Cancer Research UK and Action on Smoking and Health worked together on a joint campaign for legislation to introduce mandatory standardised packaging in the UK. It began in 2011 and culminated in a vote in March 2015 where MPs passed regulations to introduce the measure. This was a successful campaign in a very challenging political environment. One in four cancer deaths are attributed to smoking, which kills more than half of all long-term users. Eight in ten smokers start before the age of 19 and the measure will reduce the glitzy appeal of tobacco products to children.

Despite smoking rates across the UK having declined substantially over the last half-century – the result of a range of tobacco control measures – smoking is still the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the UK. Independent, peer-reviewed research showed that removing tobacco marketing from the ‘mobile billboards’ which are displayed every time a smoker takes out a pack of cigarettes was a vital next step for public health. Evidence consistently shows that plain, standardised packaging of tobacco products reduces the appeal of cigarettes to children, protecting them from a deadly addiction and saving lives.

To increase the impact of health warnings, and to reduce the attractiveness of cigarette packs, particularly to young people, and their ability to mislead. To have a successful parliamentary vote on the implementation of standardised packaging before the General Election of 2015.

The campaign was built on three key messages: needed, wanted, workable. Through this approach, we highlighted that smoking is an addiction of childhood; that public support was firmly behind tobacco control; and that tobacco industry arguments and threats were unjustified. We used the strengths of our respective organisations. CRUK built on its USP as a medical research charity, using its labs, researchers, supporters and high-street shops to facilitate engagement with MPs and Ministers, as well as providing constituency-specific tobacco control statistics to all 650 MPs. This was coupled with wider supporter engagement, including the Ambassador Programme, whose contribution ranged from campaigning at political party conferences, through to writing guest blog posts and sending letters to editors in regional press. ASH leveraged its reputation as the leading organisation working on tobacco issues, as Secretariat to the All-Party group on Smoking and Health and leading an alliance of over 300 health organisations committed to tackling smoking – the Smokefree Action Coalition (SFAC). We used our detailed knowledge of civil service and parliamentary procedures to deploy a cross-party group of peers in support of a key amendment to the Children and Families Act 2014. This proved crucial in persuading the Government to reverse its decision, announced in July 2013, not to proceed with the policy.

On 11 March 2015, MPs passed regulations to introduce standardised tobacco packaging; with 367 MPs voting in favour in a free vote. Standardised packets will be mandatory for tobacco sold in the UK from May 2016. The UK was only the second country to pass such legislation. YouGov polling in January 2015 showed that 72% of voters support the measure. 

We were able to generate political and public support on a limited budget, compared to the war chest of a multibillion pound transnational tobacco industry. One tobacco company alone publicly committed £2 million to an anti-standard packs’ advertising campaign in national newspapers addressed at ‘government and business decision-makers’, to which we responded with successful complaints to the advertising regulator about the misleading nature of their advertisements.

Our campaign to encourage the Government to implement the measure has led, in part, to other countries expressing an interest. These include New Zealand, Finland, France and Norway. We have also used the learnings from this campaign to contribute to Government consultations on introducing standardised packaging for the Norwegian Ministry of Health and Care Services, to support the introduction of the measure in Norway

CRUK are commissioning two pieces of research through our Policy Research Centre for Cancer Prevention to monitor the success of the measure. Given there are no sales data publically made available from the tobacco industry, we are commissioning the analysis of cigarette sales data to evaluate how standardised packaging leads to different consumer behaviour with regards to purchasing tobacco. We are also conducting a retail audit to understand the direct impact on what cigarettes people are buying. Both of these projects are designed to run on a monthly basis and will be running throughout the duration of the introduction of standardised packaging in the UK. As a result, we are evaluating the measure before and after its implementation to more clearly demonstrate its impact. We have also undertaken a robust internal evaluation of the campaign. After each meeting that Cancer Campaigns Ambassadors had with their MPs, we evaluated their feedback to ensure we could produce tailored communications about the campaign based on an MP’s interests or concerns. This helped us better understand how to engage Parliamentarians, tailor communications and assess levels of support.