I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time. I do not, I suppose, have to tell the House that this is a Private Member's Bill and that it does not represent Labour Party policy. It is my own personal production. The Labour Party accept no responsibility for it whatsoever: the individuals may have their own views on it.
I think I should, at a very early stage, try to make clear what the Bill does not propose to do. The Bill does not propose to prohibit the sale of tobacco; it does not propose to prevent people from smoking cigarettes if they wish to do so. It is an enabling Bill which would give to the Minister for Health authority to take action in certain circumstances in regard to the sale and advertisement of cigarettes in particular.
It is desirable that a Bill of this kind should be introduced to the House, whatever its chances of being passed, because, at this particular point, it is important that the public should be made aware of the fact that there is a very wide consensus of scientific and medical opinion in the world which holds that there are grave dangers associated with the smoking of cigarettes. It is particularly difficult to try to get acceptance of this idea in view of the fact that in Britain the cigarette smokers are rated at something like three-quarters of the population: as far as I can gather, three out of four persons there tend to smoke. It is generally held by authorities, whom I could quote, that the ratio is much the same here. There is quite clearly, therefore, a very substantial volume of opinion which will not like any restriction whatsoever on indulgence in their addiction, the smoking of cigarettes.
The various rationalisations which have been set up by people who favour the continuation of smoking cigarettes —who wish to suppress or to play down the case made by scientists and medical people, after the most careful examination—are very powerful. I believe that the most powerful rationalising influence which most people addicted or habituated to smoking cigarettes depend on is the very expensive, very clever and, at the same time, I believe, very misleading and dishonest advertising campaign carried out in all the media of communication—radio, television, public hoardings and, in particular, the newspaper. The average person who is addicted to cigarette smoking depends on this continuous exhortation by the tobacco companies—in their own interests—for his continuation in a habit which he has been told is a most dangerous one and, from the point of view of his health, a most damaging one.
The case against cigarette smoking is largely directed at present against its likelihood of causing lung cancer. An equally good case has been made against cigarettes as being the cause of a very high incidence of coronary heart failure and of chronic bronchitis, both of these affecting relatively young people—middle-aged people in their most productive years when they are most needed by their families.
Although there are other diseases said to be influenced by cigarette smoking, the three major diseases with which I am concerned are lung cancer, coronary heart diseases and acute and chronic bronchitis. They are all disabling, and in certain circumstances killing, diseases for which cigarettes are responsible.
It has been suggested that this legislation being promoted by me is unnecessarily restrictive. On that I would simply answer there are very many precedents for this kind of legislation, precedents, in particular, in our own licensing and traffic laws and, as I will show later on, in our Health Act.