House of Commons Hansard Debates for 2 Dec 1991

Judges

Resolved,

That the draft Maximum Number of Judges (Scotland) Order 1991, which was laid before this House on 14th November, be approved.-- [Mr. Nicholas Baker.]

Child Care

Resolved,

That this House takes note of European Community Document No. 7845/91, relating to child care ; and supports the Government's view that the terms of the Recommendation are welcome in principle, subject to detailed changes to improve the text to ensure adequate recognition of the principle of parental choice and the involvement of the private and voluntary sectors, and to ensure that the wide range of developments in child care services, leave and other arrangements for employed parents are not adversely affected by the imposition of statutory arrangements.-- [Mr. Nicholas Baker.]

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Tobacco Advertising (Children)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.-- [Mr. Nicholas Baker.]

8.13 pm

Miss Joan Lestor (Eccles) : I wish at the outset to explain what this debate is not about and I am pleased that we have rather longer to discuss the matter than would have been the case had the previous business run for its full time.

This debate is not about the banning of smoking, whatever my personal feelings may be about that. It is not even about banning tobacco advertising, although I deeply regret the Government's refusal last month to support an EC proposal to that effect. A ban on tobacco advertising should, in my opinion, be matched by a rethink of the enormous sums spent under the common agricultural policy on subsidising tobacco production. That costs about £900 million a year. I would rather some of that were diverted to help the national health service, which currently spends £437 million dealing with tobacco victims.

The debate is specifically about the impact of tobacco advertising on children. Some people more cynical than I say that it is a cold-blooded and calculated effort by the tobacco manufacturers to recruit sufficient under- age smokers to replace the 300 men and women who die every day from smoking -related diseases.

The debate is also about how the voluntary codes of practice which govern tobacco advertising are failing our children. There is now sufficient independent and expert evidence to suggest that tobacco advertising influences under-age smokers and that the current voluntary codes governing tobacco advertising do not work in the best interests of our children. As a matter of urgency, we should be pressing for a strictly enforced, independently monitored, statutory system of advertising control.

Earlier this year, my hon. Friend the Member for Warley, East (Mr. Faulds) successfully piloted through the Children and Young Persons (Protection from Tobacco) Act 1991 to strengthen the law governing the sale of cigarettes in shops to children. I served on the Committee which dealt with that measure and, like other hon. Members, I was appalled by the concrete evidence laid before us of tobacco companies flouting the voluntary code.

As a result of that measure and pressure from Parliament and the health lobby, many of the offending advertisements were withdrawn or resited, but a recent survey revealed that, some of the offending advertisements are still in place. Should any hon. Member doubt that, I have the details.

Last month, The Observer ran a front page story which claimed that in Canada, Imperial Tobacco Ltd., a subsidiary of BAT Industries, was targeting non-smokers as young as 12 as part of its marketing strategy. The article was based on documents laid before a court in Canada during a legal fight over the banning of tobacco advertising. The judge ruled in favour of the tobacco industry on the basis that an advertising ban violated the industry's freedom of commercial speech. That case has now gone to appeal, and the ban remains in force.

The judge discounted thousands of pages of evidence related to health issues, but among the documents were

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papers which revealed an advertising strategy which acknowledged that children as young as 12 would fall within a targeted range. I wrote to the chairman of BAT Industries. I wanted him to dissociate himself from the activities of the Canadian subsidiary. I wanted reassurance that such practices as detailed during the Canadian court case had since ceased. I also wanted confirmation from a leading figure in the British tobacco industry that the rules governing the protection of children from harmful tobacco products were both fully understood and fully accepted.

I received two letters in reply. The first was from Helen McDonald of BAT Industries' external affairs department, enclosing a copy of a letter written by Mr. Mercier, chairman and chief executive officer of Imperial Tobacco Ltd., addressed to Donald Trelford, editor of The Observer. Miss McDonald drew my attention to this sentence in Mr. Mercier's letter :

"Imperial Tobacco did not and does not advertise to non-smokers or to anyone below the legal age to buy cigarettes."

