Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 30th October 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, as this is the first time I have spoken in Committee on this Bill, I want to reflect for a moment on the extraordinary lengths to which tobacco companies will go to sell their products, including getting children addicted to nicotine. When I look at this Bill and the amendments to it, I see the extraordinary lengths to which government must then go in order to combat that.

Turning to the amendments in this group, we have heard three excellent speeches. I do not want to repeat any of the points made but wish to pick up one made by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. It concerns the importance of the government side of this combat, if you like, between the tobacco companies and government. Put simply, the Government should have the data that is available so that they can hone their arguments in the continuing wrestle that we are seeing around this set of topics.

I very much support that amendment. I also support the amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, on the “polluter pays” principle. Again, this seems practical to me; we heard the Minister refer to it as such at an earlier period, I believe. However, there are three terribly simple arguments, although I do not want to add to the detail. First, there is the principle that the polluter should pay for the damage. That is a very simple statement; it has, as the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, said, been used in other circumstances. There is very considerable damage, and it is very easily measured.

The second argument is to reduce the incentives for tobacco companies. As I have commented before, if only we could get the tobacco companies to use all their guile and manoeuvring to improve health rather than damage it. Perhaps there are things that government can learn from the way in which tobacco companies seek to influence the public.

The third argument is, of course, to support public health. Another good reason for this is to provide that money to support public health and at the same time the public purse. Finally, I note that tobacco companies probably come under the category of those with broad shoulders, so I ask the Minister whether we might expect to hear a line or two about this in the forthcoming Budget.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I stand with some trepidation on this one, but I will give it a go. I have some reservations about this series of amendments. On Amendment 12, I have a lot of sympathy with having more transparency as a general principle, but I ask the noble Baronesses, Lady Northover and Lady Walmsley, how we would deal with having a dangerous precedent on the commercial confidentiality and sensitivities, for any company, and what can and cannot be revealed. Asking for information is one thing; mandating it is a whole different ball game. Many companies hold data close to themselves, as they are allowed to, because they are private entities. It is a legal thing to do and there are reasons, beyond malevolent ones, why that might occur.

I am particularly concerned about Amendments 192 and 194. As the noble Earl, Lord Russell, noted, tobacco companies already pay, or are responsible for, substantial duties that are collected. I am not sure that I entirely agree with the “polluter pays” principle—or, at least, it is quite complicated. It sounds virtuous, and in some instances I might well support it, but when I was reading these amendments I kept thinking, perhaps because of my left-wing, Marxist background, “Oh my God, this is a new form of legal wealth distribution by force”. It felt to me as though we were saying: “Forget economic growth. We’re just going take more from legal companies, but it’s all right because they are evil companies”.

In the words that the noble Earl, Lord Russell, used about his more specific amendments on what the money should be used for, if I may put it that way, I recognised an argument that I came across from Cancer Research. It has been very helpful in its briefings on the Bill and, in many instances, I agree with what it is putting forward. But in this instance, it said:

“At a time when funding for public health initiatives is limited, this proposal raises money without directly costing the taxpayer. Given the current economic challenges, this presents an opportunity for the Government to act decisively, should it choose to seize it”.


I kept thinking of this as a way of avoiding crises in public health, or in the NHS, by simply not resolving what should be an adequate health service for everyone while turning to private companies instead and trying to compensate for that. That is a dangerous precedent. Private companies should not let the state off the hook for what it should be doing, because those public health services should be provided by the state, regardless.

The fact that there is an economic crisis at the moment cannot just be meted out to companies that we do not like. I realise that tobacco companies have for some time been treated as especially evil, malevolent and harmful, but if you enter other debates and read the briefings of lobbying groups on other issues, you will hear similar moralistic arguments used about sugary foods, junk food, alcohol, gambling and even fossil fuels. I read a fascinating paper the other day which basically said that fossil fuels were killing us all and should be closed down, and so on. That is the kind of language being used.

