Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 200A touches on a different theme from the other amendments that I have tabled. As my noble friend Lord Howe commented, it is a probing amendment to test the Government’s attitude to small shops and the burdens that they face. I endorse the remarks made by my noble friend about shoplifting because it no longer seems to be a crime—you just go in and help yourself to what you want.

This amendment is focused on the burden placed on businesses by their need for age-verification technology. The businesses that will have to comply with this Bill are not just major supermarkets or established tobacco specialists; they are also corner shops and convenience stores up and down the country. These are small businesses on which local communities rely. They are run by local businessmen who provide employment in our villages and towns. They are a place where essential services, such as postal services and phone or bill payment services, can be accessed.

Any additional burden on our corner shops must be considered in that context. Can the Minister please set out what assessment the Government have made of the impact of this Bill on small businesses, especially convenience stores? Can she assure us that, if the impact on these businesses is shown to be overly burdensome following the passage of this Bill, Ministers will look closely at how to support convenience stores further by reducing the regulatory burden that they face? I should declare an interest in that I own a convenience store, although I do not run it.

It is essential that we do not proceed blindly without a proper understanding of the impact that this Bill will have on small businesses, so I hope that the Minister will be able to address my concerns fully in her closing remarks.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am very much in favour of these three amendments. As we come to the end of Committee, it is important that we consider some of the unintended consequences of this Bill, particularly in relation to retailers. In relation to Amendment 188 from the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, and the noble Earl, Lord Howe, I stress in particular proposed new subsection (4)(a) and (b) on the need to consult retailers of relevant products and representatives of retailers of relevant products. This is key and would help to inform the guidance on implementation for retailers that is called for in Amendment 191.

I want to say something on consultation because, throughout Committee, whenever the word “consultation” has come up, the Minister has assured us that retailers have been consulted. I am not impugning her at all, but I do not think that the notion of widespread retail consultation is strictly accurate. Twenty witnesses were invited to give oral evidence to the Public Bill Committee, but the solitary witness from retail, the British Retail Consortium, represented large retailers. More broadly, a wide range of organisations representing independent shopkeepers and related stakeholders such as pubs and hospitality supplied written evidence. Nineteen of the witnesses called to give oral testimony represented health charities, public health practices, health regulation and local government officials. That is a distorting set of witnesses in relation to what will have a big impact on different sectors such as retail and hospitality. It distorts the evidence base and the information that the Government are working with, and it shapes the narrative away from one of the sectors that is affected by this legislation.

The sort of retailers that are caught up in and detrimentally affected by the Bill are thousands of small retail outlets, mini marts and convenience stores, often family businesses with up to half run by British Asians—the sort of shops that are the heart and soul of so many communities and are especially important in rural areas. They are a vital part of local economies, especially in areas where large corporate retail companies do not have much of a presence. I have been talking to a number of these retailers, and I think that it would be useful for the Government to talk to them to get an accurate picture of their fears and concerns and, indeed, to listen to some very imaginative and creative solutions they have to the challenges presented by the Bill. I recommend to the Minister that her department and officials start by reading a useful academic essay by Maged Ali, reader at Essex Business School, University of Essex, entitled The Backbone of the UK Under Attack: The Economic Effects of Tobacco Generational Sales Ban on Retail SMEs because it provides a lot of rich detail.

The economic effects are very important for Amendment 200A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising, on the need to provide financial assistance and grants for the acquisition of age-verification technology. I stress how important this is. The sector is largely driven, as I have indicated, by independent retailers who run 71% of convenience stores. They are self-financing individuals who will have to invest their own money to enforce policies that, as we have heard from the noble Earl, Lord Howe, will mean them receiving potentially more abuse, intimidation and violence in terms of ID checks. They certainly need some help in dealing with all this.

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[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Howe, about how important it is that retailers of all kinds feel supported as we move into the transition to a smoke-free generation. Those who operate legally and who will obtain a licence to operate under the new rules will want to see the Government doing everything that they can to attack the illicit trade that undermines the profits of law-abiding businesses.