Those were weasel words. Imperial Tobacco knew the age range of readers of magazines in which it placed cigarette advertisements. Adam Raphael, in The Observer, quoted from Imperial Tobacco's own document :

"If the last 10 years have taught us anything, it is that the industry is dominated by companies which respond most effectively to the needs of non- smokers Young smokers represent the major opportunity group for the cigarette industry."

The second letter which I received from BAT Industries was from David Haywood, the deputy chairman, who wrote :

"BAT believe that smoking is an adult choice Imperial Tobacco did not and does not advertise to non-smokers or to anyone below the legal age to buy cigarettes."

He went on :

"We certainly would not promote cigarettes to non-adults or to any non- smoker."

Again, those are weasel words.

The tobacco industry needs young smokers. Research has shown that, if people are not smoking by the age of 20, they are unlikely to start. As more and more adults either kick the habit or kick the bucket, new smokers must be found to keep up the sales and the industry's profits. The number of adult smokers is falling, and I am glad about that, but in the past decade the decline among teenage smokers has ceased. The latest figures from the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys shows that 10 per cent. of 11 to 15-year-olds smoke regularly-- [Interruption.] I am happy to clear my throat. The smoke in the Tea Room has probably affected it.

I feel extremely strongly about the issue, because my area of Salford has the dubious distinction of having the highest proportion of deaths due to smoking of any district health authority in the UK. Of a total 3,400 deaths a year, more than 20 per cent. are attributed to smoking. The victims are the grandparents, and, sadly, in some cases the parents, of children in my constituency. It is too late to help them, but it is not too late to help their children. I do not suggest that advertising alone determines whether a child will smoke. A range of factors, including the example of parents and friends and other social pressures influence young people. However, for 25 years Governments and the tobacco industry have accepted that tobacco advertising recruits children as smokers. That is one of the main reasons why cigarette advertisements were

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banned from television in 1965 and why hoardings advertising cigarettes have been prohibited within sight of schools. But the Government have concentrated on protecting children through voluntary agreements with the industry.

Mr. Bob Cryer (Bradford, South) : Does my hon. Friend agree that, although tobacco advertising is banned on television, the ban is not effective because cheating goes on the whole time? On many sporting occasions that are attractive to children and young people, placards are shown around the ground and are picked up by television cameras, no matter how careful the television companies are. That amounts to deliberate cheating and it, too, should be prohibited.

Miss Lestor : I certainly agree with my hon. Friend and was about to come to that point.

The Government have concentrated on protecting children through voluntary agreements with the industry, but they do not work. As someone put it recently, the policeman may be around but he is not on duty. Despite a ban on television advertising, cigarettes are heavily advertised in newspapers and magazines, cleverly promoted through sports sponsorship, and widely available in corner shops and supermarkets festooned with bright and eye- catching posters that are attractive to children.

When tobacco advertising was in its infancy, the general trend was towards adverts that presented tobacco smoking as an adult or even sophisticated thing to do. Children who saw those adverts were in no doubt that smoking was an activity primarily for adults. But then came a move toward a more subtle approach. Golden Virginia has run a series of adverts which depict its brand name and logo in attractive and unusual materials such as mosaics, carvings and jigsaw puzzles. Readers of those advertisements are rewarded by cracking the code. They feel clever at guessing the message and advertisers clearly intend that that feel-good sensation should carry the reader on to purchasing their product. The increasing use of imagery associated with childhood blurs the distinction between an adult activity and one that is appropriate to children.

A new advertisement takes that trend to the extreme. Benson and Hedges are currently promoting their cigarettes with full-colour advertisements on hoardings in the street, and in newspapers and magazines featuring a puffin and a book. That is an outrageous theft of a symbol associated specifically with children. There can be no excuse for such advertisements. Puffin Books is a long-established and highly respected publishing house, and it is horrified at being blatantly associated with the promotion of smoking to children. The Publishers Association has also stressed that publishers of educational and children's books take the greatest care to avoid association of their products with practices such as smoking. The voluntary code has clearly been violated by Benson and Hedges' promotional material.

Benson and Hedges are marketed by Gallaher Tobacco Ltd. Ian Shepherd, its public affairs manager, tells me :

"We have agreed not to seek to encourage people, particularly young people, to start smoking".

