Tobacco and Vapes Bill
(1 day, 8 hours ago)
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17:59 - Division on Amendment 1 - Ayes: 78 / Noes: 246 - Amendment 1 disagreed.
Lord Murray of Blidworth
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to remove the generational ban for tobacco products in England and Wales by raising the age of sale to 21.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to all my amendments in this group, which is all of them barring Amendment 203. I thank my noble friend Lord Naseby, who has signed all my amendments.
The amendments all do the same thing: they would remove from the necessary places in the Bill the generational smoking ban—that is, the prohibition on tobacco sales to all those born after 1 January 2009—and replace it with a fixed age of sale of 21. In my view, this policy was wrong when it was adopted by my party in government, and it is still wrong now.
In asking noble Lords to support this amendment, I will make six points. The first is in relation to prohibition. A generational ban may sound like a progressive step to protect public health, but it is de facto prohibition, and there remains no evidence anywhere in the world that prohibition of a long-standing legal product has ever worked. In time, this policy will result in the termination of a legally controlled, highly regulated, highly taxed industry, which will be replaced by an illegal, uncontrolled, unregulated, untaxed criminal bonanza.
Baroness Northover (LD)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 203 in my name, which is also supported by my noble friend Lady Walmsley. She is sorry that she cannot be here today because of ill health. I know she is keeping a close eye on us, but I hope she takes it easy and will be back with us soon.
Amendment 203—to change the subject slightly—would require the Government to publish, shortly after Royal Assent, a communications plan to support the implementation of the smoke-free generation policy and to raise public awareness. We know that the ban on smoking in public places was effectively communicated so that those who needed to take action were well prepared to do so and the public knew what the plans were. We want to see the same actions here.
When this amendment was tabled in Committee, it was excellent to hear the Minister strongly agree that such communication was vital. Many of us involved in this debate over the years know from experience how effective public health communication can be. We have played our part in the major advances in tobacco control, from smoke-free public places to changes in the age of sale and plain packaging—and we have had all the same arguments coming back at us. None of those reforms succeeded by chance. They worked because they were carefully planned, cross-party in approach and underpinned by communication strategies that brought the public with them. The Bill is an excellent piece of legislation, far-sighted and potentially significant for our children and grandchildren.
We fully realise how the industry—represented here today, I can see—will, as ever, push back against this measure using every device in the book. We have seen that time after time in this Chamber over the years, with very familiar arguments.
I commend those who have helped to bring about this legislation, from Professor Khan to Professor Chris Whitty, from Rishi Sunak to the current Government. The Bill team have done a fantastic job in bringing together previously fragmented strands of tobacco regulation, seeking to close loopholes so that we create a framework that is robust enough to withstand future industry innovation, which, again, is extremely familiar. This might indeed be one of the last tobacco Bills needing to pass through this House—not that I hold my breath.
This legislation contains a world-leading and genuinely novel policy to help to deliver a smoke-free generation, which the Opposition are also theoretically committed to. It therefore creates a real opportunity not just to implement a new age of sale but to communicate the harms of smoking and promote smoking cessation, just as the ban on smoking in public places did. I therefore welcome the Minister’s comments in Committee that clear guidance will be published and the Government will work to ensure successful implementation. But guidance alone is the minimum requirement, and I hope the Government’s ambition goes further than that.
In 2007, as those of us here then will remember, when smoke-free legislation was introduced, the message was simple, consistent and widespread. The Government did not leave it to businesses and others to explain on their behalf. Stakeholders were identified early, supported properly, not undermined with all sorts of reasons to feel anxious, and given time to prepare. Guidance, signage and materials were ready well in advance. National TV adverts raised awareness. The result was immediate: we saw 98% compliance on day one, accompanied by growing public support.
That approach achieved more than compliance; it changed attitudes. It sparked conversations about the harms of smoking, not the liberties—as if an addiction is a liberty—and encouraged many people to try to quit. That kind of cultural shift is exactly what this legislation should aim to replicate. Although the rising age of sale applies to a specific cohort, a wider objective is to engage the whole population and frame smoking cessation as a shared national endeavour.
Lord Naseby (Con)
My Lords, I support the 27 amendments in this group, which were so ably spoken to by my noble friend.
Members of the House may not know—there is no reason why they should—that when I came back from working in India and Sri Lanka, both of which are very extensive users of tobacco, I joined an advertising agency on the marketing side. In particular, I was asked to help on the marketing of Gallaher products such as Park Drive and Senior Service. That experience meant getting to know those companies in depth, and I began to understand how the industry operated. Of course, at that point I had no idea that I would become a Member of Parliament some 10 years later, but I realised that this is not a flippant industry. This was an industry employing thousands of people, particularly in skilled areas, and an industry that, as far as I could see as a marketing man, listened to the problems of health.
I am married to a full-time GP, and I have a son who was a GP. I have admired various political parties that ran the National Health Service through the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and onwards. You only had to go into your own surgery to see the effort put in on the ground to encourage people not to smoke. It was not as if the industry ignored it. Pressure was understandably put on, whereby advertising, in which I had a role to play, should be targeted in terms of age and timing. The media at that time was very different. But, on the recommendation that I and my team went through, the industry recognised that it should avoid advertising to young people and took positive steps to that effect.
I hasten to say that I have no financial involvement; I do not have any stocks and shares in tobacco companies. I am only speaking from experience. When I got to the other place as the honourable Member for Northampton South, I continued to take an interest in the industry. I am impressed with the efforts that were made jointly by the industry and various Governments. But I do express huge disappointment to the present Government that, as far as I understand it, they have resisted attempts to talk to the industry in depth, particularly to retailers and the other representatives. They certainly feel that they have been ignored, and that is not a good position to be in.
Leaving that aside, we come back to the central issue of what the Government are proposing and what I and others are proposing. Twenty-one is a sensible age. I did my national service as an RAF pilot from 18 to 20, and then I went to Cambridge. By that time, you can decide for yourself what you are going to do. This idea of a phased introduction is confusing to all those involved.
There is a problem on the ground. I live in Bedfordshire, next door to Northamptonshire. We have a lot of small towns. For one newsagent, roughly 19% of his income comes from tobacco. It is falling, but that is understandable. It is falling because the percentage of the population who smoke has dramatically fallen between the period when I first got involved, in 1964, and today. I do not argue that it would not be better if it had fallen a bit further, but it has fallen dramatically. This is an issue for the retail trade.
Another issue that His Majesty’s Government appear not to be terribly up to date on is the illicit tobacco trade, which is a huge problem today. As I understand it, His Majesty’s Government recognise that only 10% of cigarettes consumed in 2023-24 were illicit. That, in itself, equals 12 billion illicit cigarettes. However, when you dig a bit deeper, the National Crime Agency’s Deputy Director for Illicit Finance, Sal Melki, has stated that the combined law enforcement agencies’ Operation Machinize seized 4.5 billion illicit cigarettes in 2024. Surely that is the area we should be focused on. We do not need new and complicated laws—that is a real target. I do not understand why His Majesty’s Government are not making that a real priority. As it is, the illicit trade is totally undermining our situation.
I had the privilege of working as a junior Minister in Northern Ireland. I am not blaming anybody, but it was my own party that failed to deal properly with the situation in Northern Ireland. I am really upset that we did not do it better, but we did not. It ought not to have happened. But, quite frankly, even if the Government’s wish was to go through, it is not going to happen in Northern Ireland. That is not good. We are part of the United Kingdom; we do not want to have another category where poor Northern Ireland is left out in the cold.
I am not going to repeat the points my noble friend has already made. This amendment that he and I have put down is a simple proposition to replace the generational ban with a minimum legal purchasing age of 21. I plead for the House to think long and hard. I shall certainly be supporting this amendment if my noble friend tests the opinion of the House at the appropriate time.
Lord Pannick (CB)
My Lords, I have listened very carefully to the speeches from the noble Lords, Lord Murray and Lord Naseby. However, what they cannot avoid is that their amendment, by maintaining the legal sale of tobacco products to persons over the age of 21, will continue the enormous damage to public health and the enormous cost to the National Health Service that is caused by the consumption of this product.
I am not persuaded by the freedom arguments. We ban heroin. We require that people wear seat belts, even if they are over the age of 21 and they may take a different view. If Sir Walter Raleigh were to bring tobacco into this country today for the first time, there is surely no doubt whatever that it would be banned because of its noxious, dangerous character. The Bill contains such detailed provisions relating to legality precisely because this has been a lawful product for so long. I think the Government are quite right in the way they seek to deal with it.
The only other argument of substance presented was from the noble Lord, Lord Murray, relating to illicit tobacco products. But that is an unfortunate consequence of banning any product. We ban cannabis. There is an illicit trade in cannabis, but I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Murray, is a supporter of legalising the sale of cannabis. The enactment of the Bill will do an enormous amount to educate the public of the dangers that this product causes and of the need to ensure that we move forward now to promote public health.
Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Con)
My Lords, I want to speak to my interest. About 30 years ago, I was a director of British American Tobacco. I started smoking when I was at school, and I have now been smoking for about 70 years. At the moment, the thought has not crossed my mind that I am going to abandon my enjoyable smoking of small cigars.
Leaving that aside, I recall that when I was at BAT, just as my noble friend’s experience of Gallaher has confirmed, we were desperately anxious to keep our reputation as a company and make sure the dangers of our product were brought to people’s attention and we could protect our reputation. I will not reminisce for too long, but I recall that we lobbied the then Government to make it illegal to sell our products to under-18s. They rejected that idea because of counterlobbying from retailers. We certainly offered no resistance whatever to the widespread publication of the health risks of smoking, which are considerable.
We were often accused of doing dreadful things. People who campaigned against our product decided they had to campaign against the evil organisation that was involved in it. But this was a complete misunderstanding of our attempt to maintain a good reputation. It was, in fact, an extremely well-run company. My opinion is that smoking should not be banned and made illegal if the sale is to adults who are fully informed that they are adding to the risk to their health that motoring and other things already pose to them and decide that the pleasure of smoking involves them taking it on.
I will not repeat all the excellent arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Murray, who put the case perfectly clearly and well—I agree with every word he said. I find the proposition, which was first put forward by my own party towards the end of our last period of office, a quite extraordinary one. It is going to be found that shopkeepers are making an illegal sale if their customer is a day older than the legal limit imposed by Parliament. I assume that in 60 years, somebody like me will be required to go into a shop taking my birth certificate, saying that I am 85 so can legally buy a cigarette, whereas if I was 84 years of age it would be an illegal act to engage in this transaction. I cannot see how shopkeepers are going to comply with the law except by demanding some proof of date of birth and continuing to demand that proof as the legally entitled purchasers steadily grow older and older. I am sure it is well intentioned. It is another attempt to reinforce the already very successful efforts we have made in this country to reduce the incidence of smoking. But it is faintly ridiculous and slightly preposterous, and, given the history of the decline of smoking in this country, it is quite unnecessary.
