Health and Care Bill

Baroness Northover Excerpts

Lords Hansard _ Part 1 & Report stage
Wednesday 16th March 2022 Lords Chamber

I say to my noble friend on the Front Bench that I understand that the Government are bringing forward their tobacco control proposals, and of course we will look at those carefully. However, as someone who comes from a medical household, I know that other parts of the health service urgently need attention. The whole of the GP practice situation in our country is in very deep trouble at the moment and that is where the money should be spent, not on trying to administer some marginal levy system which will not work and will cost Her Majesty’s Government a fortune.

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, briefly, I support these amendments; my name was on an amendment at an earlier stage. I hope that the Minister will have managed to persuade other parts of government that they will not achieve a smoke-free 2030 in the UK unless they move further and faster on tackling an industry built on promoting ill health and death—the reverse of what the health service seeks to do.

The Department of Health has come a long way in this area, with much cross-party working, and I know that the noble Earl himself has been part of that cross-party support in tackling the terrible health consequences of smoking. I have a sense of déjà vu, as I think others might. Over the years, the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, has been a rather lone voice on the other side. From time to time FOREST, which makes it plain that it is funded by the tobacco industry, kindly sends me its brief, no doubt inadvertently, and I recognise some familiar phrases that have just been voiced. I noted the rueful expression of the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, took apart what he had said about the levy.

The Government say that they are committed to delivering a smoke-free 2030, but keep putting off the action required. Not all parts of government are fully aligned to this in the actions taken. The steps proposed in the amendments are designed to help the Government achieve what they say they wish to do. I therefore commend them to the House.

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

My Lords, I want to make just a small factual supplement to the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Naseby. In fact, it was a Conservative Government in 1957 who introduced the pharmaceutical price regulation scheme or PPRS, and that scheme has been sustained ever since by Conservative, Labour and coalition Governments. As the noble Lord, Lord Young, pointed out, if it is deemed appropriate to have a form of price and profit regulation for the medicines industry, which delivers products that are essential and life-saving, it does not seem too far a stretch to think that an equivalent mechanism might be used for an industry whose products are discretionary and life-destroying.