Plain cigarette packets proposed

20 November 2010 Last updated at 19:14 ET

Cigarette packets should have plain packaging to make smoking less attractive, ministers have suggested.

The government is currently planning to ask retailers to cover up their displays of cigarettes from next year to protect children.

But now cigarette packets could also be made a standard colour like grey, rather than the existing bright colours.

Campaign group ASH says this is "an enormous leap forward".

The Department of Health is considering the idea of asking tobacco firms to put only basic information and health or picture warnings on their packets.

Making the cigarette packets a plain colour would protect children from taking up smoking in the first place, it suggests.

It would also help support people who are trying to give up smoking, the department said.

'Costs too high'

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, said it was time to try a new approach.

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"Start Quote

The industry use packaging to seduce our kids and mislead smokers"

End Quote Martin Dockrell ASH

"The evidence is clear that packaging helps to recruit smokers, so it makes sense to consider having less attractive packaging. It's wrong that children are being attracted to smoke by glitzy designs on packets.

"We would prefer it if people did not smoke and adults will still be able to buy cigarettes, but children should be protected from the start.

"The levels of poor health and deaths from smoking are still far too high, and the cost to the NHS and the economy is vast. That money could be used to educate our children and treat cancer," Mr Lansley said.

"We will shortly set out a radical new approach to public health in a White Paper."

Martin Dockrell, director of policy and research at ASH, (Action on Smoking and Health), said the industry calls packaging "the silent salesman".

"They use it to seduce our kids and mislead smokers into the false belief that a cigarette in a blue pack is somehow less deadly than a cigarette in a red one.

"By helping smokers who want to quit and protecting our children from the tobacco ad men this will be an enormous leap forward for public health, perhaps even bigger than the smoking ban," he said.

"The government accepts that packaging and tobacco displays influence young people, so there is no time to waste. It may take years to pass a new law on plain packs but the law on tobacco displays is already on the statute books and comes into force next year."

Recent research published in Tobacco Control showed that putting tobacco out of sight in shops not only changes young people's attitude to smoking, it also doesn't result in retailers losing money.

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Pope's condom comments welcomed

20 November 2010 Last updated at 20:58 ET

Catholic reformers and groups working to combat HIV have welcomed remarks by Pope Benedict that the use of condoms might not always be wrong.

The Pope said their use might be justified on a case by case basis to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids.

The remarks, due to be published in a book next week, mark a softening of his previously hard line against condoms in the battle against HIV, analysts say.

The Vatican has long opposed condoms as an artificial form of contraception.

This has drawn heavy criticism, particularly from Aids campaigners,who say condoms are one of the few methods proven to stop the spread of HIV.

'Significant shift'

Pope Benedict said during a visit to Cameroon last year that handing out condoms might actually make HIV infection worse, drawing criticism from several EU states.

In his latest comments, however, he said the use of condoms might be justified in exceptional circumstances.

He gave the example of male prostitutes where, he said, using condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS could be seen as an act of moral responsibility, even though condoms were "not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection".

This marks a significant shift in his previously implacable opposition to the use of condoms, says the BBC's religious affairs correspondent, Robert Pigott.

UNAIDS, the United Nations programme on HIV/Aids, welcomed the comments as a "significant and positive step forward".

"This move recognizes that responsible sexual behaviour and the use of condoms have important roles in HIV prevention," said UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe.

The Kenya Treatment Access Movement (KETAM), which works to combat the spread of HIV, welcomed what it said was the Pope's acceptance of reality that abstinence did not always work.

"It's accepting the reality on the ground," said David Kamau, head of the KETAM. "If the Church has failed to get people to follow its moral values and practice abstinence, they should take the next best step and encourage condom use."

The Catholic reform group We Are Church said the comments showed the Pope was able to learn from experience.

The British gay rights campaigner, Peter Tatchell, told the BBC the Pope's comments were significant but needed "clarification".

'Not a moral solution'

The new book - Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times - is based on a series of interview the Pope gave the German Catholic journalist, Peter Seewald, earlier this year.

When asked whether the Catholic Church was not opposed in principle to the use of condoms, the Pope replied: "She of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality."

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Pope Benedict said the "sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalisation of sexuality" where sexuality was no longer an expression of love, "but only a sort of drug that people administer to themselves".

Although Pope Benedict reiterated the Church's fundamental opposition to contraception, and repeated his view that condoms were not the answer to curbing HIV, he added that there was much in the area of sexual ethics that needed to be pondered and expressed in new ways.

Austen Ivereigh, coordinator of the Catholic Voices group, said that while this was the first time the Pope had voiced such an opinion on condoms, it was in line with what Catholic moral theologians have been saying for many years.

"The Church's teaching on contraception predates the discovery of Aids," Mr Ivereigh told the BBC news website.

"The prevalence of HIV raised the question of whether condoms could be used to prevent the transmission of the virus.

"If the intention is to prevent transmission of the virus, rather than prevent contraception, moral theologians would say that was of a different moral order."

But Clifford Longley, who writes for The Tablet, a British Catholic newspaper, said the development was far more significant than a nuanced change in attitude.

He said the "small concession... could easily become a collapse in the whole edifice of Catholic teaching on contraception".

"The implication seems to me to be much vaster than even the Pope anticipates," said Mr Longley.

The Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, published excerpts of the book in its Saturday edition.

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GP leader warns over NHS reform

20 November 2010 Last updated at 08:34 ET

Doctors could be faced with angry patients questioning spending decisions if NHS reforms go ahead, the new leader of the Royal College of GPs has warned.

Clare Gerada criticised plans to put �80bn of annual funding into the hands of GPs as part of widespread reform.

Patients could end up begging doctors for life-saving drugs while drug companies lobby GPs, she warned.

The NHS has been told by Health Secretary Andrew Lansley to make up to �20bn of savings by 2014.

Mr Lansley believes GPs know what works best and wants to tap into their entrepreneurial spirit to drive improvement.

'Begging letters'

The plans move the responsibility of deciding who gets treatment from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence and primary care trusts in England to GPs, from 2013.

"At worst, the negative impact for GPs could be patients lobbying outside their front door, saying 'You've got a nice BMW car but you will not allow me to have this cytotoxic drug that will give me three more months of life'," she told the Guardian newspaper.

"I'm concerned that my profession, GPs, will be exposed to lobbying by patients, patient groups and the pharma industry to fund or commission their bit of the service. There could be letters from MPs and patient groups, and begging letters from patients."

She added: "Patients might think that the decision made about their healthcare will be based on self-interest - GPs saving money for themselves rather than spending it on patients."

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I think it is the end of the NHS as we currently know it"

End Quote Clare Gerada Royal College of GPs

Currently about 80% of the budget is held by local managers working for the 151 primary care trusts in England.

Ministers want to transfer much of that responsibility to GPs working in consortiums across the country, phasing out primary care trusts and regional bodies known as strategic health authorities over the next few years.

NHS break-up

But Dr Gerada predicted the demise of the NHS through such reform.

"I think it is the end of the NHS as we currently know it, which is a national, unified health service, with central policies and central planning, in the way that (Aneurin) Bevan imagined," she said.

A Department of Health spokeswoman said the reform was "a necessity", not an option.

"We share a common goal with the RCGP that we all want patients to get the best health and care services," she added.

Shadow health secretary John Healey said the plans were "signalling a break-up of the NHS that will see it move away from a consistency of service that can be accessed whatever people's means."

He accused Mr Lansley of not listening to warnings from doctors, nurses and health experts "to slow down on his high-cost, high-risk plans."

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