Legislation Tobacco and Vapes Bill: (day 1) part one
My Amendments 129 and 133 would place a duty on the Government to consult on whether health warnings should appear not just on cigarette packets or the inserts within them but on every single cigarette, by printing the warnings on the paper enclosing the dangerous tobacco. In Grand Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, whose great work on this Bill is much to be admired, said that this was something the Government could look at in future but not something they were looking at now, and that secondary legislation could provide for this in future. I ask: why not consider it now, and why not meet my request for a consultation to begin?
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This idea is not new or untested. It was first endorsed by the All-Party Group on Smoking and Health in 2021, and then in the Khan review commissioned by the previous Government in 2022. Canada has already implemented this approach on cigarette papers, with demonstrable impact. Australia followed suit last April, albeit with warnings only on the filters. The evidence gathered for Health Canada examined how smokers and non-smokers responded to cigarettes carrying health warnings directly on them. The findings were striking: cigarettes displaying warnings were consistently regarded as less attractive, while those without warnings were more likely to be seen as less dangerous. In other words, the absence of a warning sends its own message—and it is the wrong one.
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