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** 6 December 2021
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** UK
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** Stress of pandemic sees more people take up smoking for first time in decades, according to The Sun (#1)
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** Levelling up: Government white paper likely to be delayed to 2022 (#2)
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** 'Councils have been short-changed. We need more government money' (#3)
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** International
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** Smokefree New Zealand: 2025 goal 'unlikely' to be hit (#4)
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** Comment: Making the tobacco industry pay for cigarette litter could stop 4.5bn butts polluting the Australian environment (#5)
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** Parliamentary Activity
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** Parliamentary Bill second reading - Health Warnings on Cigarette Sticks (#6)
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** UK
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**
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** Statistics from the Office of National Statistics, set to be released this week, will show that the stress of COVID-19 and imposed lockdowns has seen a rise in the number of people smoking in Britain for the first time since the 1970s, says The Sun. Experts say that sales have increased during the pandemic as more people struggled with the anxiety, stress, and boredom caused by lockdowns.

The Government is committed to a smokefree England by 2030 in which fewer than 5% of the adult population smoke. In 2019, when the stats were last released, 14.1% of the population across Britain smoked compared to 14.7% the year before, with the exact 2020 figures to come.
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** Source: The Sun, 5 December 2021

Editorial Note: The ONS data will be published tomorrow (7 December 2021).
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** It has been confirmed that the Government’s white paper on levelling up all regions of the UK will likely be delayed until next year. The document, focusing on industry, skills, and transport, had been expected before Christmas, but the spread of the Omicron COVID-19 variant has been cited as one reason for the delay. Labour accused ministers of being in "disarray" over levelling-up plans.

Levelling up the UK was a key promise in the Conservatives' 2019 general election manifesto. Critics have said the term is too vague but the Government said that the white paper will clarify its meaning. In a speech in July, Boris Johnson promised county areas in England would get "new deals", giving them the same powers as those currently held by major cities. He said this would include the option of directly elected mayors but added there was no "one-size-fits-all" template.

However, Labour says that the Government has not come up with a "single idea" for effectively reducing regional inequality and is in "disarray" over the plans. Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner accused the Government’s plans of being "all jam tomorrow and a load of baloney."

Source: BBC News, 5 December 2021
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** The Observer correspondent Philip Inman investigates councils' frustrations at being asked to level up whilst their budgets are cut by national government.

National government has opened various pots of money to councils as part of its town fund and levelling-up fund. However, these pots are for regeneration projects rather than the statutory services for which there is huge need. The shortfall means the burden is being put on households. In the Budget, about £1.6bn a year extra was promised to councils for the three years from 2022, but some of this extra cash will come from a maximum annual 3% increase in council tax which means that the average household bill could rise from £1,898 today to £2,074 by 2024-25.

Michael Gove, secretary of state at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, is currently pushing Sunak for more funds, but sources close to No 11 say that Sunak is resisting any increase in the agreed three-year settlement, postponing an announcement due last week towards Christmas or the new year. Jonathan Carr-West, head of thinktank the Local Government Information Unit, says that Gove’s silence on funding “is making people [in councils] uneasy.”

In Cornwall, the county had been due £100m in EU social funds over the next seven years but has seen just £1m from a shared fund that the Government promised would replace all EU funds. Councillors across England say that financial planning is made harder as the Government has not decided on several key questions: the proportion of business rates that councils can keep; how the system for funding local government will be agreed; and the results of a fair funding review.
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**
Source: The Guardian, 4 December 2021
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** International
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** District Health Boards (DHBs) across New Zealand have said the country is not on track to meet its smokefree New Zealand by 2025 goal in which 5% or fewer of the population smoke. In a national policy statement released at a recent West Coast DHB meeting, DHBs also said that smoking-related inequalities persist, particularly for Māori and Pacific people and those on low incomes.

The West Coast DHB is the only DHB in the country meeting the national target of 90% of smokers using DHB stop smoking services, but even here only 21% of smokers using the services actually quit. DHBs did note successes in reducing smoking rates in young people, as in a 2019 survey of Year 10 students as few as 2% of 14 and 15-year-olds were daily cigarette smokers. However, once again even here rates were persistently higher amongst Māori and Pasifika youth.

DHBs said that meeting the Smokefree New Zealand goal would take a four-fold increase in the number of quitters each year and a concentrated focus on Māori and Pasifika. At present about half a million people in New Zealand smoke with 300,000 smokers needing to quit in the next four years to meet the 5% goal. DHBs said that this would not be possible without more funding.

Source: New Zealand Herald, 6 December 2021
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**
Kylie Morphett, research fellow at the School of Public Health, Carol Gartner, Director of the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence on Achieving the Tobacco Endgame, and William Clarke, Professor of waste management, all at the University of Queensland, discuss the merits of making the tobacco industry pay the costs of cleaning cigarette litter in Australia.

They begin by noting that cigarette butts with filters are the most commonly littered item worldwide with 4.5tn littered each year and an estimated 8.9bn in Australia. Proposed solutions include a ban on filters, due to the environmental impact of the plastic they contain. California and New York lawmakers have tried to ban the sale of cigarettes with filters and New Zealand is finalising its Smokefree Aotearoa Action Plan which may include a cigarette filter ban.

Alongside a filter ban, recent research by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature Australia found that a mandatory stewardship scheme might best address the problem. The study suggested a levy of A$0.004 (£0.0021) on each smoked cigarette could pay for recovering and processing cigarette butt litter. The scheme would potentially reduce the number of butts littered in Australia by 4.45bn per year and could save the Australian economy an estimated A$73m (£38.6m) per year.

In the UK, the Government is considering a mandatory scheme in which tobacco firms would also pay for gathering and reporting data on tobacco product waste, bins for cigarette butts, and public education campaigns. Whilst the Australian Government’s National Plastics Plan, released in March, promised to consider a stewardship scheme, a taskforce could be industry led, potentially undermining its effectiveness. It is time the Australian Government went further, the authors say.

Source: The Conversation, 5 December
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** Parliamentary Activity
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**
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**
On Friday 3 November, the House of Lords heard the second reading of Lord Young of Cookham’s Cigarette Stick Health Warnings Private Members Bill. Below is a summary of what was covered.

The proposed Bill would extend the health warnings currently on cigarette packs to individual cigarette sticks and cigarette rolling papers. Cigarettes and rolling papers would display health warnings like “Smoking Kills” or “Smoking Causes Cancer”. The proposal is supported by 71 organisations including Cancer Research UK, the Royal College of Physicians, the Health Foundation, Asthma UK, the British Heart Foundation, and the British Lung Foundation.

Lord Young said that his proposal is evidence-based, simple, cost-effective, and popular. He said that it was particularly important for young people who are especially likely to start smoking with individual cigarettes rather than packs. He said that the measure was included as one of several tobacco amendments tabled to the Health and Care Bill in the House of Commons, however these were not supported by the Government. Lord Young committed to retabling these amendments when the Health and Care Bill progresses to the House of Lords.

Responding for the Government, Lord Kamall, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Innovation at the Department of Health and Social Care, said that whilst the Government recognised the “good intentions” behind the Bill, it needed more time to review the evidence base. He said that the Government would review the proposal as part of the development of the new Tobacco Control Plan, which will be published next year. He also said that the Department will review the idea of a polluter pays levy on the tobacco industry.

The Bill will proceed to Committee stage in the House of Lords, with the date to be confirmed.

You can read a transcript of the second reading here ([link removed](HL)) and a Briefing Paper on the Bill here ([link removed]) .
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