The most important point that the noble Lord, Lord Murray, makes to those who might be faintly neutral in this debate is that it will stimulate organised illegality. It most undoubtedly will. He made the arguments for that, but I remind the House of the best example in my lifetime. Until about 30 years ago, betting on racehorses was legal only on the course, and there was a firm law saying that you could not place a bet on a horse—it was strictly illegal—unless you were actually at the course.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, for the first time in my life, I will publicly disagree with my noble friend Lord Clarke. I will speak briefly but very strongly against this group of amendments, which would simply defeat the object of the Bill: to introduce a generational ban and achieve over time a smoke-free country.
Less than two years ago, a generational ban was the policy of a Conservative Government, and the then Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, described it as one of his proudest initiatives. In that Parliament, on a free vote, the vast majority of Conservative Members of Parliament supported the Bill, as did 28 out of the 30 members of the Cabinet. All the arguments that we have heard this afternoon were put forward at that time, listened to and discounted. In this Parliament, the measure passed with a majority of 415 to 47, so it is fair to say that the Bill has broad cross-party support, and it is popular outside. It has a clear objective of reducing the burdens of smoking on the economy and the NHS.
I will leave it to others to deal with the argument about illicit tobacco and the Windsor Framework; I just want to tackle the libertarian argument, following the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. I listened to all the libertarian arguments when a Conservative Government made it compulsory for motorcyclists to wear crash helmets. We heard the arguments about well-informed adults being aware of the risks. Nobody would now reverse that piece of legislation. We heard the same arguments on compulsory seat belts. Both those measures were introduced by a Conservative Government. We heard the same arguments about smoking on public transport, on trains and in pubs. Yes, there is a libertarian argument, but in my view there is a much broader benefit in moving to a smoke-free country.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I will speak in favour of the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth. I will concentrate on one narrow area—one of the practical aspects of this generational ban—which, as my noble friend Lord Clarke highlighted, is the inevitable difficulty of age verification in stores. I am sure the Minister will soon argue that age verification is a well-established practice and therefore should present no particular difficulty, but the implications of the Bill in a few years’ time are profound, as my noble friend noted.
Judging the difference between an 18 year-old and a 40 year-old by eye is not especially difficult—although at this point I note that there are a number of Peers on the Government Benches who regularly claim that even that is impossible in the case of asylum seekers. But how is a shopkeeper supposed to judge the precise age of someone who is apparently 40 years old in a few years’ time? Is he 40? Is he 39? Is he 40 in 364 days? I am sure that we will soon hear the argument that the point is actually somewhat moot, because that 40 year- old born after the 1 January 2009 will have never smoked or shown any desire to smoke because of the Bill. But that is simply not a credible argument. As my noble friend Lord Murray noted, the generational ban is a de facto prohibition, and one does not need to be a dedicated student of history to know that prohibition of any kind has never worked. Indeed, it serves to make whatever is being prohibited more desirable, more glamorous and more edgy. Plenty of people will still choose to smoke.
In effect, the state will therefore be asking shopkeepers to both comply with and police the law at the same time. To put some statistics around this, the Association of Convenience Stores represents 50,000 local shops, petrol forecourt sites and independent retailers across all locations. Last year, it reported that there were 57,000 incidents of violence against people working in convenience stores. Some 87% of store workers reported verbal abuse and 44% reported hate-motivated abuse. The top three triggers of this violence epidemic were encountering shop thieves, enforcing age restriction policies and refusing to serve intoxicated customers. Does the Minister think this will get any better when the shopkeeper has to ask two middle-aged men for their passports—or, indeed, an 85 year-old for his birth certificate?
Today, I read that the British Retail Consortium has reported that there were 1,600 incidents of violence and abuse per day in shops in the year 2024-25. That is down from the previous year, but it is still a staggering number. It is welcome that the Crime and Policing Bill will make assaulting a retail worker an aggravated offence, but that is, I contend, highly unlikely to make any difference at all to the number of incidents around age verification, which are inevitable. I am sure the Minister will also refer to the increase in police numbers and neighbourhood policing officers due by 2029. That is also welcome, of course, but I note that the previous Government bequeathed more police officers than ever before in this country, and that did not have a noticeable impact. The simple fact is that this measure will inevitably cause more trouble, and the Government will be unable to do much about that. It is ludicrous to pass a law that will provoke the breaking of other laws.
My noble friend Lord Murray’s amendments would achieve the Government’s aims without causing this needless aggravation. The Government’s own impact assessment states that a one-off increase in the age of sale to 21 would be just as effective in the short term at reducing smoking rates, compared with a generational smoking ban. The Government should change tack and accept my noble friend Lord Murray’s amendments.
Lord Rennard (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I oppose Amendment 1 and the associated amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth, because I believe wholeheartedly that a country free from the harms of tobacco would transform the public health of this nation and prevent huge amounts of human suffering. We heard from the noble Lord about the reversal of the planned policy in New Zealand, but we did not hear an explanation for that. The explanation is quite simple: there was a change of coalition parties following a general election. One of the new coalition parties feared the drop in revenue to the Government as a result of the policy being introduced and a reduction in the prevalence of tobacco smoking, which surely proves the point that that party accepted that such policies as this would be effective.
We have heard about the wonderful, kind-spirited nature of the tobacco industry in caring for young people, but not enough about the many decades of deceit, in which that industry knew full well the links between its products and lung cancer, and covered up what it knew and lied about them, as it lied about tobacco smoking of a second-hand nature. This is not an industry which we can trust for a remote second.
Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Con)
May I ask what evidence the noble Lord has for that? I well remember, when I was on the board of BAT, that we acknowledged the health risks. We were accused of somehow denying it, but the people with this bizarre conspiracy theory were never able to produce any examples of our denying it, because we did not, and we did not oppose warnings and labels on packages. It is just part of the mythology of the more extreme fringe of well-intentioned anti-tobacco lobbyists.
Lord Rennard (Non-Afl)
My Lords, with respect, I am not part of any extreme fringe, and the views I have enunciated are shared almost entirely by the medical profession in this country. For decades, the tobacco companies had evidence that tobacco was linked to lung cancer, yet they kept denying until it was proven by showing the number of people with lung cancer who smoked and the number of people with lung cancer who did not. The industry hid that as it fought tooth and nail against such things as plain packaging with many bogus arguments. This is the most deceitful industry in the world.
We have heard about the cliff edge problem, but it is one that we have now. At 17 years and 364 days, you may not buy tobacco, but you can on your 18th birthday. With these amendments, that would change to being able to buy tobacco on your 21st birthday, but not after 20 years and 364 days on this planet.
My experience of being orphaned at 16, and finding my mother, a heavy smoker, dead in her bed as a result of hypertensive heart disease, with smoking obviously a key factor in her death, has driven me, ever since then, to support people trying to quit—that is most smokers, in my experience—and to prevent the tobacco industry promoting addiction to its lethal products. The Bill proposes a world-leading policy of which we should be proud, and we should not make it less effective, as proposed by many amendments in this group.
Raising the age at which someone can legally be sold a cigarette works in terms of reducing tobacco consumption. It may not be 100% effective, but that is not a reason to try to make it less effective. We know that raising the age of sale in England from 16 to 18 in 2007 reduced smoking rates among 16 and 17 year-olds by 30%. In the US, when the age of sale was increased from 18 to 21, the chance of a person in that age group taking up smoking fell by 39%.
The tobacco industry employs the most deceitful and dangerous lobbyists in the world. Their role is to try to protect its enormous profits and persuade more people—in particular young people—to take up the deadly habit in order to replace the 50% of its consumers whose lives are shortened by smoking tobacco.
One argument we hear from opponents of tobacco control legislation is that it represents a so-called nanny state. This is a term that I feel is really used only in the media. The phrase does not resonate with the public, who are highly supportive of tobacco control legislation. I hear laughter, but polling shows that 68% of the public support the smoke-free generation. The Chief Medical Officer has been clear that there is no freedom in addiction. Many people start smoking as children and become addicted almost immediately. Two out of three people who try just one cigarette go on to become daily smokers, and three-quarters of smokers say that they would never have started if they had the choice again.
It is also important to be clear what this policy does and does not do. The rising age of sale does not remove any current adult’s ability to buy tobacco; it simply phases in a high minimum age of purchase for future generations. That is a proportionate approach. By contrast, accepting these amendments would mean that those aged 18 to 20 who already smoke would suddenly be unable to buy tobacco legally—a far more intrusive step.
Smoking remains one of the greatest preventable burdens on our public services and our economy. It is responsible for up to 75,000 GP appointments every year. It costs the country approximately £27.6 billion in lost economic productivity. It costs the NHS almost £2 billion annually and local authorities nearly £4 billion a year in social care costs. That is money we do not have, and which could and should be spent on improving health, not managing preventable harm. The number of people—
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)
My Lords, I remind the noble Lord that this is Report stage of proceedings. His speech is a bit on the long side. Can he bring his remarks to a close, please?
Lord Rennard (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I hear some responses from the Benches next to me who disagree with this. I hope, however, that they will consider carefully the arguments that I am making, and those that come from the Minister shortly.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, I rise to support my noble friends’ amendments in group 1, not to defend tobacco, but to defend common sense, public safety and the livelihoods of tens of thousands of small shopkeepers who would be most harmed by a policy that looks simple on paper but is deeply dangerous in practice.
First, the burden on retailers and communities is real. Small shopkeepers already face unprecedented levels of crime and intimidation. The Bill would force them to enforce a moving legal threshold every year, placing the full weight of policing on their shoulders.
We heard an awful lot from the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, on guidance. I am listening to my noble friend Lord Sharpe of Epsom describing what the shopkeeper would have to do, and I would love to see what the Government guidance will be for that shopkeeper. When they ask, “What is your age? When were you born? Prove it.”, how on earth will the shopkeeper be able to deal with people in their 20s, 30s and 40s when trying to stay on the right side of an ever- changing law?
The implementation of a generational ban on tobacco sales will have profound, unintended consequences for shopkeepers, law enforcement and retailers—to the benefit of organised criminals—across the UK for years to come. That is not hyperbole; it is a sober description of the risks we are being asked to accept with this.
Secondly, the policy will drastically expand the illicit cigarette market and hand control to organised criminals. Everybody knows the stark evidence—even though HMRC will never admit it—that illicit tobacco loses the Treasury £3.5 billion per annum. Some 25% of all cigarettes sold are illicit and cheap, and the price differential drives consumers to illegal sources in pubs, clubs and under-the-counter sales.
This ill-conceived generational ban—admittedly, a stupid idea from the last Government—will create a permanent cohort of consumers who cannot legally buy tobacco, and where demand exists, supply will follow. That supply will be by criminal networks. Let us look briefly at Australia as a sign of what will unfold in the UK. Organised crime gangs dominate the illicit tobacco market in Australia, which has led to arson, violence and the takeover of local markets by criminal gangs.
Thirdly, enforcement capacity is already stretched to breaking point. Trading Standards and other front-line agencies have lost staff and lack the resources to police a complex, ever-changing age rule. Enforcement bodies are underfunded and under-resourced; adding a perpetual generational rule will only widen the enforcement gap and shift the burden to retailers and local communities, who will be unable to cope. When enforcement fails, the law becomes a paper shield for criminals and a real threat to honest businesses.