I therefore worry about setting a precedent for a moralised hierarchy of legislators deciding which are the evil companies, and who gets to decide that, with a punishment then meted out. I say this because, briefly, I was a bit disturbed the other day at some mention of a report by KPMG. The data in it was dismissed as being from a report produced for Philip Morris, the tobacco company, as if that somehow closed down any possibility of a discussion—that having said that, the report could be laughed off. The idea that all you have to do is say the name of a tobacco company, and then close down valuable information, is quite dangerous.

It thought that was particularly unfair on KPMG. I am not necessarily a great fan of the big four accountancy firms, but they certainly have reputations. To write them off as being in bed with the evil Philip Morris, so that we take no notice of what they do, seemed a little unfair. If that were the case, have the Government let KPMG know that this is their view of it—especially since KPMG is a supplier to the Government, as I understand it, focusing on Civil Service training and economic matters? KPMG might have a case to answer on those things, but it should not be written off as a company because it has done some work for Philip Morris.

Neither is it appropriate for our discussions to always assume that everything a tobacco company says or does is evil because of the nature of the product. The product is harmful and contributes to cancer in many people—I know that—but if this Government believe that the tobacco companies are so uniquely evil that they are killing the population, they should have the courage of their conviction, make them illegal and ban them, not take their taxes and have it all ways.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. Normal service is probably about to be resumed. I am on a different page from her on this issue.

These amendments give me the opportunity to clarify my position on the Bill. I fear that my previous opposition to the age-escalator provision in the Bill, meaning that some adults will never be able to purchase tobacco legally, has been misrepresented by some as a general objection to any form of regulation or restriction on tobacco. I state clearly that that is not the case. That is why I support all amendments in this group—Amendments 12 and 148, tabled by my noble friend Lady Northover, Amendment 192, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Young, and Amendment 194 in the name of my noble friend Lord Russell.

I come back to something the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, said regarding the point made by my noble friend Lady Northover about data. If this was unique, some of those issues would need to be explored further, but this is not a first. For example, the water and energy companies have to give to the regulator investment details, asset details, investment plans and details of their costs and profits. This happens without commercial sensitivities going by the way. The amendments, particularly Amendments 192 and 194, generally represent a necessary and proportionate intervention to correct a profound fiscal and health imbalance, which is weighted too heavily in favour of the tobacco industry. The tobacco industry in the UK operates with a near monopoly, as many noble Lords have said, on selling an addictive product. The market structure allows them to generate excessive profits. They extract nearly £900 million per year in profit, while contributing little in terms of corporate tax to the Exchequer.

Simultaneously, the societal costs of smoking are vast, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, and my noble friend Lord Russell identified, with the NHS bearing the immediate cost of approximately £1.8 billion per year. The current system places the entire tax burden on the consumer and the taxpayer, while the manufacturer enjoys excessive returns. That is not only a moral wrong but an economic failure that government has a duty to correct.

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[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I support this amendment. We know that nicotine is highly addictive. In fact, it is one of the most addictive substances there is, even in small quantities. The noble Lord, Lord Kamall, made the point that people use it for cessation of tobacco or cigarette smoking. That is true, but the dosage, even of 20 milligrams, is too high. High doses of nicotine cause serious diseases, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. But apart from that, in older people it causes higher risk of cardiovascular disease, not just by increasing heart rate and blood pressure but by making platelets stickier and leading to higher levels of fibrinogen, which increases the risk of forming a clot. This is a good amendment and there is no reason, to my mind, why the Minister should resist it.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, have made some interesting cases probing the issue of the high nicotine content of pouches. However, it is worth noting that Cancer Research does not support these amendments. It says that there may well be a need for a deeper dive into the evidence, but it stresses something that has been missed in some of the debates we have had so far, certainly at Second Reading: it is tobacco that is the cancer-causing ingredient in cigarettes.

Nicotine patches do not contain tobacco. Nicotine is addictive, but the overall evidence does not support a direct causal link between nicotine and cancer: it is not carcinogenic. That is what the scientific evidence seems to show, and it comes from anti-tobacco lobbying groups and people whom I would not necessarily usually cite. It is noted that nicotine products and pouches are being used as recreational products, but they are also helpful for smoking cessation.

