Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Baroness Meyer Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

My Lords, there is a real problem about being number 39 to speak in this debate, because other noble Lords have said everything that I am going to say. There is an even bigger problem in that the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, stole my speech. I do not know on how many other issues we would be on the same side, but on this one we are 100%.

Of course we should support smokers to quit, and of course we must discourage young people from ever starting, but I do not believe that this Government’s ban is the answer. As many other noble Lords have said, imagine a 40-year-old going to the shops and buying a pack of cigarettes, which for his friend next to him, who is a day younger, would be doing something criminal. This does not work. It is silly and unfair. It undermines equality before the law. It is discriminatory.

The policy is also impractical. It forces retailers to check birth dates indefinitely, creating confusion and increasing the risk of fraud. Retailers are already under financial stress. The British Retail Consortium reports 2,000 incidents of abuse a day. This ban would make it worse. Many retailers say that they would have to close, leaving communities without vital services.

Meanwhile, the black market is thriving. As we have already heard, UK consumers spend £21 billion on tobacco, including £6.1 billion on illegal products. With legal cigarettes at £16.60 a pack and illicit ones at £3, the incentive is obvious. This is not about saving a few pennies, as the Minister said; it is about saving pounds.

We know where this leads. Operation Machinize exposed hundreds of high-street shops, many of which were barbers, fronting for organised crime, including illegal tobacco. This ban would only strengthen criminal networks.

History also shows that bans do not work. Remember prohibition in the United States in the 1920s. It did not end up stopping drinking; it empowered gangs and created the mafia. In 2021, South Africa’s Covid tobacco ban saw criminals fill the gap, with 93% of smokers switching to illegal sources. In Australia, a similar crackdown led to turf wars and gang violence. Yet the warnings from their law enforcement were ignored by the Public Bill Committee. The lesson is clear: bans do not stop demand; they push it underground. Illegal drugs continue to flourish despite decades of enforcement, because demand drives supply.

I speak as a former smoker. I managed to quit only with the help of Nicorette inhalators, which many noble Lords may have seen me using. A ban would not have stopped me; it was the alternative that did. Smoking rates among young people have fallen, thanks to safer alternatives and effective campaigns. If we are serious about reducing smoking, we should focus essentially on demand and seek a more balanced approach.

The Bill also raises serious constitutional concerns. It gives Ministers sweeping powers, about which many noble Lords have spoken. These include 17 Henry VIII clauses, some allowing the creation of new criminal offences without parliamentary scrutiny. This is executive overreach. No proper impact assessment has been made. Small businesses, retailers and the hospitality sector were excluded from the committee. Even the Government’s own consultation promised targeted restrictions, as opposed to a ban. Does the Minister not agree that raising the legal age to 21—a policy which retailers support—would be a fairer, more enforceable and simpler way to deter children from smoking?

I do not have any more time, but I just want to say that, as a smoker, I think people need to realise that it is a personality trait: you are a smoker, or you are not a smoker. I do not think a ban will solve it.

Food, Diet and Obesity Committee Report

Baroness Meyer Excerpts

Friday 28th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the chair and all the committee members on their excellent report. But while the report is strong, the Government’s response is weak. Despite years of proposals, successive Governments have failed to tackle obesity. In fact, the problem has got worse and it is our most vulnerable, poorer families and children who are paying the price, as many noble Lords have said before me. Childhood obesity is not just a phase. Children who are obese have an 80% chance of remaining overweight or obese as adults. That is a lifetime of preventable illnesses. We owe our children a healthier and better start in life.

Today, over one in five children in England are overweight or obese when they start primary school. By the time they leave, that is one in three. These are not just numbers; they are our children’s lives. In the UK, we have among the highest obesity rates in the developed world: only the USA and Brazil outstrip us.

In France, the difference is stark. There, food is something to be cherished. Schools offer children a proper meal—a three-course meal with fruits and vegetables. Families still cook from scratch, shop for fresh ingredients and eat together at set times. Meals are moments of connection and enjoyment, not something consumed on the go in front of a screen. When I first arrived in the UK, I was shocked to see people eating chocolate bars at their desk in the morning, sipping sugary drinks on public transport and snacking constantly without sitting down to enjoy a meal.

People often ask me: “How do you manage to keep your weight down?” The truth is simple. I was raised to eat well. My parents taught me to rely on fruits and vegetables, not tinned and ultra-processed foods. My parents were vegetarians, and we sat at meals around a table. I was taught to chew before I swallowed.

The root cause of obesity is clear. It is not just the quantity—it is also what we eat and how we eat it. This is not about blaming individuals, but about acknowledging that our food system is broken. As the report highlights, obesity is not just a health issue. It is driving chronic illness, disability and economic hardship. It costs the NHS over £19 billion a year, and the wider economy even more, yet the Government’s response lacks ambition and urgency. It leans heavily on voluntary measures, with no serious regulatory levers, but we need a national food strategy that puts health first.

