Smoke and Mirrors

stephen clarke, 13 April 2012

Anyone observing British politics this month could be forgiven for thinking that the British government decided to extend April Fool’s Day in order to play a leading role in the month-long festivities. If late March’s petrol fiasco was not warning enough, the Coalition kicked off April by tying itself in knots over bemusing plans to reduce tax relief for charitable donations and now seems to be taking a worryingly bizarre position on smoking, encapsulated by Andrew Lansley’s bewildering comments.

Speaking to the Times Andrew Lansley reportedly said:

‘We don’t work in partnership with the tobacco companies because we are trying to arrive at a point where they have no business in this country.’

Ignoring the first part of that sentence and focusing on the second: ‘we are trying to arrive at a point where they [tobacco companies] have no business in this country’. It would appear that Britain, in the Government’s own words is ‘open for business’, except if you sell a product that damages people’s health. Of course this excludes companies that sell alcoholic beverages, fatty foods or weapons. Not content with stopping smoking companies advertise, sell their products in vending machines or display their wares in large shops, the government now wants to stop companies branding their packets and will launch a consultation on Monday to examine such a proposal.

There are three separate arguments against Lansley’s ridiculous campaign. The first is economic. The Government exhibits a peculiar aversion to smokers and the tobacco industry despite the fact that both provide an immensely lucrative source of revenue for the Government, £9 billion a year according to HMRC. At a time of austerity such revenue is very useful for the government, especially because no one seems to mind that taxing smoking is regressive and hits the poorest the hardest (the poorest households spend 3 per cent of their disposable income on tobacco duty compared to 0.3 per cent for the richest households).Lansley claims that smoking causes 100,000 deaths a year and there is the recurring argument that it costs the NHS billions of pounds.

One cannot argue that smoking causes people to die prematurely but the evidence that smokers cost the NHS a disproportionate amount of money is questionable. Smokers require treatment for serious afflictions but those who die prematurely save the NHS money in the long-run by not needing care for chronic conditions, such as dementia, which are becoming increasingly common as life expectancy increases. A Dutch study has suggested that health care costs for smokers are lower than for non-smokers.

The second argument is philosophic: why should the government favour some industries and lifestyle choices more than others? The message from this week appears to be arms sales are good, cigarette sales are bad, buying happy meal after happy meal is fine but should you try and have a cigarette then the government is going to make that as difficult as possible for you. Undoubtedly Tories with a liberal bent will be perplexed by the authoritarian position the party has chosen to take in this case.

The final argument is a political one. Many of the government’s recent policy pronouncements seem to contradict one another. Reducing the 50p tax rate was justified on the grounds of competitiveness and efficiency. The argument was that the tax brought in a relatively small amount of revenue and made Britain a less attractive place to invest. However the decision to reduce allowances for charitable donations flies in the face of this. The Government seems to be saying that well-off individuals can keep more of their money but shouldn’t give it to charity, more should go to the state despite the government’s plan to empower local communities and civil society. A similar degree of incongruence is evident in the Government’s latest policy on smoking. On the one hand the government is keen to help British businesses and the British economy, even going so far as to have 55 business people and other representatives accompany the Prime Minister on his Asian tour. On the other hand Lansley and the government show open disdain for an industry that directly employs 5,000 people, generating wealth and tax receipts. The Conservatives often wish to appear as the party that is pro-business and against the nanny state. Recent policy decisions have suggested otherwise.