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I have heard that before. In response to my specific point about the puffin advertisement, which Mr. Shepherd referred to as "Beak", he said :

"Considerable efforts were made to give it an adult appeal, through the use of text drawn from ornithological reference books depicted on the left hand side of the picture".

In other words, Gallaher was aware of the obvious connection and, to get round the Advertising Standards Authority, looked for a cleverer way to disguise its message.

Mr. Shepherd assures me that Gallaher has had no complaints about the advert. I have news for him. I have a letter from the publishing director of Puffin Books, which describes Benson and Hedges' use of a puffin in cigarette advertising as highly objectionable. Puffin Books has now issued a formal complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority, explaining :

"We at Puffin Books have been distressed and dismayed to receive calls from several members of the public complaining at a children's publisher associating itself with the promotion of smoking." I well understand that, yet Mr. Shepherd tells me that he has had no such complaint. I, too, have received complaints, which prompted my interest in the matter.

What a remarkable coincidence that Benson and Hedges chose the puffin for their latest advertisements in the same year as Puffin Books celebrates its 50th anniversary. Bookshop windows throughout the country are emblazoned with the puffin symbol. There are competitions on BBC's "Blue Peter", newspaper features, and events at Alton Towers and at the Edinburgh festival. The main message of Puffin Books' promotional efforts has been that children should get enjoyment from reading Puffin books, as they do. Imagine its upset at having its special year sullied by a cheap trick of that nature. Tobacco companies will deny the link with under-age smokers. They hide behind the claim that they do not advertise to recruit non- smokers, especially children. They say that they advertise to improve their market share and make existing smokers more brand aware--an absurd claim. Advertising not only reinforces the habit of those who already smoke but recruits new smokers, the majority of whom are under age. Research carried out by the advertising research unit at Strathclyde university shows that cigarette advertising reinforces under-age smoking. Another study among 10 to 12-year-olds revealed that those who notice and take a favourable view of cigarette adverts are twice as likely to start smoking within a year as those who do not.

There is increasing evidence that children are receptive to cigarette advertising. That is all the more disquieting when set against the need of tobacco companies to replenish their stock of customers. Substantial sums of money are paid by the industry to have its brands placed in children's films, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South might also have referred. For example, Marlboro appeared in "Superman" and Lucky Strikes appeared in "Beverley Hills Cop" and "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" That is advertising directed toward a young market, because mainly youngsters watch those films.

Even the Tobacco Advisory Council's own spokesman, Brendan Brady, admitted in a television interview :

"Every industry has to recruit new customers. We recruit new customers once they are over the age of 16. Of course they see the advertising before that age ; of course, they see people

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smoking before that age. They make up their decisions before that age. But we are not interested in that market under the age of 16." But the industry is there to recruit and influence those young people. That market is worth some £90 million to the tobacco industry, so I shall let hon. Members draw their own conclusions.

In this country, tobacco advertising is governed by voluntary agreements negotiated between the Department of Health and the tobacco industry or, in the case of sports sponsorship, by the Minister of Sport and the industry. Independent observers representing health interests are not allowed at those meetings and the industry refuses to allow publication of the research commissioned by the monitoring commission. That information should be made available.

The very existence of these voluntary agreements, especially when they relate to young people, is proof that the industry and the Government accept the substantial health threat to youngsters posed by tobacco and the need to protect them from harmful information. They accept that it is wrong to position posters within full view of schools. Why is it not wrong to position the same posters near bus stops used by school children, or in magazines or newspapers that are read by them? Who is monitoring the content of those advertisements with a view to child protection?

It is clear that as long as the industry can claim, hand on heart, that its advertisements are legal, decent and honest the question of their appeal to children directly or indirectly will not be addressed by anyone in authority. Tobacco advertising is everywhere. It swamps health advertising and undermines its effectiveness. It influences children to smoke. A study of 18 countries carried out by the New Zealand Toxic Substances Board shows that countries with a ban on tobacco advertising saw a decrease in the number of children smoking. Of course, tobacco advertising is subject to inadequate controls. I raise this topic now and have raised it in other ways over the years because we have a duty to protect our children. We cannot always expect adults to behave in a healthy fashion. That choice is theirs. We can warn them about the dangers, but when advertisements such as those that I have shown--and I could show others--are directly aimed at attracting children by using a symbol that is meant for children, the voluntary code has been exploded. I urge the Minister to make suggestions that will provide for children real protection from the effects of unscrupulous cigarette advertising.

