Consultation into a tobacco licensing bill in Scotland

Responding to the announcement today that Christine Grahame MSP, Convenor of the Health Committee, is launching a consultation to inform the proposed tobacco licensing bill in Scotland – Chris Ogden, Director of the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association, said:

“We shall be responding to the consultation in the full awareness that retailers do not want a positive licensing system to be introduced. We believe the vast majority of retailers in Scotland and throughout the UK are committed to upholding the law on age-related sales and that licensing, as proposed by Christine Grahame, would impose an additional burden of red tape on hard-pressed small businesses.

“The UK Government is on record as favouring a negative licensing system which we support[1]. Following the Government consultation on the introduction of licensing for tobacco products, Health Minister Ben Bradshaw stated: ‘The majority of respondents favoured the introduction of a negative licensing scheme…[and]…the Government now intends to bring forward legislation at the next first legislative opportunity’[2]. Any proposals relating to licensing should look at the consistency of existing enforcement systems, the most efficient way of managing them and the cost implications of any scheme for the majority of small businesses which retail tobacco. The TMA supports measures for consistent enforcement of verification across all jurisdictions.

“In the last survey conducted by Trading Standards in the year ending March 2005, three-fifths of local authorities with Trading Standards responsibilities reported using volunteer children under 16 in test purchase operations in 1,350 premises. It was found that 88% of retailers did not make underage sales. [3]

“The TMA is fully committed to youth access prevention. As an industry we make significant investments in programmes to support effective retailer engagement. The TMA is the principal stakeholder in CitizenCard, the UK-wide proof–of-age scheme that enables retailers to establish the age of their customers, and we also support the No ID No Sale (NINS) campaign which reinforces the culture of age verification.

“TMA member company representatives distributed NINS packs, updated to cover the 16 to 18 age increase, throughout the UK over the summer. The distinctive NINS poster is visible in retail outlets throughout the UK and hundreds of thousands of store staff are trained using NINS material which greatly assists them in asking for proof-of-age. In Scotland the Young Scot card provides a further means of checking age. The key issue is that retailers must be able to establish the age of any potential customer before a sale is made.”

Background:

• The TMA responded and supported the UK Government’s proposals to introduce negative licensing as part of the “Consultation on Under-Age of Sale of Tobacco” published in July 2006.
• The UK Government is now introducing an amendment to the Criminal Justice & Immigration Bill which will enable the enforcement of negative licensing of tobacco retailers in England and Wales (Committee Stage 20 November).

1. This press statement is issued on behalf of the TMA’s member companies: British American Tobacco, Gallaher Ltd and Imperial Tobacco Ltd.

2. About CitizenCard (http://www.citizencard.com/):

• CitizenCard is the UK’s largest photo-ID scheme.  The scheme is supported by Government, police, trading standards and retail groups.
• CitizenCard verifies applicants using a stringent authentication process and uses hologram-protected cards embedding a laser-etched colour photo to reduce the risk of forgery.
• CitizenCard is the only ID scheme available to the entire UK population to comply with the Home Office-backed PASS (Proof of Age Standards Scheme) criteria, externally audited by the Trading Standards Institute.

3. About No ID No Sale (www.noidnosale.com):

• The No ID No Sale campaign, launched in 2002, is positioned in more than 100,000 retailers nationwide and is aimed at creating a culture in which young people expect to be asked to prove their age, and in which retailers accept only the correct forms of ID.