The government’s plans to introduce the world’s first full smoking ban, halt sales of energy drinks to children and modernise mental health laws are “gamechanging” and will save thousands of lives, health leaders have said.
Labour will also impose restrictions on the sale and marketing of vapes to children and launch a crackdown on junk food advertising in a drive to improve the health of future generations.
Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents the whole healthcare system in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, said: “The king’s speech has some gamechanging commitments that will improve the nation’s health – with reforms to the Mental Health Act and legislation to create a smoke-free generation at the top of the list.
“Our members will also support the focus on children and young people, with measures to tackle the impact of junk food and high-caffeine energy drinks a welcome starting point.”
The tobacco and vapes bill will progressively increase the age at which people can buy tobacco so that future generations will never legally be able to do so.
It prevents anyone born after 1 January 2009 from legally smoking, making the UK the first country in the world to ban smoking.
Rishi Sunak had vowed to pass the bill when he was prime minister but ditched it from the “wash-up” process, when outgoing governments choose which policies to fast-track and which to drop, after lobbying by the world’s largest tobacco firms, first exposed by the Guardian.
The bill also paves the way for changes to the sale and branding of vapes to reduce their appeal to children. Flavours such as bubble gum and candy floss may also face curbs as research shows young people prefer them to flavours such as menthol.
Also included are restrictions on packaging and display of products such as nicotine pouches that can draw children into smoking. Trading Standards officials will get more powers to fine retailers who sell vapes and tobacco to under-18s.
England’s chief medical officer, Prof Sir Chris Whitty, who has pleaded with MPs to ignore lobbying by tobacco firms and pass the bill, said the move to create a smoke-free country would be “a major step forward in public health”.
Cancer Research UK’s executive director of policy, Dr Ian Walker, predicted that the ban would “have a hugely positive impact on the nation’s health”.
The president of the Association of Directors of Public Health, Greg Fell, said: “Phasing out smoking will save thousands of lives, help protect the next generation from ever becoming addicted to this lethal product, and do more to narrow the unacceptably large gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest regions than any other single measure.”
The president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, Prof Steve Turner, described the move as “a major milestone” towards the UK having “the healthiest generation of children in our history”.
People detained under the Mental Health Act will be given greater choice and rights under new legislation unveiled as part of the king’s speech.
The mental health bill aims to put more power in the hands of patients and put them at the centre of decisions about their care. It amends the 1983 act, which Labour described as “woefully out of date”, to bring it “into the 21st century”.
The chief executive of the mental health charity Mind, Dr Sarah Hughes, hailed the changes as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity”.
However, the chief executive of the charity Sane, Marjorie Wallace, cautioned that the revamp would have to be matched with an increase in funding for staff, inpatient beds and community services.
“While mental health services are so impoverished and there is limited access to treatments and therapies, the vision for improved rights and individual choice cannot be realised,” Wallace said.
