Hansard

I am pleased to announce the publication today of our new action plan, which sets out a longer-term strategic approach to smoking prevention activity in Scotland. Although we will continue to do all that we can to help smokers to quit, the plan contains an ambitious programme of specific measures to discourage children and young people from starting to smoke and becoming regular smokers.

A generation after the health risks associated with smoking were demonstrated beyond dispute, smoking remains one of the principal causes of illness and premature death in Scotland. It is still linked to 13,000 deaths—and many more hospital admissions—each year. Apart from the human tragedy that those statistics represent, there is also a considerable resultant economic burden. The annual cost of hospital care alone is estimated at more than £200 million and of lost productivity at £450 million. Smoking also disproportionately affects those who are already disadvantaged by poverty and is a major contributor to health and premature mortality inequalities. As a result, tackling smoking-related harm lies at the heart of our health improvement and health inequalities drive.

In recent years, of course, significant progress has been made in reducing the cultural acceptability of smoking, including the bold and decisive legislative action taken by this Parliament in introducing the smoking ban and increasing the age of sale for tobacco from 16 to 18.

While the decline in population smoking in recent years is welcome, we must continue with firm action to reduce smoking's prevalence even further. Although we have already committed to continued investment in smoking cessation services, we also want to focus on preventing smoking uptake by children and young people.

Let me, if I may, remind members why a focus on children and young people is so vital. Smoking is dangerous at any age, but in this case the statistics are stark. Eighty per cent of smokers start in their teens. Moreover, the younger that people start, the more likely they are to smoke for longer and to die early as a result. Worst of all, someone who starts smoking at 15 is three times more likely to die of cancer than someone who starts in their mid-20s.

I am sure that members will agree that those are compelling reasons for shifting the focus more clearly towards smoking prevention. In a nutshell, we want to do everything we can to denormalise smoking within society in Scotland to help our young people in particular to choose not to smoke. Our proposals are in line with the Scottish Government's desire, as set out in its economic strategy, to create a more successful country with opportunities for all to flourish.

The proposals that are set out in "Scotland's Future is Smoke-free: A Smoking Prevention Action Plan", which is published today, were developed in consultation with the ministerial working group on tobacco control. I chair that group, and I am grateful for its members' advice and support.

I am grateful also to Dr Laurence Gruer and other members of the expert smoking prevention working group, whose recommendations form the basis of the measures in the action plan. The group thoroughly investigated the issues and, importantly, has provided a strong evidence base for our proposed action. Of course, its recommendations were subject to widespread consultation. I am grateful to all of those who took part in the consultation, including young people who fed in views through focus groups and a Young Scot online survey.

The crucial point is that, although individuals and organisations might take issue with particular recommendations, the consultation results were overwhelmingly positive on the need for a longer-term strategic approach to smoking prevention. They also gave the Scottish Government a strong mandate to act decisively to stop a new generation of young Scots from becoming addicted to tobacco.

The challenge is to make cigarettes and other tobacco products less affordable, less accessible and less attractive to children and young people. Of course, that cannot be achieved by the Scottish Government alone: ownership and action are required from a wide range of individuals and organisations, including national health service boards, local authorities, third sector bodies and the business sector.

What do we propose? We propose to deliver a co-ordinated programme of measures that respond to all the factors that influence behaviour. The plan sets out action in five broad areas. First, we propose to educate and to promote healthy lifestyles through measures that make clear to children and young people the risks that are associated with smoking and which do everything possible to counter the idea that there is any link between smoking and glamour, celebrity, maturity and independence. Actions that we will take in that regard include the promotion of an all-encompassing approach to health and wellbeing in Scottish schools, which will be fostered through health-promoting schools, the curriculum for excellence and improvements in substance misuse education in schools; more effective engagement with young people in non-school settings, such as in universities and further education colleges; and engagement with members of harder-to-reach groups, such as people who are not in employment, education or training, or those who are in occupations or settings in which smoking levels are higher than average. We will also ensure that tobacco issues are addressed fully in the new health improvement social marketing strategy to discourage smoking uptake and promote healthy, smoke-free lifestyles.

Secondly, we propose to reduce the attractiveness of cigarettes through measures that will counter positive images of cigarettes in the media and at points of sale, which will reduce the opportunities for children and young people to be exposed to smoking. All such measures are important, but the one that I expect to have the greatest impact is our proposal to introduce legislative controls to further restrict the display of tobacco products at points of sale. Even though tobacco advertising was banned in 2002, there are growing concerns that prominent and public displays of cigarettes and other tobacco products in shops and at other points of sale are undermining our wider tobacco control efforts to denormalise smoking by shifting cultural perceptions of smoking and discouraging young people from starting to smoke in the first place.

Children and young people have been found to be far more receptive to tobacco advertising than are adults. The evidence is clear: young people who are exposed to tobacco advertising and promotion are more likely to take up smoking. There is also evidence that displays stimulate impulse purchases among people who did not intend to buy cigarettes and, importantly, among smokers who are trying to give up. Giving cigarettes pride of place in shops—a position that is much sought after in product placement terms—sits uncomfortably with our ambition to create a climate in which everything possible is done to dissuade people, particularly children and young people, from smoking.

I know that sections of the retail sector will be concerned about restrictions on displays, which it fears will impact adversely on businesses. However, it is clear that point-of-sale display is being used as a promotional tool. Protecting children and young people from the impact of tobacco must be paramount. There are occasions when benefiting the public health of the nation must take precedence, and this is such an occasion.

