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** 20 July 2021
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** UK
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** The pros and cons of plain packaging (#1)
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** Rise in national insurance to pay for social care reforms (#2)
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** NHS staff in England could be offered a 3% pay rise (#3)
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** Comment: The real danger is insurgency on the right (#4)
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** Blackburn with Darwen: New post-coronavirus stop smoking campaign (#5)
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** Parliamentary Activity
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** Parliamentary question (#6)
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** UK
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** The upcoming limits on advertising for unhealthy foods have reignited the debate about plain packaging. The marketing of potentially harmful products has long been a contentious issue. In 2015, Westminster passed legislation obliging tobacco companies to use plain packaging with graphic health warnings on cigarettes sold from May 2017. This sparked discussion about whether such measures should also apply to other demonstrably unhealthy goods.

In June this year, the government announced limits on the advertising of foods high in sugar, fat and salt, including a ban on TV ads before the 9pm watershed. This will be enforced from the end of 2022. The move has renewed public interest in whether these products should also come in plain packaging. There is no doubt that the nation’s love of unhealthy food creates a serious burden for the NHS. A House of Commons briefing paper published in January estimated that 28% of adults in England are obese – up from 15% in 1993. Weight problems often start in childhood: 9.9% of children aged four and five in England are obese, and a further 13% are overweight.

Some experts believe that marketing is partly to blame for this. Wolfram Schultz, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, said: “The colourful wrapping of high-energy foods, of course, makes you buy more of that stuff. We should not advertise, propagate or encourage the unnecessary ingestion of calories.” Markus Joutsela, a lecturer in Finland, agrees that the colours, logos and images on packaging are designed to engage your emotions. Such stimuli are also particularly appealing to young children, who have limited capacity for analytical decision-making.

One branding expert who’s fiercely sceptical of the value of plain packaging is David Haigh, CEO of consultancy Brand Finance. “Consumers understand that there are products that are bad for you,” he argues. “But they like to have freedom of choice over which ones they want to use. They don’t particularly like plain packaging, as they feel that it confuses this decision-making progress.”

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of anti-tobacco charity Action on Smoking and Health, disagrees that the public would consider the move excessive. Having compiled its own body of research into the issue, her organisation began campaigning for plain packaging on tobacco products in 2010. When it comes to important public health matters, she says, “consumers actually support government intervention. They understand that a lot of behaviour changes are quite difficult.” Arnott adds that one of the adverse side effects of plain packaging that the pro-smoking lobby had warned about – that it would lead to a rise in counterfeiting and black-market imports from countries without such rules – hasn’t occurred to a significant degree.

According to research published in 2019 by Public Health England and the Office for National Statistics, the number of smokers in England declined by approximately 175,000 in the year after the plain packaging rules took effect in May 2017. Arnott acknowledges that it’s hard to gauge the exact influence that plain packaging had on these trends because other anti-smoking measures were introduced at the same time. This is one of the reasons why Arnott is cautious about taking data about plain packaging’s effect on smoking and extrapolating it to the consumption of unhealthy foods.

Source: Raconteur, 19 July 2021
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** Boris Johnson and senior ministers have agreed to increase national insurance to fund long-term reform of social care and reduce NHS waiting lists, The Times has been told.

The prime minister is expected to announce plans to increase payments by 1% for both employers and employees in a move that will raise £10 billion a year. The new health and social care tax will initially be used to address the NHS backlog following the pandemic. Sajid Javid, the health secretary, has raised concerns that the waiting list could rise from 5.3 million to 13 million.

Later the fund will be used to cap care costs. Johnson is understood to favour plans by Sir Andrew Dilnot, a former government health adviser, to limit costs to £50,000 per person so families do not end up selling their homes.

Ministers are likely to argue that a tax rise will give people an effective insurance against spiralling care costs in old age. However, increasing national insurance is contentious as it affects people of working age rather than those who have already retired. Ministers have also discussed increasing income tax but are understood to have opted for national insurance because the burden will fall on both employers and employees. The prime minister agreed the approach in principle with Sajid Javid, the health minister, and Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, on Friday. The plan was due to be announced this week as Johnson marked two years of his premiership.

It is now likely to be delayed until after the summer recess since Javid tested positive for the coronavirus. As a result of his close contact with Sunak and Johnson at the meeting on Friday both men are self-isolating.