What is the sensible alternative? It must be setting the age at 21, as set out in my noble friend’s amendment. This is not a retreat from public health; it is a pragmatic, enforceable measure that achieves the same long-term outcome for young people while avoiding the catastrophic side-effects of a generational ban. My noble friend set out in detail from the Government’s own impact assessment how raising the age to 21 would achieve the same long-term aim.
A minimum age of 21 is clear, static and much more easily enforceable. It allows retailers to train staff once and apply a consistent rule, and it reduces the incentive for criminal markets to exploit a permanently excluded generation. It also aligns with international practice and with the Republic of Ireland’s own policy direction, reducing cross-border legal friction.
Finally, we must pair any age change with stronger enforcement and support. If we raise the age to 21, we should simultaneously strengthen fixed-penalty regimes, resource trading standards and Border Force properly and invest in targeted education and cessation services. Enforcement must be credible—it is not at the moment. Everybody knows that you can get illegal cigarettes in any pub or club in the country. We need stepped penalties for repeat offenders, licensing powers that bite and better funding for the agencies that will be asked to do the work.
All of us in this House and Parliament share the aim of reducing smoking, but good ends do not justify bad, unworkable means. A generational ban risks destroying small businesses, empowering organised crime, overwhelming enforcement and creating legal chaos. A minimum legal purchasing age of 21 is a proportionate, enforceable and effective alternative that would protect public health without the catastrophic unintended consequences. If we come to a vote, I urge the House to reject the generational ban and support a measured, evidence-based approach that combines an age limit of 21 with robust enforcement and support for cessation. I support my noble friend’s amendments.
Lord Sentamu (CB)
My Lords, I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and he persuaded me that, at the end of the day, we are dealing with a question of health, not choice. I will give an example. Colin Bennetts, Bishop of Coventry from 1998 to 2008, died in July 2013 after a period of illness due to cancer. His lungs were filled with deposits of smoke. He said to everybody, “I have never smoked in my life”, but as a youngster he had worked in an office where cigarettes were lit at every moment. Colin, who had not smoked, died of lung cancer. You do not have to smoke to die from it —others sitting near may get it.
I respect the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, but you cannot compare gambling on horses with smoking. Gambling on horses affects only those gambling, but secondary smoking is detrimental to anybody in a place where people are smoking. I do not think these amendments would be helpful. We should stick with the Bill as drafted, because we are trying to protect people’s lives and make them healthier.
I suffered what is called in medical terms a lung infarction, where bits of your lungs do not quite operate. I still have that illness, so every time I go into a place where there is a lot of smoking, I can barely breathe—I have to get out into the fresh air and get it in my lungs. Friends, this is about health. If we do not do this now, then when?
Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of Cancer Research UK. Given that smoking continues to be the single biggest cause of cancer, it will not be a surprise that I oppose the amendments in this group, which would substantially weaken this landmark legislation. In explaining why, I will respond to each of the six points made by the noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth.
First, the noble Lord argued that we do not need more tobacco control legislation anyway because smoking rates are already coming down. That is not correct; Javed Khan has pointed out that, among the most deprived parts of the country, on current trends we will not be smoke-free until 2044. In any event, some in the tobacco industry have come to the same conclusion. I quote from an advert that Philip Morris took out in the New Statesman, no doubt designed to influence people such as us: “Here in the UK, smoking rates are not declining fast enough. None of the home nations are on course to hit their smoke-free dates, and the most deprived communities are lagging significantly behind”. The suggestion that we can just assume that the status quo will produce a benign outcome is incorrect.
The noble Lord’s second argument was that, rather than having a generational tobacco sales restriction, we should instead just move towards delaying the age at which smoking can be initiated to 21. The tobacco industry would doubtless switch its efforts to targeting twenty-somethings instead of teenagers. On the surprising claims we have heard in respect of the behaviour down the decades of Gallaher or British American Tobacco, I simply say to noble Lords: google their internal documents. They have all been disclosed as a result of international treaties and court cases, and noble Lords will see the systematic duplicity, bribery and corruption that has continued across the world in advancing big tobacco’s agenda. Those documents, the internal files, are there: noble Lords can check them out for themselves.
The noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth, referred to the Republic of Ireland as an example we should perhaps be following, when it proposed to adopt the age of 21. However, the director of the tobacco industry-funded front organisation FOREST said of the effect of adopting the age of 21 as a tobacco sales restriction:
“If you’re not careful, you’re actually going to make smoking … fashionable again. You’re going to actually encourage young people to smoke”,
on the back of this proposed sales restriction to over 21 year-olds.
The third argument we heard was about the black market. For reasons that are a non sequitur, we have several times heard cited the example of Australia. The amendments in this group relate to changes to the age of sale. There has been no change in the age of sale in Australia. As far as I am aware, it is still 18 and has been for 30 years. So, whatever else is going on in Australia, it has got nothing to do with the amendments in this group in respect of age of sale. In fact, the Australian example tells us that you need rigorous enforcement. Until very recently, there was no retail licensing available for New South Wales, Victoria or Queensland, covering about 70% of the Australian population, and it has only been patchily introduced subsequently.
There is agreement that we need strong enforcement to deal with the illicit trade, but the argument that we should essentially do whatever it takes to maximise revenue for the Exchequer is a flawed one. If that were the case, as we have heard from other noble Lords, we would be legalising and licensing handguns, assault weapons, fentanyl or crack cocaine. The fact is that, when it comes to tobacco control policy, it is not the Laffer curve that we should focus on, it is the life expectancy curve.
The fourth argument has been around the impact on retailers. I accept that there are legitimate concerns, and the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, has rightly drawn attention to the epidemic of violence and also noted the provisions that will be in the Crime and Policing Bill as one step to attempt to tackle this. But the fact is that the progressive age of sale restrictions in the Bill are an evolutionary measure that will be phased over many years, giving retailers much opportunity to adjust. There are substitutes that they can sell, including vapes, as alternatives to smoked tobacco. Surely, nobody is suggesting that the trump argument should be that we need to sustain the margins of retailers at the expense of 80,000 people who die prematurely from smoking every year.
The fifth argument we heard was around the Windsor Framework. It is fair to say that alternative legal opinions are available. Member states are free to determine the age limit that they see as appropriate on their territory. This does not constitute a trade restriction within the meaning of the EU treaties. In any event, even if a court found that it did, it could be justified on public health grounds. Perhaps the Minister can confirm that the Bill has the support of Northern Irish Health Ministers and that legislative consent has been received from the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Lastly, we come back to the liberty argument: the freedom of unborn smokers to become addicted in decades to come. Well, those of us who take the opposite view judge that this is a proportionate response to a great harm. It is a novel piece of legislation; we will need to see how it plays out in practice. One of the government amendments that will be before us on Report will be precisely a report on its real-world effects in the coming years. In the meantime, to weaken what has the potential to be one of the most fundamental health-improving pieces of legislation this Parliament has ever enacted would in my judgment be a grave error.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, who gave a pretty good summary of many of the arguments against this group of amendments. I join him in all that he said. My fundamental motive is twofold. First, I would like to see the eradication of smoking in this country. That is a vision that we should embrace and be proud of. Just kicking the can and putting up the age limit, as this group of amendments seeks to do, would simply extend a very large and unfair addiction that kills two-thirds of its users and that we could all do without.
Secondly, I am very proud that my party was leading on this issue and brought about the generational ban. I remind noble Lords to have a moment of self-awareness. This is a measure that is massively supported by voters, taxpayers, smokers, Conservatives, retailers and even by the tobacco companies which, at least in this country, have a notional commitment to the eradication of smoking. You can judge whether to take that at face value, but that is at least their rhetorical position. So it seems out of date for my noble friends Lord Murray and Lord Naseby to be stalwarts for the permanent establishment of smoking in the face of such opposition.
Lord Bethell (Con)
Noble Lords have, perfectly reasonably, rebutted me on that. But my point is that the modern retail experience does not rely on retailers squinting to try to judge the difference between 21 and 22 year-olds. It is mandatory for almost everyone to produce ID when they are purchasing any restricted product. As the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, rightly said, it is right that the Government support this regime. I am pleased to see statutory guidance, updated training standards and enforcement tools as part of the Bill.
Regarding stories about the black market, I must express grave reservations about some of the points that have been made in this debate. They remind me more of stories of Arthur Daley and “Minder” than of modern Britain and I am not sure how relevant stories of Australian biker gangs shooting each other are. Just to correct my noble friend Lord Napier, he said that 4 billion—
Lord Bethell (Con)
My noble friend is looking very well on it. He mentioned that 4 billion cigarettes had been taken by the police in 2024. According to HMRC, the number is 24 million. I draw attention to that because there is a lot of loose use of numbers in the description of illicit trade.
Lord Naseby (Con)
The figure that my noble friend quotes is correct from the source that he quoted, but, after further investigation, it was found that the figure I quoted was the correct figure.
Lord Bethell (Con)
If my noble friend is correct, I will absolutely and humbly correct myself. Maybe we could have a drink afterwards and compare notes on that.
On the question of freedom, I too am a passionate believer and fighter for freedom. However, the freedoms I care about are not only the freedom of choice but the freedom not to be impoverished by taxes and not to see my nation, my country, ruined by the health, welfare and productivity costs of carcinogenic, nasty toxins such as cigarettes. The financial cost on ourselves, and particularly on our children, of this industry is absolutely enormous and is still growing, even if the numbers have stalled. So the freedom from addiction and debt should be included in any discussion of what the freedoms are. For those reasons, I will be voting against this package of measures.
Baroness Gerada (CB)
My Lords, I am also against these amendments. I will disclose a conflict of interest: I started smoking when I was 16—and 33 years later, like many of us who start to smoke at that age, because it is a childhood disease, I gave up.
We know and have heard about all the health effects of smoking, but we also have to realise that smoking is an easy addiction to start. I have looked after every addiction—heroin, cocaine, alcohol—and smoking is the easiest. You need only two cigarettes for 80% of people to be addicted, like me, for 33 years, and many people, like me, try to give up.
It is not just addiction that is the problem. It is not even about death, although death is a bad outcome to have. It is also about all the other complications. Like many smokers, I have lost many of my teeth. Our eyesight goes. We have skin problems. Smoking causes all sorts of things.
As a GP for nearly 30 years, I am pleased that I have seen a massive reduction in people with smoking-related diseases. My surgeries used to be full of what we call blue bloaters and pink puffers and full of people with premature heart disease. It is not an accident that I no longer see that in my consulting room; it is because of the hard work of our Chief Medical Officers, the Department of Health, ASH and many others to stop normalising smoking.
On the issue of the black market, there is of course a price differential. Wherever there is a price differential you will get a black market, whether it is diesel, cigarettes, alcohol or whatever. But the Bill is about stopping people starting—as the noble Lord said, preventing the next generation that has not even been born from starting. We have to focus on prevention, which is what the Bill is about.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, called this a world-leading policy. It is world-leading, because no one else in the world has chosen this policy. One wants to know why. At least the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, admitted that this was novel and therefore untested. Can we at least have a little humility by admitting that the Bill is an experiment? It is a risk.
How you do age verification, as rather wittily described by the noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, is a bit untested. How will we cope with the 84 year-old versus the 85 year-old—will there be a scrap? It is said that it is not going to happen for many years, but I thought the idea of legislators was that you were meant to think about the future, not just tomorrow, and the long- term implications of policies that pass.