8.31 pm

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody (Crewe and Nantwich) : I hope that the Minister will agree that the Department of Health should look at what it costs this country to deal with the effects of smoking-related diseases. Although the evidence has been available for many years, it is extraordinary that the House still does not give sufficient weight to the impact of those costs on the national health service. One of the saddest and most frightening statistics of the past decade has been the increase in the deaths of women from smoking and smoking-related diseases.

Without wishing in any way to add to the guilt of any of the women concerned, I can tell the House that in many homes smoking has once again become part of the acceptable face of family life. That adds to the enormous pressures on children at every level.

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Advertising does not assume that its sole role is educational. It seeks, and has always sought, to present products in a way that makes them attractive. Therefore, advertising that is specifically aimed at children does not seek to fulfil a pure information role. It does not say to those who are at or leaving school, "You should think about this but remember that it has implications." Advertising is meant to do something rather different. It aims to sell a product. There would not be anything wrong with that if society as a whole had not considered the impact of smoking on the young, but we know what happens. We know that, if smokers are caught young, they will be customers for many tens of years.

When I was a small child--which was not very long ago--it was customary for working-class children to smoke because it was regarded as a sign of growing up. As a naturally perverse child, I was the only one in my class who did not smoke, because it was an easy way to stand out. People were encouraged to feel that smoking marked the divide between the small child or the teenager and the adult. For a while, because of the voluntary code of conduct and the acceptance by the industry of the need to understand that cigarettes were a health hazard, society started to come round to the idea that there should be direct controls on advertising and that we should do nothing to encourage the young. Unfortunately, that has undoubtedly changed. The techniques used by advertisers are far more sophisticated than before, and that is the real hazard.

It is no longer a question of simply having a glowing picture of a cowboy on a horse. Advertisers now make specific and cynical use of detailed marketing techniques. Companies pay educational psychologists and those with knowledge of marketing techniques to work out how goods can be presented most attractively to the young. Therefore, such advertising is no accident. The companies know that they are targeting specific buying groups who will have access to money, will be hooked on the product and will produce large numbers of future buyers.

The House has a specific duty. When we originally debated the code of conduct, we were told that the industry not only accepted the difficulties but was prepared to comply with a voluntary code because it knew that that was the way in which it could best fulfil its duty. We were told, and many hon. Members genuinely believed, that the industry accepted that its advertising campaigns had an impact on the health of the nation. I never believed that. I never accepted that such a large, expensively maintained and profitable industry would lightly give up an advertising habit of a lifetime without continuing to look at the customer as the ultimate and most important object. What is happening now is outrageous. Quite small children are being encouraged at every level to regard smoking as an activity that is almost automatically tied in with specific health promotions which are important to them. Why does the tobacco industry spend so much money on the promotion of sports events? It is because the young, almost automatically, go to those events. They are excited by what they see and become followers of a sport or a team. Automatically they begin to see within the ambiance of that sport the constant advertising of certain goods. Almost without thinking, they accept that that is somehow or other part of the sport. Football is the classic one, but such sponsorship now appears everywhere.

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Motor racing is just one of the sports which for many years has been promoted in connection with certain famous tobacco company names.

Despite all that, the industry is still prepared to suggest to the House that the voluntary code is working. Not only is it not working ; it is being exploited in the most cynical, almost depraved way. If we were asked to give to every teenage or pre-teen child in our constituencies a noxious substance in a mild form to which they would become addicted and because of which they would face possible death and certain illness, the House would react violently. It would say that there was no conceivable way in which hon. Members could be asked to pass or support laws that would somehow or other put children at risk. But by not insisting on very deliberate controls and by ignoring what is happening in the tobacco industry, that is what we are doing, week after week, month after month.