We have to consider what we are doing with the Bill. The NHS itself calls nicotine “relatively harmless”, and, in his 2022 review, Dr Javed Khan said that

“the government must facilitate access to the various already available safer alternative nicotine products such as nicotine pouches”.

We therefore have to be careful about demonising these things, because it is not straightforward.

There is a danger throughout the Bill—it will come up in other groups—of a constant slippage between tobacco and nicotine. Sometimes that occurs through a discussion around addiction. I would be interested to know what the Minister thinks about this—she talked about the problems of addiction on our first day in Committee—because the Bill is not necessarily tackling addiction; it is tackling harms. There is a danger that we get confused between that addiction, which, as I say, many people in the health professions do not see as a problem per se, and what we are targeting. I am worried that that slippage between nicotine and tobacco, between vapes and smoking cigarettes, leads to an unscientific mishmash of misinformation that, ironically, can damage public health.

In relation to young people using pouches until they vomit, young people use lots of things until they vomit. They can overuse a range of things, not helpfully, but it does not necessarily mean that the product itself is always the problem: sometimes, it can be youthful lack of restraint, which one might want to intervene in but not necessarily through the law.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I broadly support these amendments but also agree with my noble friend Lord Patel that there is probably no reason to have oral pouches at all. It is something that we could carefully consider deleting from our society. If you are trying to withdraw from tobacco, nicotine patches are just as effective as pouches and do not cause the problems that have been so readily described today. While the debate has been going on, I looked back, and it was 1950 when Sir Richard Doll proved the relationship between tobacco and lung cancer. It has therefore taken us 75 years to get to this point, with the Bill. There is sufficient evidence in relation to pouches for us not to decide that we need a 75-year prospective trial to show their damage.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I too support the amendment, and I have a question for those who have tabled it, which relates to proposed new subsection (2)(b), saying the product is

“not intended to be inhaled or chewed”.

I am afraid that as someone who has been looking at tobacco control measures for many years now, through legislation, I am slightly concerned that, as we get rid of one thing, the nicotine manufacturers will find another way of bringing in a substance that is, in effect, addictive, which is promoted to young people, and is a way to get them started on the inevitable chain of addiction that leads to promotion.

When we look at the evidence around nicotine, we see that, yes, it is highly addictive, but the other thing that happens with an addictive substance is that you become tolerant to the effect, to that boost. Therefore, the addict seeks higher and higher doses to get a greater and greater hit. In the long term, as my noble friend Lord Patel pointed out, it is not only blood pressure and so on; there is a problem with platelet stickiness. We do not know what this will do in the microvasculature in the brain in the long term, because these high-dose nicotine products have not been around long enough and we have not had enough brains that have come to post-mortems—I am sorry to put it so bluntly—of people who have been using them for a long time. The hit that they get is greater than they would get from smoking a cigarette.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I want to clarify how we make policy based on evidence if that evidence is unknown unknowns about what might possibly be the problem with something. It is absolutely the case that, where there is proof of harm, evidence is given and medical papers are produced. They have not been produced on this issue—I have looked—so it would be useful to see lots of peer-reviewed evidence that showed harm. To suggest that something could be a harm because we have not had long enough to find out whether it is a harm does not seem to be the basis of sensible evidence-based policy.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

I completely take that criticism; it is a fair comment. However, we know the damage to the brain microvasculature from smoking over the long term and that these substances are highly addictive. We also know that when we previously took through tobacco control measures, we never anticipated vapes or pouches. The evidence therefore is that those producing nicotine products are very imaginative and creative, and there is concern about this being used as a gateway to further addictive products. That is why I question whether proposed new subsection (2)(b) is necessary or adds anything to Amendment 13, which otherwise should be strongly supported.