Let us be honest: there is no good practice to copy with this Bill. There is no evidence about exactly how it will work or whether it will work. The claims on its behalf are largely based on modelling and speculation, and that is not evidence; it is not scientific. Therefore, the moral high ground and the sense of certainty deployed by those who are enthusiastic about the Bill, and the disdain towards those of us who are sceptical about it, are just a little misplaced.
I therefore request that, as we go through the very short Report stage, because a lot of us have been through a longer Committee stage, we are honest about things such as cost-benefit analysis—what is lost, what is gained—and, rather than moral righteousness, consider whether this is actually fit for purpose, even the purpose of those people who are putting the Bill forward. Whatever the intentions of those promoting the Bill, many of the clauses in it are counterproductive.
I know we are not on this section yet, but as an ex-smoker who started vaping, I am utterly distraught that we now have a Bill that, to all intents and purposes, treats vaping and tobacco as interchangeable, despite a denial by the Government. I do not think that there will be the health gain that is claimed.
My final point at this time—because I will be back —is that it is a little rich to sneer about freedom. Saying the word “libertarian” gives certain people a thrill; they can feel as though they are morally virtuous. I do not consider myself to be a libertarian, despite what Wikipedia says. However, I fully embrace living in a free society. I do not think that freedom is something I should be embarrassed about, nor that saying that people should be given choices about their lifestyles makes you to the right of Genghis Khan, or whatever it is that people are implying—or, worse, in the pay of big tobacco, which is the inference of many of the contributions. At some stage relatively soon, lots of adults—the 84 and 85 year-olds, because these kids do grow up to be adults—will be denied a choice. This Bill affects adults.
People can make choices about whether they take risks in their health. I suspect that practically everyone I know is using those weight-loss injections. To me they are a bit risky—I think, “Are they safe?”—but I am not mounting a campaign yet, because half this House would be out. People say it is worth the risk. A lot of people do daft things such as going skiing—mad; too risky for me. There are all sorts of things. People have been known to have the odd extra pint or eat the odd greasy breakfast. People take risks and make choices about their health all the time.
I do not want more people to smoke, but I also think that, in a free society, we have to give a certain degree of room for people to make choices—even the wrong choices. We live in a free society. Deciding the right and wrong choice is what happens in authoritarian regimes, but in a free society we say, “I don’t think you should do that, but I’m not necessarily going to legislate so that you can’t do everything I personally disapprove of”. We should not even say, “You shouldn’t do that, because I know best for your health what you should and shouldn’t do”. In medical ethics, there are times when you go to your doctor, who says, “Take this”, and you say, “I decline to take that medication; I do not want that intervention”. In a free society, a doctor cannot force you to do what you do not want to do—even the virtuous health professional who we are all meant to revere.
As we carry on this Report stage, can we all show a bit of humility? Living in a free society puts before us difficult moral decisions. There is no necessarily right or wrong. We are allowed to scrutinise a Bill that is put before us without being accused of somehow being evil because we do not go along with the Bill. Just because the Conservative Government, when they were in, and the Labour Government now agree—if that is the basis on which we should not scrutinise, we might as well all go home. I am sad to say that, for some of us, the Conservative Party has had far too much agreement with the Labour Party over recent decades.
Lord Brady of Altrincham (Con)
I am a Conservative Member who, in the other House, voted against this proposition. Does the noble Baroness not share my concern that one of the unspoken nonsenses of this legislation is that far too many young people are already choosing to smoke cannabis, instead of cigarettes that they might legally obtain? That proves that, however we try to legislate or regulate this market, people will do what they choose to do. Virtually no effort is made to clamp down on the illegal smoking of cannabis.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
I am allowed to come back on that. All I want to say is that I do not want it to go down in Hansard that I am such a libertarian that I support the smoking of cannabis: I am not Zack Polanski. It is also the case that we have to think of the unintended consequences and the real world and real young people, rather than imaginary ones.
Lord Magan of Castletown (Con)
My Lords, I support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Murray. We have heard a lot of nonsense from those from whom we would expect to hear a lot of nonsense. It is more surprising that those from whom we would have expected to hear some good sense have most grievously erred and strayed.
The proposed legislation will in no way stop people smoking; it will simply drive smoking underground. Health issues will not improve and highly aggressive criminal involvement in this trade will soar. His Majesty’s Treasury will be denied at least £10 billion a year, which will accrue to the benefit of the criminal underworld. This crass development will turn out to be a disastrous policy swerve. Look at the empirical evidence: prohibition or intended prohibition has turned out to be a disastrous and damaging policy in many parts of the world. This ill-thought-through legislation will have to be repealed in due course. Let us come to our collective senses: the consequences of this proposed legislation will be dire.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
My Lords, I will be very brief. I am worried not about whether it is right or wrong to try to stop smoking but about whether this would work. There is no point in passing laws that do not work, as they are not respected. I think back to the amount of pot that was smoked when I was at university, to all the drugs generally around the place, and to the switch from alcohol to ecstasy and other things when they were cheaper because the price of alcohol had been raised. We tamper around with it, but the problem is much deeper than that: people need to take things to stave off reality a bit, from time to time.
I was not a smoker, because I saw my friends wheezing at school. I tried it; everyone was worried about the amount of chocolate I ate, so I briefly tried smoking. I gave up after my second sore throat and saw no benefit from it. To be honest, this will not be an effective way of stopping smoking, so I see no point in it. It will cause problems with policing. We can handle age verification in various ways, but I will not bore your Lordships with that now. We should not make life more complicated for everyone. They will go on smoking if they are driven to it, and we do not want to make it look attractive, which driving stuff underground does.
Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)
Before I say a few brief words about the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Murray, and his excellent speech, I congratulate my former constituent, the noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, who made an excellent speech. He spoke for common sense in how we treat adults. We will probably be allowing people to vote at 16 and we allow all sorts of things to happen at a much younger age, yet we do not realise how this generational ban will affect older people making decisions about their own lives and health.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, said, people take risks all their time. I am suffering from a very sore back, because I took a risk in thinking that, at my age, I could still ski—I found it quite difficult last week. We all take such choices. After the age of becoming an adult, people have to be able to make those choices. We should be spending our time educating young people. I do not want people to smoke—I have never smoked in my life—but I do not see this generational ban working.
To the people who want to see smoking stopped, I point out that, as the noble Lord, Lord Murray, said, this generational ban will end up in the courts. Labour Peers did not listen when people said that the immigration Bill and the legacy Bill would not apply to Northern Ireland. It is clear from what has already been said by many noble KCs, by the European Union itself and by those seven countries that have given detailed reasons that this Bill cannot apply to Northern Ireland, not just because of the Windsor Framework but generally because of the tobacco directive.
If we were really serious about getting rid of smoking, we would ban tobacco altogether. That will never happen, because the Government like having the money that comes in from it. I do not understand how anyone could think that, by voting for something that will take years to implement, no matter what the Government say, we will not land up in court over and again with legal issues. Until the Windsor Framework goes, this will not happen. I have an amendment next week, so I will not go into any more detail on that now. Whether or not you agree with the generational ban, this might be a reason to look seriously at the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Murray, on the age of 21, even if you think that, in principle, adults over the age of 18 should be allowed to make their own decisions.
Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, I will briefly sum up for the Front Bench on this interesting group of amendments. Our position is that we support this generational change and welcome the Government bringing it forward. This is not party-political; these ideas come from across the House, and we welcome them.
From our point of view, changing the age of sale to 21 would be tinkering at the edges and would not bring about the change that we all know we need. Nobody who has ever smoked a cigarette or been a smoker would wish otherwise. Imagine for a moment that, today, we were not considering this ban but contemplating introducing cigarettes for the first time. Nobody with a modicum of common sense would ever contemplate introducing cigarettes and allowing corporate companies to sell products that kill half their users. We all need to change this. My own father died of emphysema, and I am sure there is hardly anyone in this House who has not been impacted by tobacco.
This might be one of the most important things that any of us in the House do in our lifetime. It is hard to see another piece of legislation having such a beneficial impact on preventing harm and misery for people in society and helping them to lead healthier and better lives.
We see no insurmountable problem in this legislation. Yes, it is new and novel, and there will be teething problems—I cannot say there will not be—but they are all surmountable. Age verification and ID are commonly used, we need to look after our small retailers and look at how this change will be implemented, and there are other views on the EU question, but this is essential and it needs to be done. We have had conversations about freedom of choice, but we would not allow any young person to pick up a loaded revolver with two chambers and one bullet and give them the freedom of choice to spin it, put it against their head and pull the trigger.
Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Con)
Does the noble Earl not agree that we would save many lives if we passed a law saying that nobody should be allowed to drive a motor car unless there is a man waving a stick walking in advance of them? Similarly, if we banned electric bicycles, we would prevent a great deal of injuries and possible deaths. We all have to face these kinds of judgments as part of the human condition and living in a society.
Earl Russell (LD)
With the greatest of respect, there are degrees of risk. There is no electric bike or motor vehicle that we have allowed that kills 50% of people who get on a bike or in a car. The noble Lord is comparing apples with pears. The dangers of smoking are known and proven, and are far greater than anything else.
To conclude, we welcome this generational ban. There are particular issues that need to be looked at and the Bill will need to be regularly reviewed, but we will come to amendments on that. This is the most important thing that we must do. It is essential that we make progress to improve the public health of people in this country.
Earl Howe (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Murray for his amendments in this group and all noble Lords for their contributions to this important and lively debate.
Reducing smoking rates and, in particular, preventing young people from taking up tobacco, with its highly damaging and pernicious consequences, are goals that I believe command broad support across the House. My noble friend’s amendments present us with an opportunity to settle in our minds the best way those goals might be achieved. From our debates in Committee and again today, we know there is a dichotomy of views on that.
My noble friend has eloquently made the case for substantially lifting the age of sale such that the legal purchase of tobacco by anyone under the age of 21 would be rendered impossible. The Government, on the other hand, have proposed the much more radical step of initiating a complete ban on tobacco sales to anyone born after 1 January 2009, thus creating, year by year, a wider and wider cohort of individuals for whom access to cigarettes and other tobacco products in shops will be legally barred.
Neither of these proposals, whether that of my noble friend or that of the Government, provides an absolute block on young would-be smokers accessing tobacco; so long as cigarettes remain a legal product, nothing could. However, if the generational ban can be made to work as intended, there can surely be no doubt that the benefits to public health over the long term will be immense. My right honourable friend the previous Prime Minister arrived at that realisation during the last Government, and the present Government have seen fit to agree with him.
There are two main arguments against the generational ban: one relates to civil liberties; the other is that of practical workability. I will not repeat the points that have been made on those themes, but I acknowledge that what is proposed in the Bill is, by any standards, without precedent in our consumer law. For the first time, a permanent legal distinction will be drawn between two adults based solely on their date of birth. One person may lawfully purchase a legal product while another, perhaps a year younger, may not. This would be not because of any difference in capacity or circumstance but purely by virtue of when they were born. The question people ask is whether in a free country that is right.