For about 30 years I have watched developments in the health service and have seen the rising graph of deaths from carcinoma, coronary heart disease and smoking-related diseases. In my active time in the House of Commons, I have done everything that I can to promote the need for controls on the tobacco industry, but it is still necessary for my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Miss Lestor) to make her plea tonight. She and I call one another "sister grandmothers" because we have been here for some time and our concern for our families and grandchildren makes us feel strongly that the House of Commons has a duty to protect those who are most at risk. Enough of the cynicism, and of the abandonment of common sense to the promotion of commercial which that are dangerous substances. Enough of a House of Commons which no longer regards health promotion as something that requires equal commitment in terms of money and support to that which is expended by the industry in promoting its goods to the young. Enough of a House of Commons no longer fulfilling its proper watchdog functions and allowing noxious substances to be sold to our children. If we do not understand the implications, the deaths, illnesses and long-term unhappiness of many families will be on the consciences of every elected Member of Parliament.

8.40 pm

Mr. Bob Cryer (Bradford, South) : I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Miss Lestor) on securing an Adjournment debate on the important topic of targeting children in advertising tobacco. It links with the activities of my hon. Friend the Member for Warley, East (Mr. Faulds), who promoted what has become the Children and Young Persons (Protection from Tobacco) Act 1991 to curb advertising at point of sale in retail shops.

I shall deal with two areas--a regulated one, television, and a non- regulated one, which is now covered by my hon. Friend's Act. The Independent Broadcasting Authority was replaced by the Independent Television Commission under the provisions of the Broadcasting Act 1987, under which the most recent auction of franchises took place. Hon. Members felt that the IBA was a toothless watchdog and we expected the newly constituted commission to do

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better. The House took a long time debating the broadcasting Bill. I served on the Committee that spent many hours in diligent examination of it.

I have already mentioned my particular concern in an intervention in the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Miss Lestor). It is the way in which--at sporting events in particular, but all outside broadcasting events--the names of tobacco products are visible for all to see in the background. I am not much in favour of sponsorship, particularly that by the tobacco industry, and I think that one can divide sponsorship between that done by those who are genuinely seeking to assist an organisation and that by those who wish to exploit it. There is no question in my mind--this was reinforced by the evidence produced by my hon. Friend--that the tobacco industry falls in the latter category. Furthermore, it seeks to exploit the young.

Outside broadcasts of test matches, soccer matches, rugby league and rugby union matches and track activities at athletic events are keenly watched by a significant proportion of our young people, as they should be. Watching such events helps to stimulate young people to take part in sports, but in the background there is always advertising of tobacco products. On the whole, it is advertising of cigarettes, although sometimes it is of pipe tobacco, which is less of an offence.

Club owners and sports event organisers fix up events so that tobacco advertisements are given prominence. For an outside broadcast with a big audience, they can ensure that the advertising space commands a premium, particularly for those displays that are near where the main events in an athletics competition are to be held or within the camera range at an important cricket match or test match. Therefore, it is important that the Government, through the ITC, make it clear that broadcasting of cigarette advertisements on television is a breach of the 1965 ban.

Ms. Mildred Gordon (Bow and Poplar) : Is my hon. Friend aware that, some time ago, researchers for the Esther Rantzen programme "That's Life" were preparing a television programme about children and tobacco, which unfortunately was never broadcast? As an experiment, they sent children to tobacconists in my constituency, together with an adult who kept out of sight. All those children were able to buy cigarettes.

Does my hon. Friend agree that, first, parents must be encouraged not to send their children round the corner to buy a packet of cigarettes and that, secondly, tobacconists must be asked not to sell to children who say that they are buying for their parents, but who nine times out of 10 are not? They are doing so for themselves, because they have been encouraged by the advertising to which my hon. Friend referred. I should like to see anti -smoking advertisements at sporting events saying that every cigarette is a coffin nail. Rather than linking tobacco with healthy sports, we should be linking it with death.

Mr. Cryer : My hon. Friend is right. The link between cigarette advertising and sporting events is mischievous. These events are about healthy exercise and can sometimes be very glamorous. They involve strenuous physical effort and sometimes shrewd mental processes and selective judgment. By associating that with cigarettes, the advertisers give a false image to cigarettes. As my hon. Friend said, if cigarettes are mentioned at all at sporting

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activities, people should be told that they are a drug which produces an addiction and which can lead to death if smoked for long enough, as we know.