They also need protection from the wave of shoplifting, which the noble Earl, Lord Howe, talked about, which eats into their profits and sometimes puts them in physical danger. It is quite possible that progress towards gradually raising the age below which the retailers may not sell tobacco products could exacerbate this situation unless action is taken. Age verification could be seen as a problem or a solution. However, the need for age verification is already quite common and it falls upon the consumer, not the retailer. I have to verify my own age when I buy a senior railcard to use on the train, although my grey hair means that I am not challenged when I want to buy a bottle of wine. However, the fact remains that, when I have alcohol in my basket at the checkout, a member of staff is entitled to verify that I am over 18—in fact, they take one look, and they click on the terminal. They do not ask for my birth certificate, but of course they might if I looked under 18, which I do not.

However, the situation will soon change for young people only a year apart in age. Having said that, young people are already quite used to having to verify that they are over 18 when buying a drink or a packet of cigarettes or vapes. What do they do now? They use a digital age-verification tool already, and some bars issue their own card once they have verified the age of their regular customers. It therefore would not be unreasonable, and would be helpful to the retailers, if a range of age-verification mechanisms could be available to customers who would then have to show one of them in order to protect the retailers from inadvertently committing an offence. They have to show that they are over 18 now, so why not that they are 19 a year after Royal Assent or 20 the year after that?

It may be a very good idea for the Government to carry out more research on this and publish a strategy, as the noble Earl, Lord Howe, has proposed in Amendment 188. But the public are not the only ones who need guidance and information about the law well before it comes into operation; how much more important is it for retailers? We have already debated my noble friend Lady Northover’s amendment about the need for a communications strategy, so I am not sure how much Amendment 191 would add to that, but it is a useful probe.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, I do not support Amendment 200A from the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising. I do not see why taxpayers should foot the bill for creating age-verification mechanisms. I suspect that individual customers will obtain their own digital age-verification mechanism and that inventive companies will produce them and make them readily available. Of course, the vape manufacturers may also produce age-gated products, so perhaps it should be the tobacco industry that foots the bill because of its very large profit margins. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s views on this issue.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

If the Committee will allow me, I want to come back on the point about retail organisations. I am more than happy to acknowledge that all sorts of organisations are not quite as independent as they seem. In fact, many health charities over the years feel more like Astroturfed organisations, because most of their money comes from government, one way or another. All I am pointing out is that the idea of a kind of neutral body of representative organisations is something that could be queried.

It is fair enough about trade associations, but my general point—rather than trying to imply that there is something dodgy about the associations I mentioned because of any association with tobacco—is that tens of thousands of small retailers are tearing their hair out about the implications of this legislation. That is reflected in a wide range of ways, not just by briefings I have had from trade associations, of which I have not actually had very many. I have investigated this myself; I have talked to quite a number of them and met others, and I have read around. That is why doing research for a piece of legislation matters.

There is a danger of saying, “We can’t talk to the trade associations for small convenience stores, because the ones we know of have some association with or get some funding from big tobacco”, but maybe that is because they are often sidelined and ignored by other organisations, and they should not be. The Government could actually take them seriously and not have them treated as though they were a kind of pariah one can ignore. These are the small players; this is your local corner shop. How do they get a voice here? I thought I would try to give them a voice, and it is not appropriate to imply that somehow giving them a voice is something to do with representing big tobacco. It is completely unrelated to the general point I was making and, as I have pointed out, organisations such as ASH get their funding from somewhere. That is not necessarily big tobacco, but it is big government.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

Having said that, does the noble Baroness agree that it would be unfortunate to see any organisations fearmongering among small businesses that already have a lot of concerns, and a lot to face when this Bill comes into operation?

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

It would also seem that misrepresenting them in the pages of the Grocer by saying that they absolutely love this legislation is the opposite of fearmongering. That is called misinformation; it is illegitimate and not fair. I do not think any fearmongering needed to happen. As it goes, the Government recognise that small retailers are under pressure, which is why they are trying to bring in legislation so that there will be a special offence if you assault or attack a retail worker. I always hoped the law would do that anyway and that we would not need an extra law, so it makes me nervous that we would do it.

That is not because of fearmongering but because on the ground, in small shops up and down high streets throughout the land, things are pretty grim. The BBC report I recently mentioned about the illegal shops that are springing up was also an indication that a lot of these small shops are saying, “We don’t even mind being licensed. We don’t want to be part of a world that’s ignored”. All I am saying is that they have not had consultation with the Government; they do not know how to do it, and they cannot afford the big bucks—perhaps they get a bit of sponsorship, I do not know—but somebody should listen to them. They should go out and talk to them; go round with a billboard and just chat to them. I am suggesting that we do not pass this legislation without having a chat with them. I get annoyed when people say that we have already consulted retail, yet nobody has had a chat with the people who will be really affected by this.