We also need to change our food culture and support local markets. In France, local markets offer fresh products from the region. In every city and village, you have markets. Even in Paris, you have 80 street markets, and they are operating three days a week. An apple is not more expensive than a bar of chocolate, but it is far more nutritious, with fewer calories, so why not support our farmers to bring their products directly to shops, as they do in France?

Prevention alone is no longer enough. We must also invest in weight services and therapies such as GLP—but, as noble Lords have mentioned before, although that may be helpful in extreme cases, we do not know the long-term effects and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, pointed out, it is still a very expensive way to treat people. Is it not better to concentrate on food and what we eat, and to educate? Fast food makes you hungry; it does not quench your hunger. It is time to tackle junk food. Will the Minister tell this House what steps her Government will take to support our farmers and work with them to improve our children’s well-being? Instead of imposing inheritance tax, would it not be better to work with farmers to tackle this issue?

NHS England: Ovarian Cancer

Baroness Meyer Excerpts

Thursday 2nd May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

Yes, absolutely. We all come at this from the perspective of making sure that health is front and centre, which is why the primary descriptors should be “man” and “woman”, as I think we all agree. Beyond that, we should clarify that “woman” may mean a “person with ovaries”—but the primary descriptor is “woman”. I hope that we can all agree on that.

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

My Lords, given the lack of specific data on the consequences of NHS England’s adoption of gender-neutral language and services, does my noble friend the Minister agree that the millions of women who have been affected should have been consulted before such measures were implemented? Does he agree that, if medical records fail to document patients’ biological sex, clinicians would be at risk of giving trans people the wrong medication?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

Yes. Once again, I come at this from the perspective that health is the primary factor here. Clearly, a person’s biological sex is a key part of the information on their record that any clinician needs to know, so that absolutely needs to be primary.

Botulinum Toxin and Cosmetic Fillers (Children) Bill

Baroness Meyer Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

My Lords, I too fully support this Bill and thank my noble friend Lady Wyld for introducing it to this House.

If you need to be 18 to get a tattoo or a sunbed session, it stands to reason that Botox and fillers should also be illegal, to protect children under 18 from themselves and from unscrupulous practitioners. It is normal for teenagers to worry about their appearance. However, as we heard earlier, the pressure put on them by social media has led to the increasing normalisation of cosmetic interventions among the young. Children who are still growing should not be considered candidates for cosmetic treatments, particularly with products such as Botox, which paralyses muscle and is used to lessen the appearance of wrinkles. Of course, there may be instances where the prescription of Botox is medically needed, even for under-18s, as we heard, but Botox is at least classified as a medicine, so it must be prescribed by a medically qualified practitioner. The problem is that it can be injected by somebody with no qualifications at all.

Fillers, on the other hand, are classified as devices as opposed to medicines, which means that they are wholly unregulated. Children can, for instance, walk into a shop and get their lips injected by someone with no qualifications at all. Botox and filler parties are quite common among the young, where they inject each other. As with Botox, complications with fillers are not uncommon. They can include the filler moving away from the treated area into other parts of the face. As we heard, some individuals were left with rotting tissue and lumps on their faces, and required lip amputations.

The medical profession itself has tried for many years to get fillers classified as medicines and not devices and to close loopholes such as online purchase, whereby unscrupulous doctors prescribe a product and have it delivered for a fee to someone with no qualification whatever. The young and vulnerable should be protected from unscrupulous exploitation. In other countries, legislation prohibits cosmetic procedures under a certain age. In Germany, for example, no procedure can be done on someone under 18, whether aesthetic or otherwise, without parental consent. In Spain it is the same, and in France the law is even stricter.

Clearly, the Bill must be approved, and I fully support it, but as this business is lucrative, it will be difficult to curb illegal trade. I also look forward to hearing the Minister’s responses to some of the questions that were raised about supply.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) Regulations 2020

Baroness Meyer Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the changes that the Government have made to Part 4 of the Bill, reducing the duration of the proposed regulation to 3 February. I also welcome the frequency with which the imposition of tiers 2 and 3 is to be reviewed, but the Government have come far too late to the notion that they must take Parliament and the people with them. The three tiers are not the 10 commandments, to be handed down on tablets of stone by Matt Hancock in the role of Moses. Surely, the Government should try hard on the impact assessment. After eight months of lockdowns, circuit breakers and tiers, anxiety has inevitably spread about the impact of these restrictions, not just on Covid but on the very nature of social life.

