Examination of Witnesses (Questions 474-479)
VICE ADMIRAL
RORY MCLEAN
OBE AND MR
CHRIS WILLIAMS
24 NOVEMBER 2005
Q474 Chairman: Good morning.
I am sorry we have been a few minutes delayed with our last witnesses.
Could I ask you for the sake of the record to introduce yourselves?
Vice-Admiral McLean:
I am Admiral Rory McLean. I am here for three reasons. One is
I am the single point of contact between the MoD and the Department
of Health, I co-chair the Partnership Board with the Department
of Health, secondly, I run the Defence Medical Services, which
provides healthcare in all its guises across the whole of the
Armed Forces in the UK on deployed operations and in garrisons
abroad and, finally, I am charged by the Secretary of State with
coordinating the implementation of the Choosing Health
White Paper as it applies to the Ministry of Defence. Can I introduce
Chris Williams, who is my Finance and Secretariat Branch Leader
and he deals with the precise detail of the MoD policy. I had
a couple of other points I wanted to make, if I may.
Q475 Chairman: By all
means. If you would like to do that to start and then we will
go to the questions.
Vice-Admiral McLean: Very briefly,
I think what we are seeking to do at the moment, however the legislation
comes out we will implement the spirit of that within the military
circumstances we find ourselves in. We responded to the Department
of Health in the consultation phase, where there were one or two
areas where we wanted to have some exceptions. Secondly, we have
a golden rule that we have been developing, and we have been doing
this for some time, and the golden rule is that we will protect
the rights of non-smokers not to have to inhale the smoke of others.
We have a peculiar circumstance where we have to protect the individual's
private right to smoke in what you would call "the home".
The last thing is that we are seeking to establish an MoD policy
that would apply worldwide, because we believe that that will
be easier to communicate and easier for our soldiers, sailors
and airmen to understand and also to enforce.
Q476 Mike Penning: At
this stage I need to declare an interest in that I am a former
member of Her Majesty's Grenadier Guards, the junior service to
yourself. I am on the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme, which
gives me the honorary rank of a major, I believe, which is not
bad for someone who only just about made corporal! From my own
experience, I know that the prevalence of smoking within the Armed
Forces is very high, especially amongst the junior ranks. Can
you give us an estimate as to what that is at the present time
in the three main forces?
Vice-Admiral McLean: Yes, the
information that I think I produced in the parliamentary questioning
broadly speaking from memory was about 23% of the Navy smoke,
about 19% of the RAF smoke and 33% of the Army smoke. Looked at
the other way round, 80% of the Navy and the Air Force do not
smoke and 70% of Army do not smoke.
Q477 Mike Penning: But
we still, in certain ports of the world, promote reduced price
tobacco to our Armed Forces. With the legislation that is proposed,
is that going to carry on or are we still going to promote duty-free
cigarettes for our Armed Forces?
Vice-Admiral McLean: As part of
the work strands I have just been outlining for Choosing Health,
we have a whole series of actions to review, not just the smoking
but all the other aspects of the Choosing Health policy,
of which the duty-free basis for cigarettes and alcohol will be
reviewed.
Q478 Mike Penning: Having
served when tobacco was rather cheap in the Armed Forces and being
discharged and coming back to the UK, I gave up smoking, not because
of my health but because I could not afford it at the time. This
is not going to go down well with your service men and women who
have for generations had massive discounts. I wonder if you can
highlight the size of the discounts, if you know.
Vice-Admiral McLean: I would like
to answer the question a slightly different way round. I would
agree that we are going to be reviewing our policy on duty-free,
but we are engaged at the moment in what I would consider to be
quite an impressive anti-smoking campaign plan which has at its
heart the Executive, who are the people who have to implement
it, and so through the encouragement and education we are trying
to stop people smoking. For example, every time people go to the
medical centre or to the dental they are automatically offered
the various different facilities for anti-smoking that we can
offer—clinics, patches, all those sorts of things—and
so what we are trying to do is to inculcate into the Armed Forces
a culture which tries to reduce the instances of smoking.
Q479 Mike Penning: With
all due respect, that is not an answer to the question. The question
was: are you going to stop the discounts to our Armed Forces of
duty-free, and, secondly, have you made any indication with your
ranks as to how popular this is going to be? We are trying to
reduce smoking throughout the country, and lots of money is being
spent from the Department of Heath, but if you continue to give
them duty-free, you have having your cake and eating it?
Vice-Admiral McLean: I understand
the question completely. My answer is, as I said before, as part
of the work strands coming out of Choosing Health, we will
be reviewing our policy on duty-free.
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