My Lords, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, I am pleased to welcome unreservedly the regulations moved by the Minister and to congratulate him not only on the way he introduced the debate but on the part that he played in persuading his ministerial colleagues that the introduction of standard packaging for tobacco products will make a significant contribution towards public health. I thank him for the kind words that he spoke about me and the other four members of the group, from all sides of the House, who saw the opportunity to add amendments to the Children and Families Bill to introduce a range of tobacco control measures.

The Minister has described in great detail the steps that the Government have taken since the amendments were added to that Bill. The most important of those was the study by Sir Cyril Chantler, who concluded that standardised packaging,

“is very likely to lead to a modest but important reduction over time on the uptake and prevalence of smoking and thus have a positive impact on public health”.

All the objective evidence—I stress the word “objective” for reasons I will explain in a moment—supports the case for standardised packs. It would, in the words of the Canadian Cancer Society:

“(1) eliminate promotional aspects of packaging; (2) curb deceptive messages conveyed through packaging; (3) enhance the effectiveness of health warnings; (4) reduce tobacco use”.

It is precisely because the adoption of these measures will work that the tobacco industry has been spending such enormous sums of money in its efforts to defeat them. The tactics it has followed are consistent with everything it has done to oppose tobacco control measures since the 1950s. First, it attempted to discredit the results of Sir Richard Doll’s research that proved the link between lung cancer and smoking. Then for years the industry denied the addictive properties of nicotine. It lobbied extensively and expensively against every piece of legislation aimed at reducing smoking prevalence, from curbing sponsorship and advertising, protecting people from the effects of second-hand smoke, limiting displays of tobacco in retail outlets, and now these regulations on standard packaging.

The statistics on prevalence, which the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, cited, are an indication that these measures are working and that we have made great progress. It is a great pity that when those measures were before the House they did not have the universal support of all our Members, and I do not remember the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, speaking up in favour of any of them. The tobacco industry funds front organisations which lobby for it, such as FOREST, which makes claims based on so-called freedom of choice. British American Tobacco funded the National Federation of Retail Newsagents’ campaign against the display ban, although to begin with it denied that. It put money into think tanks, such as the Institute of Economic Affairs, which obligingly produces reports following the tobacco industry’s line. What else does the tobacco industry do? It spends a fortune offering hospitality to parliamentarians. The Independent last Wednesday reported under the headline “Plain cigarette packaging”:

“One in four MPs who opposed measures have declared links to tobacco industry”.

The vast majority of gifts declared by the MPs were from JTI and came in the form of tickets to the Chelsea Flower show, worth up to £1,600.

A further effort to influence this debate here and in the other place was made by Imperial Tobacco on 27 February, when it purchased what in the advertising industry is called a “wrap” on the front and back covers of The House, with the monstrous slogan:

“Plain Packaging: Bad for Business Good for Criminals”.

I know a number of noble Lords have written to the editor and to the publisher protesting against this disgraceful use of what Dods still calls Parliament’s Magazine, though it is very different from the journal I co-founded back in the late 1970s, which was edited with such great distinction by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, who I am pleased to see in his place.

However, it is the sponsorship of spurious research which should concern us most, particularly as it relates to the effect of standard packs in Australia. The claims the industry makes on such matters as smoking rates, the effect on retailers and on the packaging industry, smuggling and counterfeiting—all based on research which it funded—have been shown to be false in almost every respect, mainly because sample sizes were far too small to be of any value and because the questions asked were loaded in a way to produce the response the industry wanted. The Government—and the noble Earl the Minister—have repeatedly made it clear that the incidence of counterfeiting and smuggling has continued to decline in the UK and standard packaging certainly will not make it worse. The experience in Australia supports that.

In his amendment, and in his speech just now, the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, referred to the security system “Codentify”. This is a tobacco industry controlled system which the World Health Organization has concluded does not meet the requirements of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control anti-smuggling treaty that tracking and tracing systems have to be controlled by Governments, not by the tobacco industry. There is already a marking system on packs in the UK which enables enforcement officers to determine whether cigarettes are counterfeit.

The tobacco industry opposes standard packaging for one reason only, and that is because it works. It reduces the attractiveness of smoking, discourages children and young people from taking up the habit and, over time, reduces national rates of smoking prevalence. Although Australia got there first on standard packaging—I pay a warm tribute to the then Minister of Health Nicola Roxon, who a number of us in this House had the pleasure of meeting when she visited Parliament—the United Kingdom has for the last 10 years been at the forefront of tobacco control measures, an achievement that will be celebrated next Wednesday when the Department of Health’s tobacco programme will receive the Luther Terry award for,

“Exemplary Leadership by a Government Ministry”.

The citation states:

“This prestigious triennial award by the American Cancer Society honours the UK as a world leader in tobacco control, alongside previous award winners such as Australia and the Republic of Ireland. It is the exceptional commitment by successive UK governments to reducing the harm caused by tobacco, supported by an outstanding team of civil servants and enabled by Parliament and the public health community which has led to this award”.

So all of your Lordships who have been on this mission with us deserve a big pat on the back. I support the regulations and oppose the amendment.