Tobacco Products and Nicotine Inhaling Products (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018 — House of Lords, 2018-12-04
Topic: Health
James O’Shaughnessy (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken on this statutory instrument. It is hard to believe that it has taken us this long to have our first Brexit outing on health issues. It could be the first outing of many and we may not always be in such agreement, but I am happy that we seem to be on this occasion On the point made initially by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and later reinforced by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, about e-cigarettes, we have been working in a framework decided at a European level and have made the most of it. It inevitably involves some restrictions, whose boundaries we have tried to push in order to have what I think is the most rational and effective approach in Europe. It has worked. As we all know, it has contributed to improved smoking cessation and low use by young people—take-up among young people being one of the fears, which we are unfortunately seeing in the States. Some research is still required to understand better both the behavioural and the health impacts of vaping products, but the Government have no doubt about their central role in dealing with what is still one of the biggest public health issues that we face. I can give an assurance that we keep an open mind about the right way to regulate these products, bearing in mind their almost entirely positive benefits It is worth emphasising, as noble Lords have done, that the purpose of the instrument is not to change policy; it is to provide continuity and make sure that there are fixes. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, pointed out, the review of directives that the Secretary of State has a duty to fulfil gives us an opportunity to think about how they are operating in this and other domains. Certainly, we will fulfil that by 2021, but the Secretary of State may decide to do something sooner —of course, that is not something I can commit him to at this point. The policy is working and we want to make the most of it. For example, some of the restrictions on advertising may be stopping realisation of the full benefits of the use of e-cigarettes in smoking cessation; those are the kind of things we would want to think about The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, talked about the Australian pictures. They are indeed more gruesome—it clearly shows that Australians have a higher threshold for what appals them. We are grateful to the Australian Government for helping us get through the transition by giving us those gruesome photos. It is also worth noting that Australia has a very successful smoking cessation regime—we are not taking these images just from anybody; we are taking them from a country that is doing really well, so there is good reason to think that they will be effective The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, asked about rotation. Clearly, we are going to need to work with the Australian Government as well as design our own pictures. In a no-deal scenario we would need to do that so that we can have rotation and make sure that people do not grow desensitised to these pictures, which is of course one of the problems with them. Of course, in a no-deal scenario we may be able to work with a number of different jurisdictions. It may be possible to assemble a library that goes beyond one or two countries, but that is not something we have a timetable for yet In answer to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, I say again that there is absolutely no going back on the progress we have made on smoking cessation. The Government are a vigorous promoter of tobacco control. We know the health benefits: pretty much the best thing you can do for your health if you smoke is to stop, so I can reassure noble Lords that there is no going back On the final question regarding the language—"fixing where possible"—the point is that we are acting under the aegis of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, which gives us the power to deal with certain things. Let me give an example of what it does not allow us to do, because of the framework of primary legislation. In its 20th report of the 2016-17 Session, the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments found some defective drafting, but we do not have the power under the withdrawal Act to fix that through this process; we would need some other process. So we have used all the powers we have under the withdrawal Act to make fixes and provide continuity in key areas, but it does not necessarily follow that we have fixed everything through this process; that will have to be done through other processes. That is just the limit of what we can do through primary legislation I hope I have been able to answer noble Lords’ questions and provide reassurance about our commitment to smoking cessation and, indeed, about our open-mindedness to future policy changes that may be required for us to go further and take advantage of some of the technologies available to us. On that basis, I beg to move.