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With those thoughts about this, I hope that we return to this on Report with a view to trying to work collectively on designing a way of delivering improved public awareness of the benefits of this vaping product regime and confidence in the way the system is being used, relative to the evidence that is being derived and adopted. I beg to move.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have not always historically been an enthusiast for experts dictating policy, but I am enthusiastic about this amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley.

Particularly in relation to policy or legislation related to public health, there is an awful lot of evidence swapping, people citing data, and so on and so forth, then accusations of not being able to trust that data. It would be very helpful to have a genuine independent academic body looking at some of these things, that we could maybe all trust a little—or even look sceptically at—but which actually digs into the evidence. Many of my friends are academics; any research can be advocacy research. None the less, it has to be there in the public arena for us to examine it. It is not just data and numbers.

This is important because earlier today, the Minister rightly said that we are going to follow the evidence, yet we had a serious conversation about whether there should be regulation to ban second-hand vaping fumes. The explanation for the fact there is no evidence of that being harmful was that it is evolving evidence, evolving evidence being the unknown, unknown approach, as far as I can see. I want to Cancer Research here because this is what you do when you are not quite sure how to counter somebody saying this is evidence. It said:

“Further research is needed to understand the health effects of vaping”,


which I accept,

“however”,

there is currently no good

“evidence”,

that

“second hand vapour is harmful”.

However, we have managed to have a conversation as though, even though there is no evidence, it probably is, or it could be. I think that discredits the notion of evidence-based policy. There are also different kinds of academic studies. I was pleased to hear the idea of behavioural studies. At Queen Mary University, for example, they have done a lot of work on vaping, and all their studies suggest that vaping is not a gateway to smoking. I think that the Government need to consider such things. There are a large number of qualified specialist academics who are researching not just the health impacts of vaping but a whole range of how vaping is used. I would like that somehow to be acknowledged in the Bill and for that group of people not to be ignored.

As we are at the end of Committee, sometimes in this Bill I have argued in defence of vaping as a smoking cessation tool, because that is how I have used it. However, I have felt a little uncomfortable about the way that it is assumed that, unless it is a smoking cessation tool, there is something wrong with it. I wanted to query whether that is true. Have the Government got a view of a recreational habit? Why would the Government choose to try to overregulate something that is just a recreational choice? Some people might start vaping who have not smoked. It might be that, by vaping, they will not start smoking.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thank the noble Baroness for giving way. I just think we must not lose sight of the fact that we are talking about a highly addictive product and there is a role for the Government in ensuring protection from giant multinational companies trying to hook people on highly addictive products that we know do them harm.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I want to say that I understand some of the addiction points in relation to young people in particular. I asked in an earlier group in Committee if this Bill was tackling addiction per se as a problem. There are things that we know are addictive—for example, nicotine. I am simply asking the question about what it is we are trying to tackle. I am asking this because, when we are talking about adult freedoms and choices, it is not just enough to cite medical evidence. That is why I want the expert panel to really assess the medical evidence and behavioural points. That is where I was going. I am cautioning against seeing everything through the prism of expertise as medical expertise.

As it is the last time I will speak in this stage, I thought I would end on some behavioural insights. Since we last met, the BBC has rewritten its Christmas adaptation of Julia Donaldson’s book over its fears that it would encourage children to smoke. It is The Scarecrows’ Wedding, which as noble Lords will know, features a villain scarecrow called Reginald Rake who, lighting a cigar, accidentally starts a fire. There has been something of a kerfuffle, and the BBC decided that this had to be rewritten. It sounds like some Daily Mail story—how ridiculous, PC gone mad and all the rest of it.

For the purposes of this amendment, a colleague of mine who works in media literacy made the point that the irony is that The Scarecrows’ Wedding is a perfect example of a book for young people that puts people off smoking. Betty O’Barley, who is another scarecrow by the way, is so horrified at the villain, Reginald Rake, smoking that she keeps saying to him “smoking is bad for you”. The whole point about Reginald Rake is that he is the villain of the story. The irony of this is that a media literacy expert makes the point that the BBC’s rewriting of this is completely counterproductive in relation to messaging. I say that because I think it is a bit more complicated than just swapping numbers around. An expert panel, looking at the unintended consequences of well-meaning policy, would not do any harm as we finish Committee on this legislation.