Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Debate between Baroness Walmsley and Baroness Fox of Buckley

Committee stage
Wednesday 26th November 2025 Grand Committee

[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.

Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Debate between Baroness Walmsley and Baroness Fox of Buckley

Committee stage
Thursday 30th October 2025 Grand Committee

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.