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16: Clause 10, page 5, line 16, leave out “age of 18” and insert “voting age, as defined in section (1)(d) of the Representation of the People Act 1983 (parliamentary electors: voting age)”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to probe the reasoning for the minimum age prescribed in Clause 10, in the light of the Government’s intention to extend the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, is not able to be here to move this amendment. For me, this amendment falls in a slightly odd group. I thought that it would be in the first group; then I thought that it was going to be in the group before. It has ended up in this group. I shall talk briefly about this amendment; I will then speak on what this group is actually about, which is a different set of concerns.

The point of this amendment is to ask whether lowering the voting age to 16 would add a layer of complexity to the discussion around any age-gating that is happening in relation to either the generational smoking ban or the sale of vapes and so on. This issue obviously intersects with questions around autonomy, responsibility and any kind of consistency that we might have in relation to how we treat young people.

A lot of concerns have already been raised today, in our debate on the first group, about young people and whether they are mature enough—that is, the vulnerability of young people and so on—but, if 16 year-olds are deemed mature enough to vote and to influence laws that affect society, that strengthens the argument against denying them the right to make personal choices about a range of things; those things could include smoking, let alone vaping. Denying them such a right when they have the right to vote—which implies, we hope, a level of rational decision-making capacity—would seem to be contradictory. So this amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, is a probing one; it would be interesting to hear the Government’s response to it. There is a danger of there being confusion around age, and around whom we think we are protecting from harm, with this contradiction in terms of a different government policy on voting.

I will now talk about the amendments in this group that make a bit more sense to me. I am very supportive of, and put my name to, Amendment 18 from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. It looks at the issue of a ban on all vending machines and whether there can be some exemptions. I urge the Government to engage with a wide range of stakeholders to prevent the unintended consequences I believe there will be if the legislation carries on with this ban. Surely this law wants to ensure that safer alternatives to smoking are available, especially in environments where they might help people resist having a cigarette, such as hospitals and, in particular, mental health settings.

I am reluctant to push this too much because it is the noble Lord’s amendment, but I cannot work out how else I can speak to it. I ask the Minister whether there is a danger that we are imposing measures on tobacco and vaping—this follows on from what we have just been talking about—without clarity about the differing relative harms of each product. The ban on vaping machines talks to a conflation of products, which I am concerned about.

Vending machines containing vaping products have been used very successfully in mental health settings, providing patients who would otherwise be smoking with a route to giving up. Therefore, an exemption to the vending machine ban for healthcare settings—which, by the way, is supported by the Mental Health and Smoking Partnership, which is a coalition of 27 health and mental health organisations and includes some of the major royal colleges—seems to be something of a no-brainer, as they say.

I started my professional life working in mental health and went on to work in education in psychiatric hospitals for a period. When you first start working with people with severe mental health conditions, who may be sectioned into hospitals, or those with terrible debilitating illnesses such as schizophrenia, the thing that you notice—I remember noticing this when I was young—is just how much they smoke. Chain-smoking is almost part of the condition. All of us who worked with the mentally ill were always concerned that not only were they suffering these terrible psychotic illnesses, but they were smoking so much. The irony was that you also knew that it was part of calming them down; that was how they were able to cope with the heavy medication, the psychosis and so on.

I am not making a case here for smoking cigarettes, because it is fantastic—is it not?—that we have found a substitute for smoking cigarettes for a group of people in society who are already suffering terrible mental health problems, which is vapes. We are therefore talking about a group of people who, by the way, are often locked up in hospitals, having access to those vapes. That is what the vending machines for vapes mean, and it is why, I think, so many people are very enthusiastic about this. There are a couple of amendments so I will just say quickly that that is why this amendment is really important.

I am afraid that I cannot support Amendment 21 in this group in the names of the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, on minimum pricing of vaping products. The noble Earl assures me that his £30 vape is ultimately cheaper than constantly restocking. He also says it is easier to use. I have two thoughts on that. First, £30 as a minimum price is rather an expensive upfront cost for the people whom we keep hearing that everybody cares about: poor people. Generally, the problem with poor people is that they have not got enough money. We should have a thriving economy where they can earn money through jobs.