Following on from that are the questions around enforcement and general practicability. There are major questions around verification. As the years go by, shopkeepers will need to satisfy themselves that the person in front of them seeking to buy tobacco is 42 as opposed to 41, and so on. That does seem very different from a straightforward age of sale cut-off, which is a rule that everybody understands. Would shops and customers get used to this rigmarole? How easy would it be? As my noble friend rightly said, a number of countries have chosen to adopt the course that he is advocating rather than the generational ban.
I must, however, declare my hand. This Bill, as I have said, is an opportunity—an opportunity to make a transformational change in an area of public health that successive Governments have agreed is one of the two or three most important and far-reaching in our midst. Indeed, I would say that it is the most important. I do not think that the civil liberties arguments stand up to scrutiny for very long when we are talking about the chance of preventing serious ill health across millions of our population. Smoking needs to be made deeply unfashionable. My noble friend’s amendments, although entirely well meant, are unlikely to achieve that scale of health benefits nor that kind of attitudinal change.
There is uncertainty in whatever we decide to do. I am content for my noble friends on these Benches to make up their own minds on these matters. My noble friend, whom I greatly respect, will urge colleagues to join him in the Lobbies if he chooses to divide the House. At the same time, I hope he will understand that it ill behoves me, as my party’s spokesman for health and social care and as a former Health Minister, to pass up what I see as a golden opportunity to do something imaginative and radical, which is why I support the Government in their excellent ambitions.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Merron) (Lab)
My Lords, I am most grateful for the contributions to this debate. I think we can safely say that there is no unanimity of view, as a number of noble Lords have commented. I am particularly grateful for the support from both Front Benches, as has been consistent throughout. I am also grateful for the support of a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Pannick, Lord Young, Lord Rennard, Lord Stevens and Lord Bethell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, and others.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
My Lords, what an excellent debate showing your Lordships’ House at its best, with superb speeches on both sides of the argument. It would be invidious to list them, so I will not. I thank the Minister for her reply and her tolerance of my points throughout Committee and Report on the Bill.
Three thoughts occurred to me during those speeches. The first related to the point first raised by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, who is a man to whom I listen very carefully. He tried to draw an analogy between my amendment and the ban on heroin, or the requirement for people to wear seat belts in a motor car or a helmet when riding a motor cycle. That is, however, to ignore the fact that there is always a balancing exercise in deciding whether to ban something. One of the factors to consider is proportionality. We know from the excellent speeches we have heard this evening that what the Government propose by the Bill is untested and a gamble, not only with the lives of people who may take up smoking but with the livelihoods of shopkeepers and many involved in the retail trade. This policy is not properly thought through, and I am afraid that the analogy made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, does not satisfy me that my reasoning is flawed.
The second thought that occurred to me as I listened to the speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, and the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, is that I am always astonished that they retain the use of “liberal” in the title of the Liberal Democrat party. Having heard their speeches, it is surely redundant.
My third thought was during the excellent speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. She said that freedom is not something to be embarrassed about. I very much hope, if the noble Baroness has yet to order her coat of arms from Garter, that she uses that redounding phrase as her motto. With that ringing in your Lordships’ ears, I beg to test the opinion of the House.
Lord Moylan
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment provides that regulations to specify methods of customer age verification must be made by the affirmative resolution procedure.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendments 3 and 12, which would have the effect that the regulations to be issued in relation to age verification should be made under the affirmative process, rather than the negative process as originally envisaged.
When I tabled these amendments in Committee, the Minister showed what I thought was a hint of favour towards them, so I had the temerity to retable them on Report and lo, what do I find, but that the Minister has added her name to them. With that, I think they require no further argument. They were recommended by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. I beg to move Amendment 3 and will move Amendment 12 at the appropriate moment.
Baroness Northover (LD)
My only comment on this group is that we would not support Amendment 26, which would require a fund to be set up for age-verification technologies. If any fund were to be set up—we do not see the need for it—then it should be funded by the tobacco industry. I note with great interest that the Minister has signed the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan.
Lord Udny-Lister (Con)
I will briefly speak to Amendment 26, which is in my name, about the cost implications for small retailers and convenience stores. It is really a plea to the Minister to make some money available and introduce a grant system which can assist them. Age-verification technology is not cheap. They need to invest in a robust IT system. We need to build up a market for age verification. We also need one that protects consumers’ data and strengthens enforcement without penalising shopkeepers.
I think we all acknowledge that small shopkeepers are already in difficulty; it is not an easy time for them. We should look at anything we can do to help, and I think this would help. A simple act such as this would make it that much easier to ask the difficult question about age verification.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I half support Amendment 26. I would also like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Moylan.
The introduction of this regressive and untested generational ban on tobacco sales obviously raises the thorny issue of how it will be implemented in terms of retailers checking ages. Following the discussion on the first group, it is worth noting that this is very different from standardised age checks, which we already have, where there can be challenges at 18 or 21 and over.
I would like to quote Trading Standards Wales, which described it as creating
“a two-tier age system for tobacco whereby someone born in 2008 would be legally able to purchase tobacco products whilst someone born in 2009 would not”.
It seems that, for this Bill to work in its own terms, enforcement is key, but it is not clear how that will be practical. Again, to quote Trading Standards Wales:
“Having a two-tier age system means that young people could still obtain cigarettes from older friends or family members that smoke and, it is unlikely that any parties would report each other to the authorities as both would face legal consequences in doing so”.
Earl Howe (Con)
My Lords, I begin by thanking my noble friends Lord Moylan and Lord Udny-Lister for their amendments in this group. I welcome the fact that the Government have accepted my noble friend Lord Moylan’s amendments and congratulate my noble friend on pressing the point.
Turning to the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister, I will pick up the cogent points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, because this brings us to the broader question of age verification. Our debates in Committee demonstrated the genuine concerns among retailers that a strict “no ID, no sale” policy could become a serious flashpoint for violence and abuse directed at shop workers—an issue that, I am sure the Minister will agree, cannot be dismissed lightly. There is also a risk of confusion among customers, particularly where different age thresholds already apply across tobacco, alcohol and other age-restricted products; any new requirement must not add to that complexity. The process for purchasing these products should remain clear and readily understood by all members of the public and, crucially, shopkeepers.
Against that background, it would be extraordinary if technology were not to play a part in making that process easier and less potentially fraught. Can the Minister tell us anything about the cost and affordability of such technology? What specific consideration was given to these concerns during the Government’s consultations, and what assessment has been made of the potential impact on retail workers of what could become a cumbersome and confusing set of procedures with, as I have said, the added risk of threats and abuse to shopkeepers? At the very least, is any guidance planned to ensure that new verification requirements do not create a patchwork of conflicting obligations at the point of sale?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful for the contributions to this short debate. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for bringing back Amendments 3 and 12, which would change from negative to affirmative the procedure for making regulations to specify steps that may be taken to verify the age of customers.
In Committee I committed to returning with the Government’s response to the recommendations made by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. We have carefully considered those recommendations and listened to the support within your Lordships’ House, and I can confirm that we are accepting the recommendations in full. Therefore, as noble Lords have observed, I have—I think we can say unusually—put my name to the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. I can only counsel the noble Lord not to get used to it. I am very pleased to support his Amendments 3 and 12.
I have tabled government Amendment 105. For consistency, I have also tabled Amendment 110 to Clause 76, which is an equivalent amendment that provides the power to specify age-verification steps for Northern Ireland.
Amendment 26, tabled in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, would require the Secretary of State to establish a financial assistance scheme for the acquisition of age-verification technology by producers and retailers of nicotine products. I absolutely understand that the noble Lord’s aim is to support retailers—something that I hope the noble Lord heard me saying on behalf of the Government—and to strengthen adherence to age restriction laws. But I say to the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox—it is important to clarify this point—that the Government have no plans to mandate the use of age-verification technologies to enforce age of sale.
Checking that a customer is over the age of sale is a well-established concept for retailers, and they should continue to take reasonable steps and exercise due diligence to ensure that they do not sell age-restricted products to anyone underage. To provide clarity for retailers on the types of ID that they can use, the Bill provides powers to specify in regulations the steps that may be taken to verify a customer’s age. This includes the types of digital identities that can be used.
On some of the points raised by the noble Earl, Lord Howe—I know that other noble Lords are, rightly, concerned about this—I confirm once again that the Government will work with the retail sector, as we are already doing, to publish clear, workable guidance to support it with these legislative changes. With that, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, understands the Government’s position, and I encourage noble Lords to support Amendments 3, 12, 105 and 110.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who have spoken in this short debate. Concerning the debate about enforcement, as somebody who in the past had political responsibility for trading standards in a local authority, which is the mechanism by which enforcement of underage tobacco sales is achieved, and having sat through the whole of Report so far this afternoon, I am surprised that there has been no mention of trading standards. Perhaps we will get to this later, but trading standards will need some help as well, because a considerable burden is going to be placed on it if this mechanism of a generational age limit is to go ahead. With that, I am grateful for the support for my Amendment 3.
Earl Russell
“Power to add vaping products or nicotine products to sale prohibitions(1) The Secretary of State may by regulations amend section 1 for the purpose of adding vaping products or nicotine products specified in the regulations to the list of items in subsection (1).(2) The Secretary of State may by regulations amend section 2 for the purpose of adding vaping products or nicotine products specified in the regulations to the list of items in subsection (1).(3) Before making regulations under this section the Secretary of State must consult any persons the Secretary of State considers it appropriate to consult.(4) Before making regulations under this section the Secretary of State must obtain the consent of the Welsh Ministers if the regulations contain provision which would be within the legislative competence of Senedd Cymru if contained in an Act of the Senedd.(5) Regulations under this section are subject to the affirmative resolution procedure.”
Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, this group is on restrictions on vaping products. I thank my noble friend Lady Walmsley for her support. We welcome and commend the Government’s ambition to create a smoke-free generation, but if our goal is truly to protect the next generation from addiction and ill health, we must go further towards a nicotine-free generation as well. Big tobacco must not be allowed to re-establish its market through the vaping industry. The Government often speak of delivering the smoke-free generation, yet this phrase does not appear in the Bill.
My amendment has been through a bit of a journey. My original intention had been to amend a general purpose clause in the Bill, but, as I said, there is not one in the Bill. I then planned to add a general purpose clause but, on advice from the Public Bill Office, I instead decided to table this enabling power allowing further controls on nicotine products, should that ever prove necessary.
While cigarette smoking has continued to decline, vaping has increased, particularly among young people. Some 20% of 11 to 17 year-olds have tried vaping; 5% of 11 to 15 year-olds vape regularly, rising to 12% for 16 to 17 year-olds. If you ask any parent or teacher, this trend is unmistakable.
Vaping should be a tool for smoking cessation, not for a new generation of addicts to provide revenues for big tobacco. The provision is modest and enabling. It compels no action but does give Ministers the power, through the affirmative procedure and after consultation with the devolved Administrations, to respond swiftly when new evidence of novel nicotine products emerges. Flexibility is crucial, because legislation often lags behind the innovative curve of the tobacco industry. Without it, as soon as this legislation is passed, we may find new products emerging.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I rise to welcome government Amendments 14 and 15, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister. I will not go through them in detail, as I am sure she will, but I note that this is a lovely practical example, and all credit to the Government that their campaigning has worked. We heard in Committee from both Action on Smoking and Health and the Mental Health and Smoking Partnership about the need for an exemption in in-patient mental health settings for vaping vending machines. The Government have clearly listened, and this is an example of how this all should work, so let us applaud and highlight that.
