The waiting game
The latest tobacco and nicotine-related ‘public’ consultation closed at one minute to midnight last Friday.
Published on July 10, the ‘Tobacco and vapes: packaging, appearance and display’ consultation followed an earlier consultation on ‘Smoke-free, heated tobacco-free and vape-free places in England’ that ran from February 13 to May 8.
Why two consultations, back-to-back? Well, I guess the Department of Health wants to press ahead with further regulations on tobacco, vapes and other nicotine products, measures that were not specifically included in the Tobacco and Vapes Bill that was passed by Parliament in March but are nevertheless on the tobacco control wish list.
Instead, what became the Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026 focussed primarily on the generational tobacco sales ban. Crucially, though, it also gives this and future governments the power to introduce more measures without the need for any further parliamentary debate.
Anyway, while I was drafting a submission to the latest consultation I was reminded of the Sunak Government’s response to a previous consultation, ‘Creating a smokefree generation and tackling youth vaping consultation’.
Launched on October 13, 2023, with a closing date of December 6, the government published its response on February 12, 2024 - that is, two months later, well within the more normal three months, which suggested a prime minister in a hurry to leave some sort of legacy before he was booted out of office.
In contrast, the David Cameron Government’s response to the first public consultation on plain packaging took eleven months following the closing date in August 2012. That could have been due to the huge number of responses - almost 700,000 if you include the various campaign petitions, including approximately 250,000 signatories submitted by Forest.
However, there was a feeling at the time that the Government had been surprised by the degree of opposition to plain packaging and had decided to push the issue into the long grass, which is what effectively happened until Cameron was advised to hurry plain packaging legislation through Parliament ahead of the 2015 General Election in order to prevent it becoming an issue during the campaign.
It will be interesting therefore to see how quickly the Burnham Government publishes its response to the two consultations that have taken place this year because we are still awaiting the Government’s response to the first consultation which addressed proposals to extend smoke-free laws and ban vaping and heated tobacco in specific outdoor and indoor public spaces.
That consultation closed on May 8 and even allowing for the summer recess and a change of prime minister we are already beyond the standard three-month response time. As for the consultation that has just closed, I will be interested to see how many responses it has generated because, as I have previously noted, there have been two Save Vaping campaigns and even a Save Cigars initiative designed to encourage people to submit a response.
It’s difficult to predict the number of responses because every consultation is different and some attract more attention than others, but it’s worth noting that, compared to the plain packaging consultation in 2012, the 2023 consultation (‘Creating a smokefree generation and tackling youth vaping consultation’) attracted a relatively meagre 28,000.
Interestingly, the Government response to that consultation included a section headed ‘Tobacco industry declaration’, part of which declared:
In line with the requirements of article 5.3 of the FCTC, throughout this consultation response we summarise the views of respondents with disclosed links to the tobacco industry. But we have not considered these views when determining our policy response due to the vested interests of the tobacco industry (my emphasis).
Now, whenever we respond to a government consultation, I am reminded of those words because I have to tick the box that confirms that, yes, Forest has links with the tobacco industry. That’s why we try to persuade as many individuals as possible to submit a response because, if government won’t consider our views, they might conceivably listen to you, just as the Cameron Government did in 2012/13 before surrendering to Labour and the pro-plain packaging lobby two years later.
Anyway, I’ll update you when the Burnham Government responds to the two recent consultations. The speed with which that happens may reflect the extent to which the new PM considers further regulations on tobacco and nicotine a priority, but it’s hard to read the mind of someone whose biggest policy announcement to date – a modest downgrade of the state pension from a triple to a double lock – will not be introduced until 2030 (ie after the next general election when he might not be in office) which doesn’t strike me as very bold.
I suspect he may delay the introduction of further regulations on tobacco and vapes as well, although I wouldn’t bet my house on it. Either way, watch this space.
Home page image / iStock