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[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly to this group of amendments. Amendment 16 is about age. My noble friend Lord Moylan said that young people are sensible. I agree with that. I think it follows from that that they are sensible enough to understand that Parliament may have prescribed different age limits for different activities, so I do not find that argument wholly conclusive but, on a more conciliatory note, I agree with what my noble friend said about Clause 12.

“A person commits an offence if the person has the management or control of premises on which a vape vending machine … is available for use”.


However, there is no provision for any exceptions.

My noble friend made a case for those mental health hospitals that have vending machines that enable patients to remain smoke free. Is it the case that, when the Bill becomes an Act, they will have to take those vape machines out and go through the whole process of licensing to be able continue to sell vaping products? Is it the case that, under Clause 16(3)

“The Secretary of State may by regulations create exceptions to the prohibition in subsection (1) or (2)”.


Is that the “get out of jail” card we need to solve the problem my noble friend rightly drew attention to?

My noble friend also touched on Amendment 17A, which relates to vaping machines in non-age-gated premises. The explanatory statement says that the amendment

“would permit the sale of vapes and other nicotine products through vending machines in only those premises that are already restricted to adults only”.

I wonder what those premises are, because younger people can go into pubs and clubs. What are these age-gated premises? I can think of nightclubs and the Chambers of the House of Lords and the House of Commons, but it would be helpful to hear in slightly more detail exactly what these exemptions might be.

I am cautious about any exemptions, because I see vaping products as a smoking-cessation tool. Allowing vaping products to be made available in pubs, clubs, restaurants, or wherever, tends more towards the recreational use of vaping, which I think we all want to downplay. I give way to the noble Baroness, who will explain what these age-gated premises are.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

The point of vape vending machines in a lot of nightclubs and late-night premises—of which I hear tales and know nothing—is that, when people are out and about, very often they recreationally smoke. That is how a lot of young people start smoking: they have a cigarette with a drink. The idea therefore is that people should at least have the option of vaping. Young people are actually lobbying for this. I know how keen everyone is on giving young people what they want. That is the deal.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

The noble Baroness destroys her own argument by saying that nightclubs are premises where young people go for recreation and then saying that they might use the vaping machines and start vaping. The last thing we want is for young people, who do not want to smoke, to start vaping because they are in a recreational atmosphere where other people are vaping and there is an opportunity for them to join in. I repeat the point that I see vaping as a smoking-cessation tool, not a recreational exercise.

Finally, while I am normally on the same page as the noble Earl, Lord Russell, on this, I find his argument—that we need to fix a price that is so high that it is out of the reach of young people with pocket money, but so low that we do not penalise those in poor communities where smoking is prevalent—to be an impossible circle to square. He indicated some flexibility, but flexibility does not solve the problem, because the easier we make it for the smoking communities to start vaping, the easier it is for young people. I am not sure that price control is an area that is going to solve the problem, but I accept the environmental consequences that he spoke so fluently about.

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[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

I will be happy to check exactly what I said but, to be clear, we are not continuing discussions about vapes in hospital and mental health settings, in respect of vending machines. As I said, that is in the Bill. I hope I was making the point that discussions are continuing in respect of vape-free places, and that will be a matter for regulations. I assure the noble Lord that NHS England was in full consultation with the relevant parts of the services. It does provide services and it is the right organisation. As the noble Lord knows, we are bringing NHSE into the department in any case in the future. I am sure he will welcome that, as I certainly do.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

This has been a wide-ranging debate and I thank the variety of noble Lords who spoke. There has been some clarity: it might not be clarity that I am happy with, but we heard the noble Earl, Lord Russell, say that his aspiration is a nicotine-free generation, not just a tobacco-free one. There has been some confusion about the conflation of tobacco and nicotine. The Bill, at least, makes a distinction between those things. It is possible that the Minister—and every other Lord who wanted to get rid of that distinction—wants to challenge the nature of the very core of the Bill, but I assure them that the Bill makes that distinction. If that is not true, it would be interesting to hear what has happened there.

