Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Earl of Lindsay Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 3rd March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend on the Front Bench for asking some very practical questions, to which I hope we will get some practical answers. The only thing I will raise—I do not want to flog a dead horse for the moment—is that there are existing regulations for off-licences, and it would be interesting to see the degree to which the Government feel that those should be reflected, just in case there is a need for the two to come together at some time in the future.

Amendment 25 is key. Tobacco retailers are concerned —I have discussed this following the last debate—because they have never been in this area in any depth. They feel quite strongly that they should have some means of checking they have registered properly, and that, if the local authority changes something, they have a means of going back and checking on that portal. That is the reason for this amendment, and I will listen carefully to what the Minister says when she responds.

[The Earl of Lindsay (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to the six amendments in this group that stand in my name and the names of the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, and my noble friend Lord Johnson of Lainston. In doing so, I declare an interest as president of the CTSI, although I emphasise that these amendments are not linked to the CTSI or my role there.

Before speaking to those amendments, I will speak in support of Amendment 21A, moved by my noble friend Lord Howe, because small businesses will need all the time they can get to prepare for yet another layer of administrative burden. By way of background, the track and trace system, for which specialist tobacconists have been preparing for over five years, requires every economic operator to have a unique identifier code that they must supply when an order is sent out to them. Even something this simple has been remarkably complex and very time consuming. It has taken one supplier in the handmade cigar sector well over two years to register all its customers, and it is not yet there. A fully fledged licensing system, with all that it entails, is likely to be much more complex, especially for businesses such as hotels, for which cigars are not a primary source of income.

Businesses will suffer and possibly cease trading if the licence application process is excessively burdensome in terms of cost, time or hassle. Traditionally, the handmade cigar sector, which comprises mostly family-owned businesses, has been permitted extra time to prepare for new legislation, such as on packaging, display restrictions and so forth, in recognition of how much harder it is for small and micro-businesses with fewer resources to adapt.

I move on to Amendments 23, 30, 43, 45, 114 and 115 in this group. I hope that these amendments will be seen as being a constructive, good-faith effort to identify an evidence-based, proportionate and workable solution for specialist tobacconists. Their principal business, comprising some 70% of their turnover, is in handmade cigars. As I explained on the first day of Report, handmade cigars, which are artisanal, individually crafted, high-value and relatively expensive premium products, are fundamentally distinct from mass-produced, lower-priced, machine-made, small-format cigars and cigarillos. In other words, they occupy a completely different segment of the market. That distinction matters in terms of price, consumer characteristics and, most importantly, the evidence base relating to youth uptake and public health.

There is no credible evidence that handmade cigars contribute to youth uptake or act as a gateway to nicotine addiction. That fact was challenged last week, and I should therefore reiterate that where there is any data or evidence of cigar usage by young people, it refers not to handmade cigars but to machine-made, mass-produced, lower-priced, small-format cigars and cigarillos. The overwhelming majority of those purchasing handmade cigars are over the age of 25, with most being over the age of 35. Furthermore, handmade cigars are not inhaled and are consumed infrequently, not habitually. They are sold almost exclusively through specialist tobacconists and other distinct retail channels to informed adult customers.

In these amendments, we do not oppose the principle of licensing. The introduction of a new licensing framework, however, raises legitimate concerns about how it would apply to existing specialist tobacconists. They are a small number of lawful specialist businesses whose principal business is handmade cigars. Most of them are long-established, multi-generational, family-run, small and micro high-street enterprises. They have long been separately recognised in legislation and regulations. These amendments would provide for the grandfathering of existing specialist tobacconists into the new licensing scheme and seek to protect them from future regulations that might impose numerical caps or geographical restrictions.

These amendments do not go as far as proposing a separate category of licence, nor do they propose exempting new entrants from the licensing regime. They simply recognise that the small businesses operating lawfully under the current stringent regulatory framework should be neither unnecessarily destabilised by the introduction of a new regime nor gradually extinguished by density or zoning controls designed for different purposes. On this point, it is worth noting that in certain locations—St James’s in London is one example—they form a recognised specialist cluster that is popular with tourists and is not dissimilar in character to Savile Row in the context of the bespoke tailoring.

At a time when small businesses face significant economic pressures, we should be cautious about regulatory layering that risks unintended consequences for niche sectors that do not present the public health harms that this Bill is designed to address.

[Lord Udny-Lister (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to a number of the amendments laid in my name, starting with Amendments 24 and 25. Noble Lords will note that Amendment 24 seeks to establish a national register of tobacco and vape retailers. The reason I am pushing this so strongly is that the national register would strengthen traceability and support our trading standards officers and, importantly, could become a mechanism to strengthen consumer confidence and public reporting of rogue traders, by providing the general public with the means to distinguish legitimate retailers from rogue operators.

As for Amendment 25, noble Lords will hopefully understand the significant challenges that small businesses in this country are facing at this time. Yet here we are, through the Bill, finding yet more ways to strangle our small, legitimate traders with more red tape and more bureaucracy. I, like several people, I am sure, have heard directly from small retailers that many of them do not even bother to report people who carry out smash and grab thefts to the police, due to the time it takes out of their working day.

