Contribution
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 34 in this group, which is on cigarette filters and health warnings. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and my noble friend Lady Walmsley for their support. This amendment would require the Secretary of State to make provision
“prohibiting the manufacture, supply, or sale of … plastic filters intended for use in cigarettes, and … cigarettes containing plastic filters”
through regulations that must be laid before Parliament
“no later than the end of the period of six months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed”.
This amendment is required. It is a practical, necessary and long-overdue measure that I hope to show enjoys widespread public support. Implementing it would strengthen our commitment to environmental sustainability and corporate responsibility while having minimal impacts on those who choose to smoke cigarettes with filters.
As we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, discarded cigarette filters are one of the most common and prevalent forms of public litter. It has been estimated that 90% of all cigarettes smoked in the world contain non-biodegradable filter tips and that, in the UK, some 3.9 million cigarette butts are discarded daily. On a constituency basis, that is 6,000 cigarette butts, or 2.2 million thrown away each year. Every year, billions of cigarette butts are discarded across the UK, which is a staggering amount.
As they degrade very slowly, they release microplastics and many harmful chemicals, which are a danger to nature and to aquatic life in particular. Only one in four smokers even realise that filters are not biodegradable; most assume that they already are. Eighty-six per cent of adults support this change in the law, including 77% of the smokers asked. Cigarette butts are a bit like ants. The power of their pollution is caused by their very small nature, their frequency and the fact that they are discarded so widely. It is very difficult to clear them up, even if we wanted to.
As we have heard, they are made from cellulose acetate—a non-biodegradable form of plastic—and take up to an estimated 10 to 15 years to break down in the natural environment. I question one figure from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, which seemed to be for plastic filters, not biodegradable filters. I do not recognise the figure she gave. Yet, despite this harm, plastic filters continue to be widely used. This and other Governments have made progress on banning other forms of everyday plastic pollution, but no progress has been made here. For these reasons, regulatory action is now required. Fortunately, perfectly workable alternative solutions are available and are widely recognised within the industry as being fit for purpose and working with manufacturing processes.
Across the world, there has been a move to work on these issues. The World Health Organization supports a ban on non-biodegradable cigarettes as part of the global plastics treaty and the EU is also looking at these matters. If the Government accept this amendment, the UK could become the first country in the world to pass legislation on these matters. Biodegradable cigarette filters made from natural fibres such as paper, hemp or bamboo would degrade much more quickly and cause far less harm. They would eliminate unnecessary plastic waste and give people the option of having a filter on a cigarette if they want one.
I do not argue that filters in any shape or form make cigarettes healthier to smoke; they clearly do not. I know that tobacco companies have falsely put them forward in this way in the past. However, they make smoking more pleasant for those who want to smoke. If an alternative exists that would deal with the plastic pollution, we should not unnecessarily ban these items. My amendment is about trying to find a way between having the plastic pollution we see now and a complete ban.
Turning to the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, I suggest that banning filters would not resolve the problem because people will continue to smoke. They will smoke cigarettes without filters. They will dispose of the butts of those cigarettes without filters on the ground. Indeed, in many cases, they will end up burning their fingers and dropping them in places they do not want to, which could become an increased cause of wildfires, which are becoming an ever more prevalent problem. The litter will still exist and the nicotine in the cigarette butts will still exist. I do not buy the argument that removing filters would improve health outcomes in any way at all. I find it hard to see that a cigarette without a filter is in any way healthier than a cigarette with a filter. It may not make any difference, but I certainly cannot see how it can be argued to be in any way better.
My amendment is well argued and supported. I am open to working with the Government around the timelines that I would put in place. It might be that the Government feel that those timelines are too short. On reflection, maybe I should have allowed for a bit more time for it to take place.