Also, medical scientific discussion on this makes the distinction very clearly and endlessly, particularly, by the way, by oncologists. Those who work with people who have developed cancers from smoking are very enthusiastically promoting nicotine products. As I understood it—as I was assured at Second Reading by the Government and noticed in other communications —we should not be fearful that vaping was a target of prohibition from the Bill. But the more the conversation goes on, and the more it is treated the same, then that is the direction of travel. I would still argue that when one says that the evidence is not in on whether something is helpful, it is not a scientific way of approaching it. The evidence is not in on a wide range of things that are happening in the world. It is evidence that we base evidence-based policies on, not the lack of it.

In the discussion on young people, we ended up discussing whether we are protecting children in a variety of the amendments, through to 20 and 30-somethings in a nightclub who should not be let near a vending machine with vapes in it. My point was not that they would be recreationally vaping because they would be having a good time and therefore it was very dangerous. Although, I have to say that having a good time in a nightclub is not yet, I think, illegal. Having a drink and a cigarette outside a nightclub is, as yet, not illegal—although it might well be by the end of the Bill. The point about vaping was that young people having a good time will often have a social cigarette, and the vaping vending machine might encourage them to do something less harmful. That was my point, rather than me trying to get them all vaping or forcing them to vape.

The conflation of children and young adults needs to be sorted out. In that sense, although I am sure I did not do remotely as good a job of moving Amendment 16 as the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, would have, we need to be clear that voting in elections is not a technical matter; it is philosophically about saying that someone is an autonomous adult. Therefore, we have a conflict in who we consider children and adults when it comes to health.

I finish by saying I am genuinely, totally disappointed by the attitude to mental health provision and vending machines. Many mental health charities are concerned about this. The age-gating issue is not an issue in mental health hospitals. This idea that there will be hordes of children wandering around accessing vapes from a vending machine—it just seems cruel and inhumane. I do not understand why that exception would not be made. It is true that mental health charities and family groups have suggested that having the odd vending machine in a hospital where people are restricted from leaving would be helpful. It would be kind and compassionate. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 16 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Vaping, as a mechanism for smoking cessation, is now recommended by NICE as the first-line quit method. It has been endorsed by the NHS and it has formed the backbone of the Government-funded and the already discussed and, indeed, boasted about Swap2stop scheme for local authorities. Vaping is very much part of government policy, it seems to me.

Vaping has enabled millions of UK smokers to quit over the last five years. The way that that has happened and that single-use vapes revolutionised smoking cessation was through being easy and cheap enough to swap to quit. Inevitably, with such a revolutionary success story in innovation on the horizon, what did the Government do? They banned them.

As I explained at Second Reading, the ban on single-use vapes, which the noble Earl, Lord Russell, explained very well in relation to his amendment, was brought in for environmentalist, green reasons. That is fair enough, but health did not even come into the ban on single-use vapes; it was not even discussed. I think that that shows that although, in some of the discussions, it is as though, whatever the freedom or civil liberty considerations, the most important thing is always public health, suddenly, there are things where public health is given secondary consideration to a different set of political priorities.

I am therefore opposed to Amendment 22. Even though we have now banned single-use vapes, the amendment intends to ban the reusable vapes that are on the market and actually being sold. The amendment is interesting because it is at least honest—the noble Earl, Lord Russell, has been honest throughout the day—because, in the heading of his amendment, the word “prohibition” is used. Absolutely. Noble Lords might be delighted to know, because my own person experience might fuel these prohibitionists, that I objected to the ban on single-use vapes. Now, of course, because we are no longer able to buy them, I use reuseable vapes, but, guess what, I use them as disposable. Because nobody really thought beforehand what the point of this ban was. Despite huge inconvenience to manufactures—and just to clarify, not all manufacturers of vapes are tobacco manufacturers—all sorts of independent of vape makers have had to completely redesign everything; it has completely disrupted a successful, innovative product that was a brilliant smoking cessation tool. We have gone through this big law change, and not very much has happened.

