Khan review – Government response on Tuesday

The Government's long-awaited response to 'The Khan review: making smoking obsolete' will finally be announced on Tuesday.

However it won't be the Secretary of State for Health Steve Barclay who responds to the report (which was commissioned by one of his predecessors, Sajid Javid) but a junior minister, Neil O’Brien.

The minister for primary care and public health will give the Government's response at Policy Exchange, the right wing think tank he led before he became an MP.

It follows a recent Westminster Hall debate during which O'Brien reassured impatient tobacco control campaigners by saying:

"While I can’t divulge the specifics of the proposals at this time, I can assure you that they are grounded in the best evidence of reducing tobacco use and its associated harms.”

'Achieving Smokefree 2030: Cutting Smoking and Stopping Kids Vaping' will be chaired by Dr Sean Phillips, head of health and social care at Policy Exchange.

Writing in November I noted that when O'Brien was director of Policy Exchange, the think tank published a report, ‘Cough Up: Balancing tobacco income and costs in society’.

Published in March 2010, it is summarised on the Policy Exchange website as follows:

Smoking is the single, largest preventable cause of serious ill health and kills tens of thousands of people in England every year. It is a popular myth that smoking is a net contributor to the economy – our research finds that every single cigarette smoked costs the country 6.5 pence. In order to balance income and costs, tobacco duty should be progressively increased until the full societal cost of smoking is met through taxation.

In an email to supporters, O’Brien also wrote:

Whilst tax on tobacco contributes £10 billion annually to the Treasury coffers, the true costs to society from smoking are far higher, at £13.74 billion, think thank Policy Exchange’s latest report finds. This cost is made up of the cost of treating smokers on the NHS (£2.7 billion) but also the loss in productivity from smoking breaks (£2.9 billion) and increased absenteeism (£2.5 billion); the cost of cleaning up cigarette butts (£342 million); the cost of fires (£507 million), and also the loss in economic output from the deaths of smokers (£4.1 billion) and passive smokers (£713 million). 



The report, Cough Up, calculates that of this £13.74 billion, cigarettes – which comprise 93.3% of the tobacco market - cost us £12.82 billion a year. Currently, a pack of cigarettes costs just £6.13. But this would need to be increased to at least £7.42 for cigarettes to be revenue neutral to society and their true cost reflected by their price.

None of this fills me with confidence that O'Brien or his boss Steve Barclay (who voted AGAINST separate smoking rooms in pubs and clubs, and FOR plain packaging of tobacco) will stand up to the prohibitionists who want to forcibly make smoking history by 2030, but we'll see.

Word has it that the Treasury has been pushing back against proposals for a tobacco levy and raising tobacco duty by a further 30 per cent, but my fear is that the Government will want a headline-grabbing policy to appease tobacco control campaigners, and raising the age of sale to 21 might be the sacrificial lamb they are willing to offer.

There are two ways to listen to O'Brien's speech on Tuesday – online or in person. I've registered to attend in person but no word (yet) on whether my application has been approved.

Readers may recall that my application to attend the launch of the Khan review last year was rejected so I've also registered to watch the speech online, just in case.

Watch this space.

Comments

[Pat Nurse]

Repressive laws targeted at identifiable social groups should not be forced through based on the prejudice of others.

The figures O'Brien quotes for alleged lost working hours, for example, are based on guestimates by the anti smoker industry which has vested interests in pushing the prejudicial belief that smokers cost others.

O'Brien is clearly saying, based on no evidence at all, that all smokers are skivers when there is no evidence that all smokers clear off every five minutes for fag breaks. Clearly some do take legal breaks in a working day which is permitted by law and any taking more than they should would no doubt be dealt with by their employers.

Those that do work in jobs that are mind numbingly boring are more likely to seek distractions but that is by no means restricted to just those workers who smoke. Other workers skive too either by scrolling social media, chatting with others instead of working, eating constantly or nipping out to get snacks, and finding many other distractions to stop them working.

Also, why use the excuse of littered cigarette ends to bring in regressive laws to punish consumers? There are other, fairer means to encourage smokers not to litter by, for example, encouraging them via campaigns to bin their cig ends or take them home in pocket ashtrays.

There are no threats made to other litterers like fast food and takeaway consumers so clearly O'Brien and his Tory associates in the DoH, which as we know has policy dictated by unelected political activists and lobbyists in fake charity ASH, are intent only on persecuting one group of people based on political hatred and prejudice.

Of course you will not be allowed to make any representations on behalf of the little consumer when the Goliath of the anti smoker industry will do the vetting about who is allows to speak in their cosy club and it won't be anyone against the persecution of a targeted group of consumers judged on carefully crafted prejudice and propaganda.

That's it for me. I won't lend the Tories my vote again. In fact as a smoker I am a non person without rights so why should I give my vote to any of them? There is no point in voting anymore. No matter who wins, the haters and oppressors who despise others enjoying life, always win.