Source: The Times, 20 July 2021
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** The NHS in England could be offered a 3% pay rise, despite the government previously insisting that it could only afford 1%. An announcement is widely expected today, a day before the House of Commons rises for its summer recess.

However, it is unclear if 3% would be enough to appease doctors and nurses who have been seeking increases of 5% and 12.5% respectively to reward their efforts to tackle COVID-19.
There is also speculation that just 1.5% of the 3% would be added permanently to salaries, with the other 1.5% given as a one-off payment. If that proves to be how the offer is structured, then workforce representatives are likely to criticise the 3% figure as a sham and too low.

Medics have recently threatened to stop doing overtime, and nurses to go on strike for the first time if they do not receive a pay award, they believe reflects their value and hard work, especially after seeing their salaries cut in real terms during the last decade, when the NHS was subject to austerity.

An official at one health union said that a 3% award would be “difficult” for unions such as the British Medical Association, Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and Unison, which have been pressing for a bigger rise, adding: “Three percent may be high enough to dissuade unions from taking industrial action, because enough of their members might accept it, especially with the law now requiring unions to get at least a 50% turnout in any ballot for industrial action, and 40% of members to agree to take action”.

It is also unclear if the government will fully cover the cost of whatever pay rise they offer. NHS officials stressed privately that the service is too underfunded to meet any of the costs involved.

Source: The Guardian, 20 July 2021
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** Writing in the Times, William Hague, former leader of the Conservative Party, argues that today’s challenges necessitate government interventions, but this could make the Conservatives vulnerable to challenges from an emerging “NewKip”.

Hague characterises “NewKip” as “a libertarian, low-tax, small state insurgency on the right, fracturing the broad conservative coalition over which Boris Johnson has so far, skilfully, presided.”

Hague highlights the dilemma presented by the recently proposed National Food Strategy, which recommends taxes on products high in salt and sugar. He states that although Boris Johnson has been converted “to the cause of improving the health of the population, he finds politically unpalatable the taxation of salt and sugar that is almost certainly indispensable in achieving that aim”. According to Hague, this conflict between the Prime Minister’s libertarian instincts on the one hand and the need for state intervention, on the other hand, can be seen across a range of policy areas, including wearing masks, achieving net-zero, levelling up, and paying for social care.

Hague argues that greater government intervention is vital to ensure that the prosperity created by free markets is more equitable, sustainable and resilient. This necessitates a “more active and more effective state, rather than a more bloated one.” According to Hague, this requires having the self-control to keep government spending in check and should mean that education is at the centre of levelling up to break the cycle of dependency.

Hague cites the difficulties of effectively responding to the “great challenges of our time” while not losing the support of the part of the population that favours traditional small-state conservatism. He concludes by saying, “Conservatism is being redefined. That is unavoidable. But history shows that it is a most perilous task.”

Source: The Times, 19 July 2021
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** A new anti-smoking campaign has been launched in Blackburn with Darwen, highlighting the need for good respiratory health post-covid.

Blackburn with Darwen Council launched its latest stop smoking campaign this week to coincide with the move to step four of the government’s COVID-19 roadmap out of legal restrictions. It stresses that good respiratory health is now more important than ever because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The campaign will use a series of animations to explain how smoking harms nearly every organ of the body, including the lungs, mental health, heart, skin, brain, and vision. They will be displayed on the borough’s digital advertising boards in Blackburn town centre and Larkhill and on social media to raise awareness of the help available in the borough.

Source: Lancashire Telegraph, 19 July 2021
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** Parliamentary Activity
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** Electronic Cigarettes and Tobacco

Asked by Mr David Jones, Clwyd West

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to improve public access to information about (a) e-cigarettes and (b) reduced-harm alternatives to combustible tobacco.

Answered by Jo Churchill, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care

The National Health Service website provides public information on the harms of smoking and advice to help people quit smoking, including information on using e-cigarettes. In addition, central stop smoking campaigns such as Stoptober have supported the use of e-cigarettes as a tool to help smokers quit.

To support our Smokefree 2030 ambition, the upcoming Tobacco Control Plan will set out a range of measures which will help smokers to quit, including through the use of less harmful products such as e-cigarettes.

Source: Hansard, 19 July 2021
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ASH Daily News is a digest of published news on smoking-related topics. ASH is not responsible for the content of external websites. ASH does not necessarily endorse the material contained in this bulletin.

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