Tackling smoking still not a top priority for the public

The Tobacco and Vapes Public Bill Committee (stuffed full of MPs who voted for the Bill at second reading) met twice this week to consider further amendments to the Bill.

I’ll post about them later. In the meantime, Yonder Consulting has conducted two new polls relevant to the Bill.

I wrote about the first on Tuesday (see New poll, same result).

According to the survey of 2,009 adults, 60% said people should be allowed to purchase cigarettes and other tobacco products when they are legally an adult at 18; 30% (less than a third) said they should not; and 10% said 'don't know'.

The second new poll, conducted on Monday and Tuesday (13-14 January), confirms what similar polls have demonstrated for many years.

Asked to rate ten domestic issues according to how important or not important they are, ‘tackling smoking’ once again rates very low.

According to the poll, the public thinks the TOP priorities for government should be:

• tackling problems with the health service
• tackling energy costs
• tackling crime
• addressing care for the elderly

Of the ten listed issues, the least important (by a substantial margin) are:

• tackling obesity
• tackling smoking

Only 29% of respondents think it's very important that the Government tackles smoking, compared to tackling:

• problems with the health service (83%)
• energy costs (74%)
• inflation (72%)
• crime (72%)
• care for the elderly (70%)
• illegal immigration (61%)
• housing shortage (58%)
• climate change (51%)
• obesity (31%)

I know this is not ‘hold the front page’ news but it's worth noting because if Keir Starmer thinks the Tobacco and Vapes Bill might give him and his government a poll boost, he's going to be disappointed.

Tackling smoking didn’t save Sunak and it won’t rescue Starmer …