I remember a time when my generation could aspire to a higher standard of living than our parents. Now, we have to ask whether, with the debt already incurred, not only our children but our grandchildren will be able to enjoy a prosperity greater than ours. The rise in unemployment, family breakdown, child abuse, loneliness, mental health problems, leaving aside the damage to the economy and to education, increasingly poses the question of whether the cure is worse than the disease. We must approach the answer with humanity and humility. Science takes us only so far. The answer does not lie in statistics, data or graphs when the experts themselves cannot agree on their interpretation.

There are profound ethical and philosophical judgments to be made on the value of personal liberty, freedom of choice and the quality of life. Some fear, not without reason, that the draconian nature of lockdowns and tiers is taking us down the slippery slope to an authoritarian state from which we will never return. These value judgments go well beyond the realm of government—any Government. It is all too easy for commentators to say, from the rigid and unrealistic certitudes of their views, that the Government have no strategy, but name one nation that has a strategy. All over Europe, Presidents, Prime Ministers and Parliaments wrestle with the same problems and come up with the same answers.

The simple truth is that Covid-19 has a life of its own. It therefore holds the initiative. It is the fate of all of us to have to react to the unpredictable twists and turns of Covid. Mankind can turn the tables on the virus only with a vaccine that works. With the advent of such a vaccine, many of the fears and anxieties should fall away, but we must not count our vaccines until they are hatched. Before the first needle enters an arm, a vaccine must pass through the hoops of approval, manufacture, storage, transportation and distribution. That will take months, and, in the interval, we will have to put up with restrictions of one kind or another.

All I ask is for the Government to remember one thing: the more responsibility we are given, the more responsible we are. If we are treated like children, we will end up behaving like children. The British people are pragmatic and sensible. They are the Government’s partners in this confrontation and they should be consulted at every significant stage.

To follow up on what the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins of Tavistock, said about international travel, can the Minister tell us what the position will be over the Christmas period for people whose families live abroad? For example, will my children be able to visit us or will they have to spend five days locked in our flat in London?

Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions) (England) (No. 4) Regulations 2020

Baroness Meyer Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to my amendment to the Motion on the increase in mental illnesses and other long-term psychological harms. Earlier this week, I was talking on the telephone to my younger son who is a physician at the clinic for psychiatry and psychotherapy at the Charité in Berlin, one of Germany’s very best hospitals. He was angry; he described the disastrous impact on people of the German Government’s lockdown. By isolating them from their friends, their families and their fellow human beings in conditions akin to house arrest, their essential humanity was being denied. Many could not take it. Depression and suicide were often the inevitable consequence. Still others will be mentally scarred for life. Many turned up in his clinic, seeking help.

So from Germany, a country rightly admired for its handling of the coronavirus, comes the warning that it is not just the damage to the economy that must be calculated, but the impact on the nation’s mental health. Who in our Government is taking responsibility for making these calculations? Where is the risk analysis? Who in government can give us evidence that the cure will not be worse than the disease—because that is the heart of the matter, is it not?

It is no longer enough for the Government to say that they are following the science. That begs the question: which science, which scientist? There is the science of the Chief Medical Officer, of the Chief Scientific Officer and of Sage, which the Government are following. Then there is the science of innumerable expert voices, each with impressive titles after their names, who advance dissenting views. Contrast and compare, for example, the most recent pronouncements from Imperial College and King’s College London. The latter has asserted that there is no Covid surge. Why do we follow Imperial and not King’s? Or, as the latest edition of the Spectator magazine has put it:

“Why have No. 10’s Covid forecasts changed so much?”


Back in March, we were all innocents wandering through Covid’s dark forest. Nearly eight months later we have all become amateur epidemiologists and virologists. I know that a little learning is a dangerous thing. However, with it has come the need for, and the right to, far greater transparency in explaining the Government’s modelling inputs and policy decisions. Instead, we are blinded by science and its myriad predictions, forecasts, scenarios, and indecipherable graphs.

I stand second to none in my admiration of the Prime Minister’s fortitude, confronted as he is by intolerable policy choices on an almost daily basis. Those who are too willing to criticise him and his team over Covid handling—the Labour Party keep saying that we should have done lockdown before—should show some humility. However, the harsh fact will not go away. The one thing we know beyond all doubt is that the collateral damage inflicted by lockdown is immense: to our economy, to our freedoms, and to our mental and physical health. The latest lockdown will tear still further the fabric of the nation.

It should be about risk management, rather than predictions, which may prove to be wrong. Will Her Majesty’s Government publish a full impact assessment, setting out the cost of the lockdown in terms of jobs, the businesses that will fail, the toll on people’s mental and physical health, and the lives that will be lost—and saved—as a result of lockdown? On the evidence so far, I have to say I find it difficult to accept that the benefits of lockdown outweigh its long-term risks.

--- Later in debate ---

Tabled by

[Baroness Meyer]

At end insert “but that this House regrets that the Regulations will result in an increase in mental illness and other long-term psychological harm.”

Baroness Meyer’s amendment to the Motion not moved.