A week ago, the Tobacco Advisory Council held a reception in the House of Commons for small retailers who were concerned about the reduction in their turnover that would result if taxes on cigarettes were increased. Ironically, that was the same day as the publication of yet another report setting out the dangers of tobacco smoking and the enormous consequences for the rest of us because NHS facilities must be used to cater for those who are endangering their bodies and losing their lives as a result of their addiction to cigarette smoking.

The ITC has the power to do something about this advertising, but it does not. Year after year, there has been deliberate, organised cheating by the ITC and its predecessor body to allow tobacco advertising despite the ban. It is time for the Government to say that they want an end to all placards advertising cigarettes on outside broadcasts from both the BBC and the ITV. I hope that the Minister, when he responds to this useful debate, will make a clear statement on that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Eccles spoke about the disgraceful use of tobacco products, and cigarettes in particular, in feature films. Feature films are well enough financed, including those mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles--"Superman" and "Who Killed Roger Rabbit?", which were financed by American money--and they should not use advertising in a dishonest way. That is when advertising in concealed within a story that is presented by the film without an explicit reference to the fact that money is being paid to promote a particular product.

That is something that we do not allow on television. We do not allow invisible advertising. The last "invisible" programme that was allowed was shown in the 1960s. The programme was a weekly trip to a consumer magazine, which went through various products, and it was paid for by the promoters of the products shown in the programme. That abuse was stopped. It is unfortunate that we do not have an organisation to examine hidden advertising in feature films. I am concerned because I consider the feature film industry to be important and I believe that we should have one in the United Kingdom. The criticism that there is hidden advertising cannot be attributed to British producers, but it can rightly be directed towards American producers. It should be made clear that, if such advertising is incorporated in a feature film, the practice can be taken into account when the censorship certificate is being awarded. The censorship system is essentially trade organised, but I think that the Government should make it clear that they deplore the sort of advertising that I have described, which is a form of cheating. The advertising is not made clear and specific on television. Instead, it is part of the background. The same could be said of any feature films that promoted cigarettes in a hidden and dishonest way. My hon. Friend the Member for Bow and Poplar (Ms. Gordon) intervened to talk about advertising at retail outlets. It has been stopped specifically by the private Member's Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Warley, East. It was a simple measure that passed through the House because of the good will of hon. Members on both sides and their wish to ensure that such advertising at retail outlets was curtailed. That advertising

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is attractive to children, and very often the small retail street corner shop--I accept that their number has diminished and that this form of retail advertising applies to all shops-- is used by children. Their parents ask them to go for small items such as milk, loaves of bread and tins of food. If they see the advertising, they find it a temptation.

When the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Warley, East was passing through the House, many examples were quoted of shopkeepers who were prepared to split packets and to sell single cigarettes to children. The Bill merely enhanced existing legislation by providing facilities for local authorities to institute prosecutions against shopkeepers who adopted that practice. When the Bill was being considered, I recall asking the Government to provide financial resources to local authorities to ensure that environmental health officers could put the relevant legislation into operation and to make it clear to all shopkeepers that, if they were found to be selling cigarettes to children, they would be pursued, prosecuted where evidence was available and fined heavily in the courts. It is no good the Government taking action on advertising that helps to lure children if, when lured, they can buy cigarettes easily in the street corner shop or in the local supermarket. It must be made clear--I hope that it will be by the Minister--that the Government will take action.

