TOBACCO SUBSTITUTES (Hansard, 27 May 1970)

§ Sir Douglas Glover (Ormskirk)
On a point of order, Mr. Gourlay. Why was my hon. Friend the Member for the Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. John Smith) out of order? We are in Committee. Surely he can speak twice if he wishes and catches your eye?

§ The Deputy Chairman (Mr. Harry Gourlay)
I did not give any indication as to why the hon. Member was out of order, but I cannot at this stage go back to that point on that Schedule.

§ Mr. Laurence Pavitt (Willesden, West)
We have just started on a decade in which one million men and women will die prematurely through cigarette smoking. That figure is not mine; it appeared in the national Press and in most of the newspapers on Monday this week and it was given by Sir George Godber, Chief Medical Officer at the Department of Health and Social Security.
Clause 4 has a direct bearing on an attempt to deal with this very grave problem which faces the country as a whole and faces the Treasury, which ought to face up to some responsibility in this matter. In 1959, when I became a Member of the House, there were about 57 deaths every day from lung cancer. In those days that was only three times as many as the deaths there were from road accidents. Today the daily number of deaths from lung cancer is 84 and there are nearly five times as many deaths from lung cancer as from road accidents In 1959, with some of my hon. Friends, I was very busy discussing another Clause 4. Today I would not want this Clause 4 to pass without calling attention to the very serious problems which the Treasury's proposals raise.
At first, I used the right we all have to put down Amendments, and I put down Amendments to this Clause, but the times are out of joint and the only way I can secure the attention of the Treasury—I hope I have the attention of my hon. Friends on the Front Bench—is gracefully not to pursue my Amendments which, in other circumstances, I would 1829 have been pressing, and to proceed to discuss the point I want to make on the question, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.
The Clause affects substitutes which can be found as a means of smoking without the tremendous liability and risk of sickness and death which at present smoking entails. I cannot stress this too much to my hon. Friends, who are mainly preoccupied with Treasury matters. Suppose that a coach were involved in an accident now in Parliament Square and 84 people were killed. Every newspaper would headline it tomorrow, but day after day 84 people are dying through smoking. Therefore when I saw that, at a time when less harmful smoking may be possible, in this Clause there is the proposal to tax the tobacco substitutes which might be a solution to the ill consequences of smoking tobacco, my first reaction was one of shock.
Concern in this matter is not only shared by those in the health field; it is not felt only amongst doctors and those of us who take a deep interest in the health services. Tobacco manufacturers themselves have been expressing concern, and they are expressing concern at the moment to the extent of £2 million a year which they are spending on research because they recognise the hazards to health which arise from the manufacture, distribution, and smoking of cigarettes.
There are two main lines of research being pursued. One is a kind of detective story, to discover, isolate and nail down the killer in tobacco. What is the carcinogenic agent? What is it that causes and aggravates emphysema and chronic bronchitis? If it is possible to find a carcinogen-free cigarette most of us, who do not want to be killjoys, would look upon smoking as a good thing, being then free, as it would be, from the risk of sickness and death. For the first time we have started on a second line of research to find some measure of possibility—I put it no higher than that at the moment—of a tobacco substitute in order to make a satisfying and safe cigarette, and in this Clause, in subsection (2), duties of excise are to be imposed on the substitutes which may emerge at exactly the same rate as that for real tobacco. The Bill goes further in sub- 1830 section (4)(c) under which regulations may be laid afterwards which " contain provisions for the protection of the revenue ".
In other words, the Treasury seems to be saying—I hope they are not—that the revenue is paramount and that the one thing we must not touch is the revenue, irrespective of all other considerations. It is these two parts of the Clause which in particular I would have sought to amend.
4.45 p.m.
I have seen something of the work of research by the Tobacco Research Council at Harrogate. A number of us were very kindly taken to see that work, and I would also pay a tribute to the firm of Gallaher's who, independently of the Tobacco Research Council, are spending money on research which they took me to see at the Batelle Institute in Geneva.
In the first line of the attempt to save lives which may be lost through smoking there has been a breakthrough in the task of finding the killer, strangely enough because a breed of bald mice has been discovered. On these cancers can be grown more effectively as a consequence of research which has been done. I was rather surprised to find that mice are likely to have such a great impact on research in this matter. I have myself seen six cancers grown on one mouse in consequence of the tar extract from a smoking machine being put on the skin.
Hamsters are able to smoke and are being used for obtaining lung tissue after smoking. The Committee will know that I am interested in this for I am a member of the Medical Research Council. Dogs are being taught to smoke so that we can get tissue from them. Apes and monkeys are also being taught to smoke for research purposes.
The greatest break-through, in my view, is the revolution which has gone on in the production of man-made fibres being used for tobacco substitute. These may well be a safer smoking medium, and the Treasury ought to take account of these considerations as well as the revenue alone. The research which has gone on at Porton Down shows that in some of the substances now being tested, as compared with ordinary tobacco, the first benefit from the synthetic material is that the weight of a cigarette is significantly less than that made with 1831 natural material, and partly as a result of this, and partly from the smoking characteristics, the yields of smoke condensate from a standard-sized cigarette comes down from 31 milligrams, the weight of a natural material cigarette, to half of that.
I shall not weary the Committee with the whole of the research statistics, but there are two possibilities here. Firstly, if the Chancellor were able to see his way to be a bit more lenient these cigarettes could be manufactured consisting partly of tobacco and partly of synthetic material and one could have a phased process of weaning people from the ordinary cigarette to the other, part of a cigarette being taxable and part, if I had my way, not.
Alternatively, there is the possibility of encouraging people to smoke synthetic cigarettes, and I would hope that the tax situation would encourage people to smoke them, especially if the synthetic cigarette were shown to be much safer, with the advantage of freedom from the risk of lung cancer, and costing less. I think hon. Members on both sides who smoke now would get used to changing from the one to the other by this phased process, but I have no doubt that if substitutes cost the same as tobacco few will switch.
I would invite the Treasury to look at the economic consequences as well as the health consequences. Last year, in total for sickness, we paid £262 million in sickness benefit and the estimate of loss of production was £1,200 million through sickness. Respiratory diseases contributed 22 per cent. of this illness. Hon. Members on both sides are very concerned about production lost through strikes, but from sickness we are losing 60 days for every one day of strike, and seven days' production for every one lost through strikes, entirely from respiratory diseases. We are losing another eight from heart diseases, and it may be recalled that Dr. Charles Fletcher estimates we have at least 10,000 deaths a year from coronary thrombosis caused by smoking.
Sir George Godber in an excellent speech which has been reported nationally recently estimated that 190,000 years of work are lost each year through the premature loss of life caused by cigarette smoking. The Treasury should 1832 be concerned with this economic fact, and with the number of chest physicians, chest consultants and chest wards and the whole cost to the National Health Service of dealing with this problem.
The Treasury has an open mind to some extent but feels that, until there is some guarantee that the tobacco substitute is definitely less harmful to health than tobacco, any attempt to introduce a differential tax might lead people into thinking that the Government were giving the green light to the tobacco substitute and that it was O.K. Unfortunately this is a form of negative research and it is impossible to say that a cigarette made with tobacco substitute is completely harmless. There may well be another twenty years and another generation of smokers before we know the result. All one can say is that on all the evidence it is less likely to be harmful.
There is to be a special meeting convened by the Medical Research Council on 26th June when more evidence may come to light. I therefore ask my hon. Friend the Minister of State to say that, in the event of more evidence coming to light, it will be possible to lay regulations to alter the incidence of tax. I ask my hon. Friend to give an assurance that this will be seriously considered, even though there can be no guarantee of the absolute safety of the tobacco substitute. If there is a marginal hope that use of the tobacco substitute will mean that fewer people will suffer from emphysema, lung cancer or chronic bronchitis, I hope that my hon. Friend will lay regulations to encourage the use of the substitute.
I do not know who the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be after the General Election, except that he will be from this side of the House, but I ask him to receive a deputation from me accompanied by scientists and medical people to discuss the way in which tobacco and tobacco substitutes are affected by tax and the whole question of taxation, smoking and health. In economic terms, the value of the import of tobacco in 1967 was £89.3 million; in 1968, £114.6 million and in 1969, £116.6 million. There are strong economic considerations in addition to the health factors in favour of a substance manufactured in Britain taking the place of imported tobacco which is so expensive in terms of foreign exchange.
1833 This is an extremely important issue. I apologise for delaying the Committee, and I ask my hon. Friends on the Front Bench to consider seriously not only the fiscal and economic angles, but also the health hazards to thousands of young men and women. In the last five years the number of women who have died from lung cancer has increased by 33¼ per cent. For the sake of all these people I ask the Treasury to get away from the arithmetic and consider the humanity angle and be prepared to use fiscal measures to improve the health of the nation.