This brings me to my amendment, which suggests that the single-use vape ban, which was brought in as a piece of legislation, should be assessed before we discuss what we are doing with the Bill in relation to vaping. It is vital that the ban on single-use vapes is subject to a comprehensive impact assessment as to its impact on public health and any effects that the ban has had on public health. According to the figures, 17% of people are purchasing illegal single-use vapes that are still being sold on the black market where I live, and in other places too. Some people have now given up on those vapes, because they saw all the kerfuffle about single-use vapes, and reverted to smoking.

So it is imperative for the Government, before the Bill is passed, to review the outcome of the single-use vape ban, as proposed by my Amendment 145. It happened and I do not think it has made the kind of difference that the Government anticipated—but nobody ever talks about it any more. If you go into a corner shop or whatever to buy a vape, you will see similar-looking products that are reusable, but many people use them as if they were disposable—and even I think that that was not quite what the Government had in mind, so they should at least consider the outcome.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

I did not want to speak to the noble Baroness’s amendment before she had spoken to it but, now she has, I will briefly respond. I have no problem with her overriding concern that there should be a review of the ban on disposable vapes. Information is important. Obviously, the regulations were done by Defra, so I do not quite know where we are with that.

I will make two further points. The first is in relation to Swap to Stop; it is really important that the Government continue to fund that programme and that people are given proper, long-term vapes, because that is what they need.

With respect to the noble Baroness, I think she is the exception. On the one hand, we have had the ban on disposable vapes, but the problem is that there has not been that much change, as she says. I think we need to go further and move to proper, reusable vapes that cost slightly more but are a one-time purchase that give consumers long-term value. The trouble is that we have not gone that far; this has been a bit of a fudge. If we had a clearer distinction between what was once a one-time, disposable product and what we need to move towards, which is a long-term, reusable product that you would save money from by not needing pods and things like that, we would end up in a clearer and better place.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

The noble Earl, Lord Russell, is good at advertising the product that he is promoting. If anyone is interested in doing PR on anything, this is your man.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 22 in my name and those of my noble friend Lord Russell and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. As my noble friend said, it seeks to prohibit pre-filled single-use vaping pods, mainly for environmental reasons. These things have been the tobacco industry’s response to—indeed, its pre-emption of—the ban on single-use vapes that was introduced in June this year. Single-use vapes were such an effective entry point into vaping for young people and such a terrible blight on the environment.

These liquid pods are single-use vapes by another name. Just because you have to insert the pod does not mean that this is a multi-use product. They are cheap and available and have turned out to be just as bad for the environment as the single-use ones were, for all the reasons outlined by my noble friend. Indeed, they have introduced a new litter problem, which is that the removable sticker from the liquid container is appearing everywhere, stuck on to waste bins and pavement furniture after people have peeled them off to insert the pods. Local authorities have to spend time removing those, as well as the discarded vapes. They are just as much of a litter hazard as their predecessors were. Perhaps the Minister will tell us why they should not be treated in the same way as the original single-use vapes.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that the industry has only itself to blame for the ban on single-use vapes, because it used them, via its egregious marketing, to attract young people to addictive nicotine products. So the Government were quite right to ban them.

The problem with Amendment 145 is that single-use vapes were immediately replaced by the devices we are talking about in this group. There is no point reviewing the effect of the ban on the original single-use vapes alone, because they are all mixed up with the emergence of these products at pretty much the same time. A review would only cause a delay to the introduction, by this Bill, of measures to reduce youth smoking and vaping and to assist smokers to quit—which is an objective to which everybody who I have heard speak so far is committed.

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[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I can clarify that she has answered her own query in a way. My concern is that lawmaking—and bans—should not be rushed through without any cost-benefit analysis. That is what happened with the ban on single-use vapes. Many of us knew—and warned—what would happen without a review or process, but nobody took any notice.

The consequence of that ban was a huge amount of disruption for retailers, corner shops and people who work in the retail business, who had to completely empty their shelves and bring in new products. Product designers had to be brought in. That was a complete faff for absolutely nothing—for rushed lawmaking and a rushed ban—which happens all the time. I am simply suggesting that we should have a cost-benefit analysis, maybe retrospectively, of what has happened, before we bring in more bans of more products without thinking through what the consequences might be. It is a probing amendment, you might say.