I support Amendment 16, which the noble Earl, Lord Russell, has just introduced. The ban on disposable vapes is clearly being widely, almost universally, got around. The noble Earl spoke about producer responsibility. Well, we have a profoundly irresponsible industry that is behaving in ways that have serious health and environmental impacts. I spent most of this afternoon hosting an event for the National Association of Local Councils. As soon as I said I was leaving to do the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, the reaction was, “Waste!” That is understandable. Let us look at some figures from Biffa on three recycling facilities, in Suffolk, Teesside and London. Before the ban on single-use vapes came in, they saw an average of 200,000 vapes mixed in with general waste; after the ban came in, that went up by about 3%. There was perhaps a rush of material being sold in that immediate period, but from everything we are hearing, the waste problem is still enormous, and the risk of these lithium batteries exploding and catching fire in waste lorries and recycling centres is absolutely enormous.
We need more action on public health, too. I spoke to a young person today who said, “Well, I’m a bit confused about how vaping relates to health and cigarettes”. Young people are not getting a clear message, and they are being sold these things everywhere. This amendment is saying we need to keep a watch on this and be ready to catch whatever the industry does next, because we know big tobacco is profoundly irresponsible. As the noble Earl said, this is perhaps not the exact way to do it, but we need to make sure we hear from the Government that they are prepared to take action against big tobacco at any time.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I, too, warmly welcome government Amendments 14 and 15, which create an exemption for vape vending machines in mental health hospitals. This was really good to see: it is a humane step and will be very beneficial to patients. It proves that the Government can listen and amend, and I hope there might be more listening and amending, and exemptions, even at this late Report stage. It makes our debates feel as though they can get somewhere. This was an important concession for the Government to make, so I am really pleased to see that.
I have grave concerns about Amendment 7 in the names of the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. There is a real danger here that we end up seeing this Bill as a vehicle for a relentless attack on anything to do with nicotine. Unless I am much mistaken, the Bill does not intend—even though this is its effect—to treat all nicotine products in an undifferentiated way. It is aware of Cancer Research’s statement that vaping is “far less harmful” than tobacco and is the most popular tool to help people quit smoking.
But, following on from the remarks of the noble Earl, Lord Russell, I do not want to say simply that vaping can be considered positive only if it is used as a smoking cessation tool, because people will then undoubtedly—and they do undoubtedly—vape as a recreational habit. Is the Government’s aim, or this amendment’s aim, to tackle dependence on any substance whatever? Nicotine is the one that is named, but will caffeine be next? Where do we draw the line? As far as I am concerned, that should not be what this Bill tries to do.
I worry that this will lead to mission creep in the Bill, which will create a kind of pre-crime. I listened to the noble Baroness and I do not think that we should have a moral panic about vaping: that is the main thing. It is not appropriate for this Bill to start doing a pre-crime anticipation of all the things that might or might not go wrong in relation to vaping. That would be a disastrous outcome of this Bill. So I urge the noble Baroness to avoid the siren voices of those urging her to take it even further down the line of prohibition. I urge her to hold firm to the notion that, although there will be some suggested regulation of vaping, we should not and must not make vaping indistinguishable from tobacco in the public’s eye by treating them as equally problematic through the course of the Bill.
Baroness Northover (LD)
I very much support my noble friend Lord Russell’s amendments, which seek to address the abuse of vapes and other nicotine products. When you go into any local shop or see adverts, you must mentally think that those promoting these should hang their heads in shame. I mentioned in Committee the example from my own extended family, where vaping has been the route for teenage relatives to become addicted to nicotine and, from there, to smoking. So I fully support everything that we are doing to reduce nicotine dependency, and I support my noble friend’s amendments here.
Despite that, we welcome the Government’s amendments that create an exemption for mental health settings, allowing the continued use of vape vending machines. Written evidence submitted to the Bill Committee by, for example, the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust and others made it clear that vape vending machines located in mental health wards are currently a crucial part of delivering effective smoking cessation services. Several trusts using these machines have reported that they provide a safe and straightforward way of ensuring that patients can access vapes when they need them. It is therefore welcome that the Government have listened to this evidence and made this concession.
In England, vapes are now the most commonly used smoking cessation aid, and it is awful that they have been exploited for other purposes. Nevertheless, vaping is recommended by NICE as the first-line smoking cessation tool and is more effective than traditional nicotine replacement therapies. Smoking prevalence in in-patient mental health settings remains extremely high, with estimates of about 50% overall and some studies reporting rates as high as 80% in individual hospitals, so I see why the Government have decided to take this particular measure forward.
Although it is technically possible for vending machines to be stocked with other forms of nicotine replacement therapy, this would not reflect patient preference, and we need to be guided by what works to support smokers to quit. As my noble friend Lord Russell said, that is what vapes should be about. The risks associated with proxy purchasing would seem to be low, particularly in closed wards, but I would be interested to hear from the Minister further on this point and to have clarification on how she envisages these machines operating within the new licensing scheme.
Therefore, although we accept the Government’s amendments in relation to mental health settings, we think that they need to do more to tackle the awful spread of nicotine addiction that we now see among young people. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Earl Howe (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 13A and 14A only as a means of thanking the Minister very much for her Amendments 14 and 15 in this group. As a number of us argued in Committee, including in particular my noble friend Lord Moylan, there is a strong case for saying that, in a secure mental health setting where staff often find themselves dealing with patients in a high state of agitation, a vending machine dispensing vapes or nicotine products not only would do no harm but could be of considerable benefit to the well-being of the individuals being treated, and potentially to staff as well, as a knock-on effect. I am very glad that the Minister felt able to reconsider this issue in the way that she has.
I confess I am troubled by Amendment 7 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Russell, because, although its stated purpose is to future-proof the Bill, the signal that it sends is perhaps regrettable in the context of current public attitudes towards vaping as a means of quitting cigarettes. A substantial percentage both of the general public and of smokers mistakenly believe that vapes present a greater risk to health than smoking tobacco, extraordinary as that is. The NHS is unequivocal that vapes provide a far safer route to managing nicotine addiction than continuing to smoke. The prospect that they could at a later stage simply be swept into the same prohibition regime risks creating uncertainty, discouraging switching and undermining public health gains. We need to remember that the Bill already contains extensive regulation-making powers in respect of vaping and nicotine products—on advertising, flavours, packaging, display and sale—and those powers are wide-ranging and substantial. So adding a further power of this breadth is, I suggest, unnecessary overreach.
I am afraid that I think Amendment 16 is unnecessary as well. The Bill already contains extensive powers to regulate vaping products, from product standards and enforcement to environmental controls. The Government are already consulting widely and gathering evidence in these areas, and I am afraid I do not think there is any need for the creation of yet another statutory taskforce.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. The Chief Medical Officer’s advice on vapes is quite clear: although vaping is less harmful than smoking and can be an effective quit aid for adult smokers, non-smokers and children should never vape. In the design of policy proposals, it is imperative, we feel, to get the balance right—I say this to noble Lords who raised this point—and we sought to get the balance right between protecting future generations from the risk of vaping and ensuring that vapes remain accessible for adult smokers. I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, in particular will welcome that.
Amendment 7 from the noble Earl, Lord Russell, would add a new clause to the Bill to provide a regulation-making power that could be used to add vaping and nicotine products to the smoke-free generation provisions in England and Wales. I understand the aims of the noble Earl in bringing this forward, but I have to say—again, I hope this will be helpful to noble Lords who expressed concerns—that there is a fundamental difference in safety between vapes and tobacco products.
Tobacco is uniquely harmful. Up to two-thirds of deaths in current smokers can be attributed to smoking —so vaping, while it is not harm free, is significantly less harmful than smoking. Given the current research on health harms, the evidence base does not support extending smoke-free generation provisions to vapes or to nicotine products.
Also, to respond to the amendment, the Government should assume new powers only where there is clear justification for future regulatory change. Certainly, introducing a vape-free generation power, as suggested, would be a major step not currently supported by evidence. An age of sale restriction of 18 for vaping and nicotine products is therefore considered proportionate to protect children and young people, particularly as they may be more susceptible to the risks from nicotine use, including addiction.
On Amendment 16 from the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and to the points raised alongside this by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, I hope that I can provide a reassurance that the Government are already delivering a comprehensive programme to tackle youth vaping, strengthen enforcement and reduce environmental impacts, and have the relevant expertise required on these issues. It is our contention that it is not necessary to put this on a statutory footing.
The noble Earl, Lord Russell, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, asked how we would deal with the environmental impact of vapes. That is an extremely important area. What I can say is, as part of our upcoming circular economy growth plan, to which the noble Earl referred, the task force will consider circular design. That means including cross-government approaches such as would fit this Bill; it will consider regulation of product features and support increased recyclability—and I think that is the right place for it to be dealt with. We have to remember that last June we banned the sale and supply of single-use vapes, and from 1 October this year we will introduce a vaping products duty, which we know is effective at dissuading price-sensitive young people. Furthermore, we have a range of measures in this Bill that will tackle the drivers of youth vaping and allow us to take action on advertising, packaging, flavours and display. To support the development of future regulations, importantly, we have recently conducted a call for evidence to gather views on issues such as flavours, nicotine limits and tank sizes. There are differing opinions on all of these, so I think the call for evidence is the right approach.
The Bill also strengthens enforcement with powers that will enable us to introduce a licensing scheme and product registration scheme. Through our £10 million enforcement programme with National Trading Standards, which I referred to in the previous group, we will fund the vaping expert panel to provide valuable guidance for trading standards professionals on the enforcement of regulations.
We are also commissioning independent research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research. This includes a comprehensive analysis of all youth vaping studies and a five-year long living evidence review that will collate the latest research of vaping. Additionally, last year, we announced a landmark 10-year study that will include in its investigations the long-term health impacts of vaping on young people’s health. I consider that all these will greatly build on to the knowledge base and evidence base that we have.
Amendments 13A and 14A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, seek to exempt sales from vape vending machines in mental health hospitals for patients and staff aged 18 and over. I am very grateful to the noble Lord for raising this issue. As I am sure the noble Lord realises, we believe that the Government’s amendment covers what he is intending to achieve—and I am glad that he is indicating his agreement on that point.
I listened carefully to the concerns raised by noble Lords in Committee on patients in mental health facilities—something particularly close to my heart, as I am the Minister for Mental Health. These patients’ liberties may be restricted in terms of their being able to access vaping products to meet the public health need of helping them to quit smoking or manage nicotine addiction. Adults with a long-term mental health condition have much higher smoking prevalence rates than the general population, and this exemption takes into consideration the concerns that were raised by Peers, for which I am grateful, related to helping those people with a long-term mental health condition to quit where needed and it is appropriate.