§ Mr. A. P. Costain (Folkestone and Hythe)
I do not think that the hon. Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) need apologise for delaying the Committee on this important subject. He has dealt with it very extensively and I do not propose to repeat what he has said. I hope that the Treasury Bench will agree to a radical breakthrough, to encourage those who are doing the experimental work and desperately trying to overcome this serious medical problem. I hope that the Minister will say that even during the trial period a tax reduction will be allowed.

§ The Minister of State, Treasury (Mr. William Rodgers)
I am very glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) has taken this opportunity of raising a grave social and personal problem, and I am sure that he will discover that we are all in a sense on his side. I can certainly say that there are no narrow Treasury objections to the development of the sort of cigarette which we hope to see. It may not offer a complete answer to the problem of cancer, but, as my hon. Friend says, it will at least make cigarette smoking less dangerous than it is at present.
As my hon. Friend acknowledged, the Clause is a major step forward. Our wish in putting it into the Finance Bill is to ensure that research goes forward as quickly as possible in the hope that the time will come, sooner rather than later, when it will be possible to consider marketing a cigarette which will fulfil the health requirements.
I can give this undertaking to my hon. Friend, that there is nothing in the Clause which, when the time comes, will be an 1834 impediment to the successful marketing of such cigarettes if they can be produced. I know that there is nothing between my hon. Friend and myself on this. It would be misleading and cruel if any remark made today by myself or by any other hon. Member should lead the public at large into believing that the solution had yet been found.
Had the Bill provided for the remission of duty on synthetic cigarettes which are marketed, people might have been led to believe that we were round the corner, but this is not so. When the time comes and the question of placing such a cigarette on the market is before us, I am absolutely certain that revenue considerations will not present an obstacle to doing what is right from a health point of view.
My hon. Friend mentioned the possibility of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer receiving a deputation. I know that he would be prepared to receive one on the lines which my hon. Friend has suggested, and I do not believe that any successor would fail to acknowledge the need to discuss this and to examine all the considerations which my hon. Friend might put before him.
This is a matter of great social importance. The proposals in the Clause are a considerable advance, and I hope that they will facilitate and bring closer the day when the scourge of cancer is removed or at least substantially reduced.