Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2021-11-22
Topic: Health
Edward John Comport Argar (Conservative, Centre-right): Forgive me; I only have a few minutes and I want to cover the amendments from the hon. Member for City of Durham. The hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) did manage dexterously to shoehorn air quality more broadly within the scope of these debates, and what he said will have been heard New clause 2, which seeks to provide powers for the Secretary of State to impose a requirement for tobacco manufacturers "to print health warnings on individual cigarettes and cigarette rolling papers", is intended, as I understand from the hon. Member for City of Durham, to further strengthen our current public health messaging and encourage smokers to quit. We strongly support measures to stop people smoking, to make smoking less attractive to young people and to educate smokers of its dangers, as we have done through graphic warnings on cigarette packs We would need to conduct further research and build a further robust evidence base in support of any such additional measures before bringing them forward. To date, no country has introduced such a measure, so there is currently limited evidence of its impact in supporting smokers to quit. If evidence showed that the requirement would not be effective, it would not be an appropriate power to have in place New clause 3, also tabled by the hon. Lady, seeks to provide a power for the Secretary of State to introduce a requirement for manufacturers to insert leaflets containing health information and information about smoking cessation services into cigarette packaging. As I set out in Committee, we believe this power is unnecessary, since the Department could legislate to do that already under the Children and Families Act 2014; inserts could be required for public health messaging through amendments to the Standardised Packaging of Tobacco Products Regulations 2015. We already have in place strong graphic images and warnings of the health harms of smoking on the outside of cigarette packs. As part of the Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016, the address for the NHS website, which provides advice for people seeking to quit smoking, is also required on packaging. The current SPoT regulations prohibit the use of inserts, as there was limited evidence that placing public health messaging inserts inside cigarette packages was more effective than messaging on the outside of packs. Further research would need to be undertaken to help to establish the public health benefit if we were to go further Turning briefly to new clause 4, I am grateful again to the hon. Lady for tabling this clause. The Government are clear that they only support the use of e-cigarettes as a tool for smokers who are trying to quit, and we strongly discourage non-smokers and young people from using them. We are committed to ensuring that our regulatory framework continues to protect young people and non-smokers from using e-cigarettes Current regulations include requirements on the packaging and labelling of e-cigarettes, along with restrictions on their marketing and the prohibiting of advertising on mainstream media such as TV and radio. While we strongly support measures to protect young people further from cigarettes, we believe the current regime remains appropriate and has the powers in place within it to make changes where required, although I suspect my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East may yet be proved right when he suggests that the other place may return to this at some point I have outlined the many steps this Government are taking to address some of the major lifestyle challenges to our health. The Bill represents another step in the direction of preventive healthcare and building a healthier society, an aim I know we all share. I hope the House will support the amendments we have tabled at this stage to strengthen those measures I also want to update the House at this point, in the context of the importance of an integrated approach and how it can improve public health measures, on two steps the Secretary of State has taken today that will put NHS staff and technology at the heart of our long-term planning and allow us to take forward the integrated approach that has proved so vital during this pandemic and is so vital to public health.