In my reflection on these concerns, I am pleased to say that is why I have brought forward government Amendments 14 and 15, and I am very pleased to have the welcome of both Front Benches, as well as the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Fox. These government amendments provide an exemption from the ban on vape vending machines for adult mental health in-patient facilities in England and Wales. To be clear, the wording of the exemption has been very deliberately chosen. It is tightly defined to include only adult mental health in-patient settings and only in areas intended wholly or mainly for in-patients. By its nature, that means that staff will also be able to access these machines, but the exemption would not extend to areas that are not mainly for in-patient use, such as a visitors waiting room or a staff room. I hope that gives some indication to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, on how this might work.
We are retaining the wider ban on vending machines to prevent young people from accessing age-restricted products, and to protect the next generation from being hooked on nicotine. I hope that this provides the necessary reassurance to the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and that he will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, I am thankful for all those who have spoken in this debate and for the Minister’s detailed response.
On government Amendments 14 and 15, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, for bringing the issue forward, and I am grateful to the Minister for listening and bringing forward the Government’s own amendments. As the Minister has commented, they have been welcomed across the House; they are compassionate and sensible measures, so they are very welcome indeed.
On my Amendment 7, I tried to explain the journey that I had been on in terms of a general purpose clause. It might be that the wording of my amendment was still a little bit clunky. I want to be absolutely clear: it is not a relentless attack on nicotine, and I am not anti-vaping. The question is where we draw the line on these issues, which is probably for another Bill in future. I absolutely recognise the role of vaping in smoking cessation, but what I do not want is a new product line for big tobacco to create new nicotine addicts and to create future revenue. Where we sit between those two points is perhaps a matter for another Bill, but those issues will at some point need to be addressed. That should not be done in a way that is overly restrictive, but it should also not be done in a way that is overly free in allowing big tobacco to exploit young people and get them addicted to nicotine when that does not need to happen.
Turning to my Amendment 16, I listened to what the Minister said and I welcome the fact that the Circular Economy Taskforce is looking at these issues. We will look at those recommendations closely when they come forward. The Government say they have banned single-use disposable vapes. I must admit that, to my mind, to all intents and purposes, in the real world that is simply not the case. They are still single-use products. All that being said, I welcome the Minister’s response and I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Northover
“Transparency of tobacco sales data(1) The Secretary of State must by regulations make provision requiring every manufacturer and importer of tobacco products to publish, on a quarterly basis, data relating to the sale of tobacco products in England and Wales.(2) Regulations under subsection (1) may in particular include provision requiring publication of—(a) the volume of sales of tobacco products, broken down by product type, brand and geographical region, and (b) such other information as the Secretary of State considers appropriate for the purposes of assessing tobacco consumption and its effects on public health.(3) Data published under regulations under this section must be made publicly available in a format accessible to public health authorities, local authorities, and other relevant bodies.(4) Regulations under this section are subject to the negative resolution procedure.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to make regulations obliging tobacco companies to publish sales data, to improve transparency and support public health policy.
Baroness Northover (LD)
My Lords, Amendment 10, in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Walmsley, would require the Secretary of State to make regulations requiring tobacco manufacturers and importers to provide quarterly sales data to assist public health activities. These regulations may include information about, for example, volume of sales, geographical area and product type.
Tobacco is not like any other industry, as we have been discussing. The products sold by the industry kill around two-thirds of long-term users and the harms are widespread and well-documented. Yet the industry treats its data as a commercial secret, leaving public health authorities in the dark. The information already exists. The tobacco industry holds it. This amendment would ensure that the data are harnessed for the public good.
I note that, although Amendment 10 outlines areas where regulations could be brought, it does say “may”—there is flexibility there for the Government. All that is required is that they make progress in this area. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, noted in Committee that HMRC and the Department of Health currently have access to some data. However, we do not feel that that is sufficient. We have heard from those working in public health that there are gaps which, if filled, would benefit activities on the ground.
Smoking is responsible for deep health inequalities, with modelling from Cancer Research UK, for example, showing a 25-year gap between the most and least affluent communities in this country in achieving smoke-free status. That is a shocking illustration of health inequality, reflected in nearly twice as many smoking-related cancers in the poorest areas compared with the wealthiest. Access to sales data would help local authorities, trading standards and public health agencies target resources effectively, monitor patterns of use and respond quickly to emerging threats.
Other countries do this. Canada’s Tobacco Reporting Regulations require manufacturers to report on over 20 ingredients and 40 emissions, along with sales and promotion data, to assist Health Canada in policy decisions. Australia requires companies to report on sales volumes, product pricing, advertising, promotion, and sponsorship activities and expenditure, alongside information regarding ingredients.
Mandating transparency—we were discussing transparency earlier—is the right step. It holds the tobacco industry more accountable and ensures that public health can act on the evidence, rather than wait for other data sources. For these reasons, I urge the Government to support this amendment and commit to improve transparency for an industry that has avoided accountability for decades. I beg to move.
Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)
My Lords, I covered Amendment 17A, in my name, in Committee, so I will be brief.
Currently, the vast majority of cigarette butts are made of cellulose acetate, and each cigarette butt contains around two straws-worth of plastic. Globally, around 6 trillion cigarettes are smoked each year, with 4.5 trillion butts being littered. In the UK, around 3.9 million cigarette butts are littered daily. That is equivalent to 6,000 cigarette butts being dropped in every parliamentary constituency every day. Each plastic butt can take up to 10 years to break down into tiny fragments or microplastics, and they have polluted the entire planet, from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans. Worryingly, according to recent scientific research, the level of microplastics being found in human brain tissue samples has increased by 50% since 2016 and is increasing in other organs. Local authorities in the UK spend around £40 million a year fighting a losing battle—money that many would argue could be better spent on vital front-line services. The industry could have made a change, but so far has not gone far enough.
Banning plastic cigarette filters is supported by the public, including smokers. In polling commissioned earlier this year by the Parliament News website from Whitestone Insight, a member of the British Polling Council, 2,000 people were asked for their views on this issue. When asked:
“Would you agree or disagree with these statements? Cigarette manufacturers should be required by law to switch from using plastics in cigarette butts to a fully biodegradable alternative”,
almost nine in 10, or 86%, agreed, while just one in 20, or 6%, disagreed. Interestingly, even among current smokers, the vast majority—77%—supported the change. Support was high across every age group, social group and region. In contrast, asked if cigarette manufacturers should be able to continue to use plastic filters, just 13% agreed. The survey also found that eight in 10 people support the government levy and additional taxes on cigarette brands that refuse to switch from traditional plastic butts, including 51% of smokers. Some 84% of UK adults would support cigarette manufacturers being fined for not switching to biodegradable butts, with the revenues going towards paying for cleaning up the environment.
I do not think that this is a party-political issue. It was discussed by MPs, who voted on an amendment that was supported cross-party, including by Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems, Reform, independents and unionists. Unfortunately, the Government did not accept the change that was being put forward. If we are going to be serious about how we consider the environment, this could be an important change.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, with whom I nearly always agree, but not on this occasion. The noble Baroness and your Lordships’ House will know that concern about plastics, microplastics, nanoplastics and public health, including the way in which they are penetrating every corner of this planet and every piece of our body, is something I am gravely concerned about. As I will come to later, my amendment calls for banning filters altogether.
Very often in your Lordships’ House, I find myself acknowledging that something that is being proposed is not exactly what I want but would be an improvement. I am afraid that I am not convinced that the ban on plastic filters that the noble Baroness proposes would be an improvement. We had an extensive debate in Committee, which I am not going to reprise, but, basically, we have a problem, in that the term “biodegradable”, which is what is being proposed, is exceedingly unclear and is not defined. There is very clear evidence that these so-called biodegradable filters can take nearly as long to degrade as the plastic ones, leach harmful chemicals and remain in the environment for a long time. Studies have also shown that people who believe that cigarette butts are biodegradable are more likely to litter them. Although this might look like a small step in the right direction, I do not believe there is the evidence to actually take us in that direction.
Amendment 77, in my name, as was extensively canvassed in Committee, proposes to end the environmental and health harms of so-called cigarette filters, compelling the Government to act now and ban all cigarette filters, which have no health benefits, reasonable evidence of health harms and, of course, huge environmental harms, whether they are plastic filters or the so-called biodegradable ones.
I thank the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and the Liberal Democrats for Amendment 76, which explores a consultation on this subject. I am absolutely delighted, for the second group in a row, to say to the Minister that the series of amendments that she has tabled, which mean that the Government are preparing the way for banning filters in the future, is a significant step forward.
However, I want to keep my amendment on the paper to make the case for why this action must be taken now. The problem of so-called guilt-free littering makes the littering problem even worse. Companies that manufacture so-called biodegradable filters continue to make profits only if people continue to consume tobacco; the biodegradable filters proposal is essentially coming from the tobacco industry.
This country has never been afraid of leading the world when it comes to tobacco control. We could be—we hear the phrase world-leading so often in your Lordships’ House—the first country in the world to ban so-called cigarette filters. We could use this as an opportunity to reverse the damage done by decades of industry marketing, raise awareness of the harms of smoking and incentivise smokers to quit.
The World Health Organization has said that it believes a ban on filters would have a significant impact on discouraging consumption. A 2023 randomised controlled trial found that those smoking filterless cigarettes consumed less, and filtered cigarettes were perceived to be better tasting, more satisfying, more enjoyable, less aversive, less harsh, less potent and less negatively reinforcing than unfiltered cigarettes.
I recognise that in Committee the Minister said that she would like more evidence and modelling on this behavioural point. There are now academics working on that very point. I am sure they will be reaching out, and I will make sure that the noble Baroness hears about that as well.
While I agree with the Minister that the long-term solution here is to eliminate tobacco use—that is obviously the ambition that pretty much everyone can sign up to—with 5.3 million smokers still in the UK, 75% of whom admit to littering their butts, there is a strong case for action. I am glad to see that the Government’s position has again shifted on this since Committee. I thank Action on Smoking and Health and my colleagues in the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health, as well as the academics who have been highlighting this issue and moving this forward.
Finally, and briefly, I express Green support for Amendments 10, 204 and 133, and particularly for the suggestion in Amendment 133, which I spoke on extensively in Committee, for warnings on individual cigarettes and cigarette papers. Again, this is a place where we would not quite be first in the world, but we would certainly be in the leading pack of doing something that has been shown to have positive impacts in reducing smoking, which is what we are all after.
Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 204 in my name and those of the noble Lords, Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Crisp, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. I thank them for their support for this important amendment. This amendment proposes a “polluter pays” levy on tobacco manufacturers, ensuring that those who profit from one of the most harmful products in human history contribute to repairing some of the immense damage they have caused. The principle is simple and widely accepted: when an industry causes profound harm and reaps extraordinary profits, it should help to meet the costs of addressing that harm.
Given the unambiguity of that harm, it is only right that those who are responsible contribute to putting it right. The amendment would require the Secretary of State, within two years of Royal Assent, to establish a levy on companies deriving income from the manufacture of tobacco products. Its receipts would form a dedicated fund within the Department of Health and Social Care used solely for smoking cessation, tobacco control and healthcare for those suffering from smoke-related illnesses. Regulations would be made under the affirmative procedure to ensure proper parliamentary oversight.