What is the Government's position? They stood idly by while supermarkets opened their doors on Sunday in town after town and city after city. The supermarkets traded with impunity, unfortunately. The Attorney-General told us last week that he could not do anything. The Prime Minister said on Tuesday that he could not do anything either because, as he claimed, the law was confused. In this instance the law is not confused. If the resources are available, local authorities will take action against the scavengers who are selling the poisoned weed to schoolchildren who are often younger than 16. We must be careful in this place about the effects of the tobacco industry's lobbying efforts. It has been said that, when the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young) was a Minister at the Department of Health and Social Security--he is now the Minister for Housing and Planning--he said that he was determined to introduce much more widespread curbs on advertising. It has been reported in books about the advertising industry which have been written by practitioners that the hon. Gentleman became a victim of lobbying. I warn the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Dorrell), that if he is determined, as he should be, to improve the health of the nation by completely curbing tobacco advertising, especially that which is highly accessible to children, he should be aware of the influence of the lobbyists. They will pad round this place with a view to sidling up to his superior Minister, the deputy Prime Minister or the Prime Minister, and saying, "Self-regulation is better. The young Minister is going beyond his brief. He is trying to do something that will harm the tobacco industry." They will not say that the intention is to save children's lives or to save them years of miserable existence as they cough out their last few years.

I say that as someone who has never smoked cigarettes. My father died of a heart attack when he was 78. I think that a number of years would have been left to him if he

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had not smoked Capstan full strength for so long, until his doctor advised him to stop doing so because his smoking was causing his health to deteriorate.

My father started smoking as a young lad when he volunteered to serve in the first world war. It was a period of great stress, deprivation and difficulty. Many people smoked and they did not think much about it. After all, the next cigarette might be their last. The thought of living until their 70s and 80s, or perhaps beyond, by avoiding tobacco did not occur to them.

My father became addicted to Capstan full strength, which were probably the most poisonous of all the attractively packaged poisons that were available in the form of cigarettes. I am certain that his life was made more miserable as a result. He coughed heavily every morning of his later life and was afflicted with a heart condition in his final years. The tobacco industry is powerful and certainly wealthy enough to employ parliamentary lobbyists. If it is true that their influence displaced a Health Minister who was determined to achieve something important and useful--curbing tobacco advertising--I hope that such a thing will never happen again.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles for allowing me to contribute to her Adjournment debate. I am glad that she initiated it, but unfortunately I think that we will have to agitate much more forcefully before we will be satisfied with the Government's action in this and similar areas.

8.59 pm

Mr. John McFall (Dumbarton) : I share the delight of my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) in being able to participate in tonight's debate, and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Miss Lestor) on initiating it.

The debate reminds me of the Jesuit dictum--"Give me a boy when he is seven, and I will give you the man." That is how the tobacco industry looks upon our young people--"Give them to us young, and we will keep them throughout their adult life."

Research--not least by Strathclyde university's advertising unit, which is part of its marketing department--for the report "From the Billboard to the Playground", which was published a few months ago, show that almost all smokers start as children. I did the same. I started smoking at 14 years of age because I thought that it was the right thing to do, just as my classroom friends did. It was also one up on the teacher.

At lunchtime, my friends and I would go to buy singles--or on days when we were well off, five Players. Our English teacher, who was a particularly nasty little character, was even nastier than ourselves. He knew which of us smoked, took our cigarettes--calling us "smoky beasts" in the process-- and then kept them for himself and his pals. I did not think that that was particularly fair.

I was hooked on smoking from 14 years of age, and I did not give it up for 11 or 12 years, until I was about 25--despite making six or seven attempts to do so. I stopped because my father made me. He died of an arterial disease, and had both his legs off because he was a heavy smoker. After I reached the age of 20, I had a litany from him every

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day, exhorting me to give up cigarettes for my own good. I did not listen to him then--but later I tried again to stop smoking, and eventually, at 25 years of age, I succeeded.

Those who start smoking at an early age can take it from me that it is very hard to get off the weed if one starts on it at an early age. The tobacco industry knows that very well. Why else does it spend £160 million a year trying to convince people that smoking is good? It spends that money because it receives its rewards--but those rewards are to the detriment of the country, and particularly the national health service, to which the cost of smoking-related diseases is £437 million a year. As my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles said, every hour 12 people die from smoking- related diseases--nearly 300 per day.

