Hansard

The bill marks another staging post in the long journey towards improving public health in Scotland and our aim of limiting exposure to smoke and discouraging smoking behaviours. If the bill is passed, it will help to improve patient safety and the rights of patients by introducing the duty of candour or openness for care providers, which was debated and agreed earlier. It will help us to regulate the sale of NVPs or e-cigarettes, and it aims to reduce the exposure that youngsters may be getting to those products. It will also make ill treatment and wilful neglect in social care settings a criminal offence.

The overall aim of the bill is to have tobacco no more by 2034. A tobacco-free generation in Scotland, with the consequent benefits for public health and savings for the public purse, is a key prize to be won if we are successful. However, that will not be easy to achieve, because we are dealing with addiction and substantial vested interests. In addition, frankly, many people like cigarettes and do not intend to give them up. Nevertheless, we need such interventions to prevent people from taking up the habit, as they will probably get us to that tobacco-free Scotland eventually.

It is estimated that treating smoking-related illnesses costs the national health service in Scotland about £400 million every year, with about 33,500 admissions. Sadly, about 13,500 deaths each year are attributable directly to smoking. The scale of the problem that we face is shown in the fact that cigarette sales in the United Kingdom are worth around £13 billion a year, with a nice cheque for about £10 billion of that going to the Treasury in duty and VAT. Sales of e-cigarettes in the UK have been estimated to be worth about £127 million a year. Last year, nearly 33 billion cigarettes were released into the market in the UK, and we can estimate that about 3 billion of those were smoked by people in Scotland. Thankfully, however, the trend is coming down. In 1999, in Scotland, over 30 per cent of adults aged over 16 smoked, but that figure is now down to 23 per cent or thereabouts. That must give us all some encouragement.

As members have said, the bill is split into three parts. Part 1 contains provisions prohibiting the sale of e-cigarettes or NVPs to anyone under 18, and it will be an offence to purchase them for someone who is aged under 18. The bill will also prohibit their sale from vending machines, and retailers will have to register that they sell them, just as they register that they sell ordinary tobacco products. Part 2 deals with care settings and places a duty of candour on health and social care organisations to inform people that they have been harmed as a result of the care or treatment that they have received. In that context, I welcome Malcolm Chisholm’s amendments, which the minister accepted earlier. Part 3 creates a criminal offence of ill treatment or wilful neglect in health and social care settings.

I will say a brief word about e-cigarettes. Constituents of mine and some colleagues in Parliament say that e-cigarettes have helped them to reduce their smoking habit, and the Scottish Government recognises that e-cigarettes may have a role to play in quitting smoking. There is limited data available to allow us to come to a conclusion one way or the other, although I am pretty sure that that data will emerge in due course.

The bill is another good step forward in helping to prevent younger people from getting hooked on smoking, and in helping to protect people in healthcare settings, as has been outlined. I think that we are winning the battle on smoking, but there is still a long way to go until we can finally extinguish cigarettes from Scottish culture once and for all. Although 2034 seems a long way off, if we get this right, we can look forward to a tobacco-free society in Scotland.