This is not a new charge on consumers. It draws on the vast profits of an industry that for decades has taken far more from the public purse and the public’s health than it has ever contributed. Four companies control over 95% of UK tobacco sales, enjoying monopoly-like power and profit margins averaging 50%, some five times the UK manufacturing norm. Together they make almost £900 million a year in UK profits, and they often pay little corporation tax here in the UK.
Compare that with the cost. Smoking drains £43.7 billion a year from society in England, including a cost of £1.8 billion to the NHS and far more in lost productivity, social care and human suffering. Tobacco duty and VAT raise barely £6.8 billion—only a fraction of the real cost of these harms. The “polluter pays” principle already underpins environmental law and is embedded in gambling reforms, where a statutory levy funds prevention and treatment. It is only logical to apply the same reasoning to tobacco, a product that kills nearly 74,000 people every year in England.
Lord Rennard (Non-Afl)
My Lords, my Amendments 129 and 133 would place a duty on the Government to consult on whether health warnings should appear not just on cigarette packets or the inserts within them but on every single cigarette, by printing the warnings on the paper enclosing the dangerous tobacco. In Grand Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, whose great work on this Bill is much to be admired, said that this was something the Government could look at in future but not something they were looking at now, and that secondary legislation could provide for this in future. I ask: why not consider it now, and why not meet my request for a consultation to begin?
This idea is not new or untested. It was first endorsed by the All-Party Group on Smoking and Health in 2021, and then in the Khan review commissioned by the previous Government in 2022. Canada has already implemented this approach on cigarette papers, with demonstrable impact. Australia followed suit last April, albeit with warnings only on the filters. The evidence gathered for Health Canada examined how smokers and non-smokers responded to cigarettes carrying health warnings directly on them. The findings were striking: cigarettes displaying warnings were consistently regarded as less attractive, while those without warnings were more likely to be seen as less dangerous. In other words, the absence of a warning sends its own message—and it is the wrong one.
I strongly welcome the Government’s decision to introduce pack inserts that direct smokers towards quitting support. I argued strongly for this when we debated the Health and Care Bill. It is a positive and sensible step, but it does not address the problem that the first cigarette smoked is often offered from someone else’s packet. Warnings on individual cigarettes would get to these people in ways that pack-based measures simply do not.
This effect of warnings on individual cigarette papers has been shown to be especially pronounced among younger people. They are more likely to be offered a single cigarette in social settings, as opposed to purchasing a whole packet that already has warnings on it or may have an insert in future. Printing warnings directly on the cigarette would ensure that the health warning is present at the point of use, not just at the point of purchase. Evidence from focus groups in Scotland found that warnings on individual cigarettes were perceived by young people as embarrassing, with the consensus being that it would be very off-putting for young people.
It is sometimes disingenuously claimed that there is no need for health warnings about tobacco as the dangers of smoking are already universally understood. Action on Smoking and Health found in an analysis of its survey data that younger smokers, the very people who would benefit most from this measure, were less likely to be aware of the full risks of smoking. But awareness alone does not change behaviour. The average smoker makes 30 attempts to give up before succeeding. My amendment would help them give up every time they handle a cigarette.
More importantly, it would help prevent people smoking their very first cigarette. The evidence shows that, the greater the range of interventions we deploy, the greater our chances of preventing uptake and encouraging cessation. Different messages resonate with different people, and tobacco remains a uniquely lethal consumer product. We should be prepared to use every effective tool available to reduce the harm it causes to smokers, their families and everybody else.
Finally, I know the Minister has raised concerns about how visible the messages might be and that, in some countries where this has been implemented, they appear only on the filter. The UK could do things differently if we choose, as in Canada. It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. If I could display to this Chamber a picture of the effective health warnings on Canadian cigarette papers, it would be easy to see how effective they are. If the Minister cannot accept this amendment today, I hope she will say not just that this measure might be considered in future but that it will be considered now, beginning with the consultation requested.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, I have added my name to two amendments in this group. Before coming to those, I will say a word about Amendment 77 from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, which I was initially attracted to. Like many other noble Lords, I went to a presentation by ASH, where we listened to health experts explain that filters do not prevent anything noxious reaching the lungs. On the contrary, they have ingredients in them that might be damaging. Far worse, because of the filter, smokers inhale more than they would have done had there not been one, as they think it is safe. It may be that the 25 government amendments achieve in a rather roundabout way what the noble Baroness seeks to do in Amendment 77. We will listen with interest to the Minister when she speaks to her amendments.
Amendment 133 was ably spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard. As I have said before, when I was a Health Minister in 1979, I tried to get the tobacco industry to adopt putting a warning on cigarettes and it declined on the grounds that ink was carcinogenic. This was not an argument I found very persuasive. Here we are, nearly 50 years later, still discussing something that at the time was world-beating, although I understand that I have now been overtaken by Canada.
Amendment 204, spoken to by the noble Earl, Lord Russell, sits rather uneasily in this group, which is otherwise about filters, in that it is about the tobacco levy. I want to make a number of points. First, previously the Government ruled this out on the grounds that they consulted on a levy model in 2014. Indeed they did, but this is a very different model from that which they consulted on. Crucially, in the one they consulted on, the levy would have been passed on to the consumer, with all the impact on RPI or CPI. This model has been constructed to avoid that; it would control the price that tobacco can be sold for, leading to very different outcomes from the model consulted on by the Treasury, and would not allow tobacco companies to pass the costs on to consumers as they do at the moment. It would raise revenue. One estimate has been £5 billion. Even if it is a fraction of that, it is money well worth having.
The scheme would not be complex to administer. As the noble Earl said, there are only four manufacturers. The department already operates the PPRS, controlling medicine prices, with far more manufacturers than are involved in tobacco. Crucially, the Khan review, already referred to, which was initiated by Sajid Javid when he was Health Secretary, pointed out that the Government were not going to hit their then target of a smoke-free England by 2030. It recommended the levy—this was an independent review commissioned by the last Conservative Government—and reinvesting the money in media campaigns targeted at those elements of the population who were still smoking.
Finally, I know that the Minister will not mind me reminding her of what she said when a similar amendment was debated in 2022 and passed in your Lordships’ House by 213 to 154. She knows what I am going to say; she supported and voted for that amendment, saying that it would
“provide a well-funded and much-needed boost, and a consultation would allow this proposal to be tested, refined and shaped”.—[Official Report, 16/3/22; col. 297.]
Well, that is what we are asking for today. She did not persuade me in Committee when she gave the reasons why she had changed her mind. Perhaps she can have another go this evening and explain why she will now urge the House to reject what she thought was a good idea four years ago.
Lord Kamall (Con)
My Lords, since this is the first time I have spoken on Report, I declare my interest as a professor of politics and international relations at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, where I teach an MBA module on healthcare policy and strategy. I also work with the Vinson Centre for the Public Understanding of Economics and Entrepreneurship at the University of Buckingham, and we sometimes run seminars on evidence behind public health policy.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, I am most grateful for the contributions to this debate. I will start by addressing the government amendments tabled in my name. The issue of filters, as we have heard in this debate, has been raised throughout the Bill’s passage, both in the other place and in Committee in your Lordships’ House. As the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, said, action on filters has been proposed by parties from across the political spectrum.
However, there has not been a consensus on a single approach, and it is that that we have sought to deal with. That is why we are taking a suite of powers to enable secondary legislation to regulate filters, should evidence suggest that it is necessary. Although these powers could enable the banning of filters in the future, they also enable us to regulate filters in other ways, such as regulating their packaging, advertising, display in stores and free distribution.
As the noble Lord, Lord Young, referred to, there is evidence that people incorrectly believe that some cigarette filters make cigarettes less harmful. There is absolutely a risk that this could influence smoking behaviours. The fact of the matter is that cigarette filters provide no protection from the health risks of smoking.
The noble Earl, Lord Russell, asked about the Government’s intention to take action. On that point, and more broadly, the evidence base about the direct health impact is still in formation. We will explore commissioning further research to understand the harms and, based on that, consider further consultation. For these reasons, we are not able to accept Amendment 76 from the noble Earl.
Since we are taking these powers on filters in the Bill, Amendment 77, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and Amendment 17A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, are therefore not required—a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Kamall. Should we choose to ban filters, we would indeed be the first country in the world to do so. It would be a significant step, and noble Lords will understand that, before making any such decision, we need to interrogate the issue fully and ensure that all potential consequences are considered. However, we will now have the powers to act through these government amendments if and when the evidence emerges.
Specifically on Amendment 17A, evidence currently suggests that filters labelled as biodegradable can still leach harmful chemicals into the environment, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said. There is also evidence to suggest that people who believe that cigarette butts are biodegradable are more likely to litter them, as noble Lords have said.
I turn to Amendment 10, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Northover. I am sympathetic towards attempts to increase transparency of the tobacco industry. I therefore understand why she brought this forward. However, Clause 95 already provides powers to make regulations that could require producers or importers to provide specified information. This could include sales data, as well as market research, from producers of any relevant products within the scope of Part 5, not just tobacco products. This clause also enables us to make provision about when and how the information must be provided, and the publication of any such information. I reassure the noble Baroness that we will consult on these requirements as we develop the necessary regulations.
I am sympathetic to the aims of Amendment 204, tabled in the names of the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and the noble Lords, Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Crisp. However, as I said in Committee, again in answer to the point the noble Earl raised, we already have a “polluter pays” tax on tobacco in the form of tobacco duties. The UK has some of the highest tobacco taxes in the world. Duty rates on all tobacco products were increased by 2% above inflation at the Autumn Budget 2025. This duty raises about £8 billion a year.
I appreciate that the amendment proposes combining a levy with regulating prices, but the reality is that, because of the ongoing structural decline in the UK tobacco market, we are sceptical that there is the suggested level of profit available in the system. Regulating pricing would also be a complicated and resource-intensive policy to design and implement, and which we believe is unlikely to be successful in meeting its objectives, such as raising additional revenue. It would be challenging to design restrictions that industry could not circumvent, for example, by shifting focus to products not included in the cap or avoiding tax through international transfer pricing. Therefore, as I stated previously, our preference is to continue with tobacco duties—an understood approach which incentivises those who currently smoke to quit and generates revenue that can be put back into a full range of public services.
Finally, Amendments 129 and 133 were tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard. I am grateful for the noble Lord’s support for strong tobacco control. However, with respect to these amendments, we already have the ability to regulate the information provided on products which could enable us to mandate health warnings in the future. We already have some of the most stringent regulations in the world on cigarette packaging, emphasising health harms. They include the requirement for plain packaging and graphic picture warnings on the outside of cigarette packets. We have announced that we are introducing pack inserts to cigarettes and hand-rolling tobacco. Therefore, we do not plan to introduce dissuasive cigarettes. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, did acknowledge in his contribution, the Government will continue to monitor the evidence.
I hope that this provides reassurance to noble Lords that the Government are committed to evidence-based policy to tackle the harms from tobacco use and that the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Northover (LD)
My Lords, this is a vital Bill, even if we are seeking to improve it further. We have clearly made progress on filters and there are a number of other areas where progress can be made under the Bill. I note the Minister’s encouraging words in relation to my amendment on data and transparency. In the light of that, I beg leave to withdraw.