Review after endless frigging review, how government works

If you want to know how government works I'm probably not your man.

Even if I knew I don't have the patience to explain it but from my limited experience I can give you a small taste and you can draw your own conclusions.

Take tobacco control.

Between 2010 and 2016 the Conservative-led coalition government introduced a string of tobacco-related legislation.

New laws included bans on the display of tobacco products (and prices) in shops; selling nicotine-inhaling products, including e-cigarettes, to under 18s; buying nicotine-inhaling products on behalf of someone under 18 (proxy purchasing); and smoking in cars carrying children.

Naturally there were 'public' consultations but regardless of the rights and wrongs of each policy the outcomes were never in doubt and the legislation was duly passed and introduced.

In addition two more pieces of legislation were introduced – the Standardised Packaging of Tobacco Products Regulations 2015 and the Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016.

The former was strongly contested by Forest and others but even though two consultations resulted in heavy numerical ‘defeats’ for advocates of plain packaging (with respondents overwhelmingly opposed to the measure) the Government went ahead and introduced it anyway.

The Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016 legislation wasn't contested anything like as hard and with good reason.

The regulations were imposed on the UK by the European Union and Anna Soubry, who was public health minister at the time, seemed to ignore parliamentary procedure so the legislation went through without proper scrutiny.

So far so bad.

In July 2019 the government launched a post-implementation review on 'The impact of tobacco laws introduced between 2010 and 2016'.

The consultation ran for two months and before the closing date Forest sent an email to our supporters encouraging them to respond. I also wrote about it here – 'Wanted: your views on the impact of the display ban and other anti-smoking laws'.

Almost two-and-a-half years later the Department of Health and Social Care is still 'analysing your feedback' which seems hard to believe.

Yes, I know Covid intervened but it's a long time, especially when the results might be expected to feed into discussions for the new Tobacco Control Plan.

To put it in perspective, consultation reports are normally expected three months after the closing date, although it took eleven months for the first plain packaging consultation report to be published.

Perhaps we won't have much longer to wait because according to the Government website 'Visit this page again soon to download the outcome to this public feedback'.

Meanwhile, in June 2020, I was contacted by someone working for the Regulatory Policy Committee (RPC), one of whose roles is to scrutinise and assess post implementation reviews to check they are fit for purpose.

In other words, the RPC reviews the reviews!

Curiously they failed to follow up their initial request for a virtual meeting, despite the fact that I said I was happy to speak to them, and our correspondence fizzled out.

Six months later however, in January 2021, the Government launched yet another consultation, a post implementation review of the Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016 (TRPR) and the Standardised Packaging of Tobacco Products Regulations 2015 (SPoT).

The online survey reviewed the effectiveness of the legislation and ran for two months from January 29 to March 19, 2021.

Again we invited Forest's supporters to respond and in November 2021 we were contacted for a second time by the Regulatory Policy Committee.

This time they were inviting comments on the TRPR and SPoT review and this time a virtual meeting with Forest did take place.

I haven't seen the RPC's review of the TRPR and SPoT review, if one exists. I have however read the reports of the work the RPC was reviewing. (Note: the RPC is interested in process not policy.)

Published in March (2022) the 'Post-Implementation Review of Tobacco Legislation: The Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016' and 'The Standardised Packaging of Tobacco Products Regulations 2015: post-implementation review' went largely unnoticed.

In fact I didn't know about them until last month because, even though Forest submitted a response to the January 2021 consultation, no-one thought to notify us.

I don't expect you to read them in full but it's worth noting that under 'Public Consultation' (on page 27 of the TRPR PIR and page 29 of the SPoT PIR) it reveals that '5,254 responses were received in total, across a range of different stakeholders'.

As you can see from the graphic below 5,110 individuals (or 97.3% of all respondents) responded to the consultation compared with 32 NGOs (0.6%), 58 businesses (1.1%), 24 public sector bodies (0.5%) and 30 'other' (0.6%).

According to the report:

Across all respondents, attitudes towards the regulations were mixed. However, the overall response is skewed by the large number of individuals who provided an opinion on the regulations and does not provide an accurate picture for the response of different stakeholder groups.

Other stakeholder groups such as public sector bodies (including public health organisations) generally provided a clearer opinion on the regulations and generally favoured the regulations, suggesting they were meeting the intended objectives. Businesses and NGOs often provided mixed responses, though did provide clear opinions to certain questions.

What this tells us, I think, is that 'the large number of individuals who provided an opinion on the regulations' were generally opposed (hence they allegedly 'skewed' the overall response) while opinions were mixed in every other category bar one.

No prizes for guessing which category that was.

You can see therefore the extent to which tobacco control policy in the UK is directed and dictated not by the general public, or businesses and other groups, but by a relatively small group of public sector bodies including public health organisations that should rightly be called the tobacco control industry because that's what it is, an industry.

I know that won't come as a surprise to readers of this blog but when it's in black and white in a government report it's worth pointing out.

Meanwhile there’s always another consultation or review to look forward to and this year there have been two already, three if you include the Scottish Government consultation ‘Tightening rules on advertising and promoting vaping products’ that closed on April 29.

The first was a Welsh Government consultation (closing date March 29) that called on the public to ‘help create a smoke-free Wales by 2030’.

The second was the ‘independent review’ commissioned by health secretary Sajid Javid. Due to be published later this month, it will include recommendations by its author, Javed Khan, that may or may not be included in the Government’s new Tobacco Control Plan.

To recap, the ‘independent review’ team at the Department of Health has ignored two requests to confirm receipt of Forest’s submission to Khan so whether he has seen it, let alone read it, is a mystery.

Our request to speak to him directly was similarly ignored which further begs the question:

How independent is an ‘independent review’ whose author is being assisted by the tobacco programme lead at the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (formerly Public Health England) and formerly head of policy at the anti-smoking pressure group ASH?

You couldn’t make it up but that, I'm afraid, is how government works.

See also: Independent review adopts tobacco control hymn sheet (Taking Liberties).

PS. For the avoidance of doubt, I believe strongly that members of the public should always respond to government consultations on issues that matter to them, whatever the likely outcome.

So if you were one of the 5,110 individuals who responded to the post-implementation review of the SPoT and TRPR regulations, thank you. It has been noted.

Comments

[Pat Nurse]

This review like the original review of the impact of smoking bans was only ever about ignoring those who suffer so that the bullies driving the agenda could pat themselves on the back at how many smokers they've humiliated, abused, bullied and driven out of communities that once happily welcomed them as friends.

As long as anti smokerism is driven by undemocratic fascists, I will smoke as the only virtue signal I can show that says I am anti bullying, anti fascist, and anti totalitarian.

This review never intended to hear from all sides of the debate which is why it was gifted to tobacco control bullies to push forward.

The agenda is a world cleansed of smokers by the date the anti smoker industry set itself back in 1971 before the scam of passive smoking was invented, and there is nothing that will stop these thugs from continuing the lifestyle cleansing process to ensure only the perfect human specimen is allowed to live in the new definition of the "free" world which basically means free to live how you have been told to.

Shame on this Government. Shame on all of them. They are not creating a better future for our children. They are creating a future founded on bullying, hate incitement, inequality, and social exclusion .

How can anyone be proud of that.