Fossil Fuel Advertising and Sponsorship

Simon Opher Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)]

I will begin by thanking the 568 people who live in Stroud who signed this petition and made the debate possible.

I am an MP and a practising GP, and I chair the all-party health group for health and co-chair the net zero all-party parliamentary group. I therefore bring a dual perspective to this question—and, to be honest, from both positions I think the time has come: we must end all fossil fuel advertising and sponsorship.

Primarily, this is a public health issue. Air pollution, driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels, is the single largest environmental threat to our health. The Royal College of Physicians has said that air pollution causes 43,000 premature deaths, as my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Rusholme (Afzal Khan) mentioned—more than smoking does—and is associated with heart disease, stroke, asthma, cancer and even dementia. The Royal Society for Public Health is also strongly against the advertising of fossil fuels.

In my surgery, I can see the human costs of air pollution: children living in inner-city areas struggling with asthma; adults with COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which is much worsened by poor air quality; and elderly patients often admitted with that problem from more polluted areas. One constituent lived in London in the week and said that he was slightly inconvenienced by ULEZ, the ultra low emission zone, but it was funny that he did not need his inhalers after the legislation came in. That is a very strong sign.

Advertising and sponsorship matter. The fossil fuel industry spends millions on promoting itself as green, innovative and responsible, while continuing to invest in exploration and extraction that push us further towards climate and health catastrophe. That is not just misleading, but dangerous. If they have too much money, perhaps we need an extra windfall tax to take it off them.

We have been here before—as other hon. Members have mentioned—with tobacco ads on billboards; I remember when even cricket matches were sponsored by certain tobacco companies. When we stop advertising, we reduce consumption; in that way, lives were saved at that time. We are at the same crossroads now. As my hon. Friend the Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier) said, it is not just us looking into this; many other countries are also doing so. Spain, for example, is looking at banning advertising for short-haul flights, as a friend in the Public Gallery pointed out to me. We need to be innovative—even if we are not going to totally ban this advertising, we need to ban the worst bits.

Let us be clear: air pollution shortens an average person’s life by 1.8 years and disproportionately affects poor and deprived communities, who tend to live in much more polluted areas. Moreover, 82% of outdoor advertising is located in more deprived areas, pushing that harmful message all the time. As a doctor, I know that prevention is better than cure. Banning fossil fuel advertising is a low-cost, high-impact intervention that will save lives, reduce pressure on the NHS—and we need that—and help to build a healthy and more sustainable future for us all.

We owe it to the whole country and to future generations—and I owe it to my 568 constituents—to show courage and clarity and to be bold about ending fossil fuel advertising.