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These amendments are about ensuring that the Government, and hopefully even some of the well-intentioned campaign groups, listen and take the time to hear from those whose livelihoods, expertise and long experience will be directly affected by the legislation that is before us. I hope that the Government will want to achieve the right balance between reducing and stopping smoking, which is clearly the intention of the Bill, while working with small retailers and specialist manufacturers, so that they believe that their voices are being heard and that they can continue to contribute to our economy. I beg to move.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am pleased to see this group of excellent amendments. They have been so well explained and motivated that I do not need to add very much more.

I support them for a couple of reasons. In my dealings with different groups of people who represent convenience stores—shopkeepers—they have made it clear that they do not feel that they have been consulted at all. Ironically, the quotes always come from the British Retail Consortium. I have nothing against the British Retail Consortium—it has said some interesting things on the Bill—but shopkeepers feel that there are specific issues that are not being picked up, particularly around convenience stores.

Convenience stores are often a community asset; they are part of the community. I know that the Government understand this, because they are bringing in a new law—although I do not know whether it is necessary—to protect retail workers from assault. As I pointed out in the debate on that Bill, I hope that we already have a law protecting retail workers from assault, but it would be a double whammy if we have two. This indicates that the Government care about retail workers. Part of the motivation for that was the increase in assaults and violence. However, people from those different organisations have contacted me because of my Second Reading speech, where I made similar points. They have pointed out that they are most worried about the age verification that will come with the generational smoking ban and the economic hit that will come from the regulations that will come in with this Bill. These are some of their big fears.

When we talk about cost-benefit analysis and really weigh up what matters, we keep saying, “Health, health”, or “Public health, public health”, but let me tell you that, if you are running a small convenience store, a different thing can affect your health, and that is worrying that you will go under because of new laws and changes. So consultation with the wider group is very important.

I also want to back up the point about the peculiar position on manufacturers. We have constantly heard about everything being big tobacco, which I know is an easy way to close down a debate. I do not actually think that it would be wrong to talk to those manufacturers, but there are lots of manufacturers involved in lots of different products that will be affected by this Bill. We cannot just write them all off as “big tobacco”. Having that nuance is something on which I hope the Minister and the Government will listen.

The most important amendment of all, though, is Amendment 150 because it stresses that this consultation is not to be just a box-ticking exercise. It would insert the words,

“and take into consideration the views of”—

words that the Minister should welcome, because a consultation must listen properly. You must take into consideration the views of the people you are consulting and not have just a box-ticking exercise. I would like a broader range of organisations to be consulted; I would also like the Minister and the Government to listen to them when they are consulted.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, as I understand it, following the Royal Assent of this Bill, there will be more consultations on many of the regulations the Government plan to bring forward. The call for evidence, which was published on 8 October, is already seeking evidence on some of the more technical aspects of the Bill.

I point out to those who tabled these amendments that the UK Government are a signatory to Article 5.3 of the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which aims to protect health policy-making from tobacco industry influence. That is why I think that there should be no further mandation for consultation with those who have a vested interest in producing or selling tobacco products, as long as we keep an eye on small retailers. As far as the bulk of their sales of products containing tobacco—I choose the way I express it very carefully—are concerned, there will be a small impact because only a one-year cohort at a time, which is a relatively small amount, will be prevented from being sold these products. As I said on our previous day in Committee, that will give small retailers plenty of time to adjust their sales models. We will deal with things such as age verification, as well as other issues that may cause small retailers concern, in our debates on other groups; we must do that rigorously.

I point out that there is nothing to stop tobacco companies responding to past and current government consultations on proposed regulations, but, of course, all respondents are required under the WHO convention to be transparent about their direct or indirect industry links. This is appropriate given their commercial conflicts of interest, which are sometimes in direct conflict with the Government’s public health objective to eliminate smoking over a generation.