As we move forward with the legislative process, I will engage fully with retailers on the proposal. International experience has shown that the implementation of tobacco display bans has not had a dramatic impact on local businesses. For example, following a ban on displays in one of the Canadian provinces, no shops were forced to close. Moreover, experience suggests that the cost of refit is largely borne by the tobacco wholesalers that supply tobacco products to the retail chains. The important point is that the removal of displays changes public perceptions of smoking.

Thirdly, we propose to reduce the availability of cigarettes by stepping up enforcement of tobacco sales law to ensure that cigarettes are not sold to minors and to prevent access to smuggled or counterfeit cigarettes. It is clear that, despite what the law says, underage young people have little difficulty accessing cigarettes if they want them. We will therefore pursue a two-pronged approach that involves more effective enforcement of the law by local authorities, which will be secured by introducing an enhanced tobacco sales enforcement programme coupled with increased emphasis on proof of age, and a review and update of tobacco sales law to introduce tobacco licensing and new sanctions, such as cautions and fixed-penalty notices for breaches of the law. We will also examine minimum pack sizes and sales from vending machines as part of the legislative review. This update of tobacco sales law is long overdue. Currently, the provisions governing tobacco sales are contained in the Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Act 1937, which was last subject to a major review in 1991.

There are, of course, a number of possible licensing options, and in developing detailed legislative proposals we will examine them closely in consultation with key stakeholders, including the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, local authorities and retailers. My preference is for an approach that falls somewhere between the positive scheme favoured by Christine Grahame in her member's bill proposals and a negative licensing system that would bite only if retailers were found to be selling to underage young people. We are attracted to an approach that allows tobacco retailers to be clearly identified—which will enable trading standards officers and others to offer advice and support to them to avoid illegal sales—offers a proportionate response to the problem, is administratively simple and places the minimum burden on business.

The fourth area involves measures to reduce the affordability of cigarettes, which means ensuring that cigarette prices are sufficiently high to discourage children and young people from smoking. The price of tobacco products is one of the most important factors in determining consumption, so taxation policy is one of the main tools for preventing tobacco consumption. Of course, the availability of cheaper smuggled tobacco products—both cigarettes and loose tobacco—sold from vans at open-air markets and by other means in communities across Scotland undermines fiscal policies that are aimed at reducing tobacco consumption.

In addition to keeping pressure on the United Kingdom Government to ensure that tobacco duty remains sufficiently high, a protocol is being developed between Scottish trading standards services and HM Revenue and Customs on a collaborative approach to reduce the impact of those illicit products on Scottish communities. Such partnership working is important. Smuggled tobacco is more likely to be sold in deprived areas and it is increasingly targeted at children, so smuggling appears to have a disproportionate impact on young people in those areas and to be a factor in perpetuating health inequalities.

It is vital, too, that the action that we propose to tighten up illegal sales from legitimate business is matched by firm action on illicit tobacco sales. As part of the review and update of tobacco sales law, we will examine the question of minimum pack sizes. We know, for example, that young people are three to four times more price sensitive than adults, so as part of the legislative review we will consider the relationship between packs of 10 cigarettes and tobacco consumption, which I mentioned earlier.

The final area of the action plan describes how we will deliver, resource and measure progress. Much of the action in the plan will be delivered using existing resources, but in some cases there may be a requirement to refocus or prioritise efforts, for example in social marketing and communications activity.

We will continue to make substantial specific funding available for tobacco control. An additional £9 million will be made available over the next three years to boost delivery of actions in the plan and bring the total specific funding for tobacco control to £42 million from 2008-09 to 2010-11. That is in addition to the £2 million of annual funding that is allocated to tobacco control in national health service boards' unified budgets. The new £9 million is intended to support local delivery of the action plan, and £4.5 million will be allocated to NHS boards to enable then to co-ordinate action locally to underpin the proposed measures and to ensure that they are embedded in local tobacco control programmes. A similar amount will be allocated to local authorities to enable them to step up enforcement activity. We have also pledged to continue to support the activities of the voluntary sector—ASH Scotland's partnership action on tobacco and health, and the Scottish tobacco control alliance—to allow it to contribute fully to the plan's delivery.

In recognition of the actions proposed in the plan and to drive delivery, we have set new targets for 13 and 15-year-olds and introduced a new target for 16 to 24-year-olds. We will also establish a research and evaluation framework to assess impact.

In my statement I have provided a brief overview of our proposals. Our proposed programme is ambitious. Although I am sure that it will be welcomed as a whole, I am conscious that members might take issue with some elements of it. In particular, some members might question the need for further legislative action on tobacco. Nevertheless, given the devastation—I use the word advisedly—that tobacco has wreaked on the Scottish people, causing nearly 700,000 premature deaths during the past 50 years, we owe it to Scotland and to the Scottish people to take firm and decisive action to prevent damage to future generations. There are times when the public health benefits of a policy must be Government's overriding concern, and this is just such a time. The perceived benefits to society of preventing young people from taking up smoking supersede any minimal costs that might be imposed on Scottish tobacco retailers.

I am sure that no one in the Parliament takes issue with our desire to denormalise smoking in Scotland and to save our young people from the misery and distress of wholly preventable cancer and heart disease. By passing historic laws to ban smoking in public places in 2005, the Parliament showed that it was prepared to act collectively and courageously in the interests of public health. I call upon the Parliament to do so again by supporting the Scottish Government in our further endeavours to secure a healthier, smoke-free future for Scotland.