My late father spent many years receiving hospital treatment. I often accompanied him on his hospital visits, and the consultant challenged me to find one patient suffering from vascular problems who was not a smoker. It is true to say that not one non-smoker was to be found in those wards. That empirical evidence, burnished in my mind, is enough for me to know that smoking damages health. As a former schoolteacher, I was dismayed to learn that the incidence of smoking among the young has not diminished. Although the number of adult smokers is falling, research shows that 30 per cent. of 19-year-olds smoke regularly, and in the past nine years, the decline in teenage smoking has been arrested. Latest figures from the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys show that 10 per cent. of 11 to 15-year- olds smoke regularly. What are the Government doing about that? They are fighting the European Commission because they do not want the Commission to impose a ban on cigarette advertising. The Government have succeeded in obtaining a six-month stay of execution. They should be ashamed of themselves.

Mr. Cryer : My hon. Friend is right when he says that the Government are behaving disgracefully, but does he accept that the Commission has double standards? It is spending about £20 million a year on a tobacco mountain. It has bought tobacco at a fixed price. The wine lake, the cereal mountain and all the other mountains have now been joined by a tobacco mountain. The Commission ought not to subsidise tobacco growers.

Mr. McFall : I did not think that it would be possible to mention the European Commission without my hon. Friend jumping to his feet, but I take his point. Yes, the Commission is hypocritical in a number of respects, but we should join it in fighting to have this directive implemented.

Cigarette smoking harms young people, but it harms women and young girls even more. Medical research shows that pregnant women who smoke have underweight babies. The tobacco industry focuses its advertising campaign on young girls. Strathclyde university's report, "From the Billboard to the Playground", shows that the tobacco industry's advertising campaign is directed specifically at young people. The report was commissioned by the Cancer Research Campaign and demolished the argument that the tobacco industry advertises only in an effort to attract smokers to particular brands. That is not so. The position was summed up by the chairman of McCann Erickson, an advertising company, who said that the primary purpose of tobacco advertising was to create

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"a positive climate of social acceptability for smoking, which encourages new smokers to join the market."

Reference has already been made to cigarette advertising in cinemas and sports grounds. Advertising by Marlboro, and all the other cigarette companies, is designed to make people feel good. They show cowboys on horses riding the prairies, beautiful clear streams and wonderful weather ; then somebody sits down and takes out a cigarette. Why? Because it is another world that advertisers are trying to show to young people. They are faced not with reality but with a dreamlike world. Young people are falling for it. It is an acceptable alternative to everyday reality.

The Minister and the Government know that the voluntary code does not work. Why otherwise does the tobacco industry spend £160 million on advertising? That question must be answered. By their inactivity, the Government are condemning people to a slow and painful death. They are also condemning those who work in the national health service to looking after them. It makes no sense. Only the interests of big business are being served. The sooner the interests of big business and the tobacco industry are subordinated to the health of all adults and young people, the better.

Mr. Cryer : I have not received the details of Labour party research that may have been carried out this month into any contributions that the tobacco industry makes to the Conservative party. If, however, the industry has made any such contributions, it would behove the Government to send them back so that they can be seen to be completely free from any tobacco company influence. They ought also to send back the money that Asil Nadir and the other crooks have contributed to Conservative party funds.

Mr. McFall : I could not have put it better.

Mr. Rhodri Morgan (Cardiff, West) : Does my hon. Friend agree that there should be some equivalence between the amount spent on advertising and the additional expenditure occasioned to the national health service by its consequences? That would happen if, instead of donating to the Conservative party, tobacco companies donated to the NHS the sums that it has to spend because of smoking.

Mr. McFall : As I said, advertising by the tobacco industry costs £160 million per year, whereas the cost to the NHS of tobacco smoking is £437 million a year--a 3 : 1 ratio. I agree with my hon. Friend that the Government should do something about inversing that ratio. I am sure that the Under-Secretary will give a dismal response, because the Government are not willing to take on the tobacco giants and to preserve the health of young people. A dismal message is being sent to young people- -they can continue smoking and damaging their health, but the Government are not interested, because there are a few bucks coming in the front door, and perhaps a few coming in the back door, too.

Strathclyde university's research has shown that the subliminal message which gets across to young people, in advertisements for the John Player and Marlboro brands, is that smoking is associated with excitement and fast cars. It was found that children as young as six were aware of that excitement. The message that it is nice to smoke cigarettes because it brings excitement and another world is getting through to young people.

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