With these themes in mind, we should be mindful of passing legislation that places new and undue burdens on these small businesses. If we get this wrong, I fear that this legislation unamended would push many small and currently legally trading businesses into the hands of criminal enterprises that are fuelling illicit tobacco and vape trading across the UK. That is why, through Amendment 25, I am asking for the creation of a single digital portal for licence applications and renewals. This digital portal would lessen the burden on businesses, while also enabling greater oversight from enforcement agencies, all the while reducing the risk of administrative errors.

Amendment 31 would enable licensing authorities to suspend or revoke alcohol licences in cases where tobacco or vape licence conditions are persistently breached. Beyond the fact that, in breaching tobacco and vape licensing requirements, the person would fail to meet the definition of a “fit and proper person”, if the Bill is to succeed, it must be based on meaningful economic consequences that hurt and impact illicit trading. Alcohol represents a very significant proportion of convenience store turnover. Linking the two regimes creates a deterrent and uses existing powers under the Licensing Act 2003. If everybody is serious and genuine in their endeavours to protect children through this legislation, we must close this enforcement gap and send a message to those who breach tobacco and vape conditions by deeming them unfit to sell alcohol.

Finally, Amendment 44 seeks to ensure fairness and avoid regulatory arbitrage by ensuring that there is consistency across England and Wales. I seek your Lordships’ consent to apply the same alcohol licence linkage principle in Wales to that which I have proposed for England. That principle is that serious and persistent breaches of tobacco retail conditions should carry real commercial consequences, hitting rogue traders in a way that seeks to gravely disrupt and deter rogue trading.

Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Earl of Lindsay Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 24th February 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[The Earl of Lindsay]

18: Clause 13, page 7, line 2, at end insert—
“(3A) Regulations made under this section may not prohibit the display of tobacco products in any premises, or part of premises—(a) which are exempt from the prohibition on the display of tobacco products under regulations made under the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act 2002, in so far as that exemption relates to specialist tobacconists, or(b) which are operated by a specialist tobacconist.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment, connected to another in the name of the Earl of Lindsay to Clause 14, would preserve the existing exemption for specialist tobacconists from tobacco product display restrictions in England and Wales. Their effect is to ensure that the regulation-making powers in clauses 13 and 14 cannot be used to remove or circumvent that long-standing exemption, whether directly or indirectly through changes to existing display regulations.

[The Earl of Lindsay (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 18, 19, 127, 147, and 192 are in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn. In the absence of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, I declare my support for the spirit of her Amendment 126, although I am seeking to tackle the issue that she is addressing in a slightly different way. I declare an interest as president of the Charter Trading Standards Institute. However, these amendments are not CTSI amendments; they are very much my own.

I have tabled these amendments in a constructive spirit, as part of what I hope will be recognised as a good faith effort to identify an evidence-based, proportionate and workable solution for handmade cigars within the Bill’s existing architecture. As I have previously said, I unequivocally support the Government’s objective of reducing youth smoking and protecting future generations from smoking-related harms. Nothing in this group of amendments seeks to undermine this. It is rather that the proposed amendments seek to ensure that, in pursuing that objective, we do so in a manner that is proportionate, evidence-based and fair to a small number of lawful, specialist businesses.

Handmade cigars are fundamentally distinct from mass-produced tobacco products. They are also fundamentally distinct from mass-produced, lower-priced, machine-made, small format cigars and cigarillos, all of which occupy a very different segment of the market. This distinction matters in market characteristics and, most importantly, in the evidence base relating to youth uptake and public health.

Handmade cigars are artisanal products. They are individually crafted, higher-value, relatively expensive, premium products. They are sold almost exclusively through specialist tobacconists and other distinct retail channels to informed adult consumers. They are not impulse purchases. Of overriding importance is that handmade cigars are not inhaled, and they are consumed infrequently and not habitually. They are often associated with special occasions or celebratory moments, and are an important feature of the UK’s hospitality sector.

There is no credible evidence that handmade cigars contribute to youth uptake or act as a gateway to nicotine addiction. The last time detailed UK data on cigar usage was collected, it was found that the overwhelming majority of cigar smokers were over the age of 25, with most being over the age of 35. Handmade cigars therefore occupy an entirely different segment of the market, in price, consumer profile and usage.

Their production is uniquely different, which brings me to our Amendments 127 and 147. Handmade cigars are low-volume, high-variety, artisanal products, manufactured in small batches, mostly by producers in Latin America and the Caribbean. There are over 1,300 individual product lines, almost all of which are packaged manually. Requiring bespoke standardised packaging specifically for a single market such as the United Kingdom is simply not practical or commercially viable.

As currently drafted, the Bill would enable the Secretary of State to impose the standardised packaging regime to handmade cigars in the same manner as to mass-market cigarettes, et cetera. Such a measure ignores known risk profiles and market characteristics, and certainly does not represent sound evidence-based policy. The certain outcome of this is that handmade cigars would disappear from our market altogether, along with the long-standing specialist retailers whose businesses depend upon them and, of course, their employees.

These two amendments, therefore, would exempt handmade cigars from the retail packaging regime, accompanied by a tightly drawn statutory definition of what constitutes a handmade cigar. They recognise that the policy rationale for plain packaging in the context of high-volume, youth-sensitive products does not translate to artisanal, individually crafted cigars sold in specialist premises to adults. They acknowledge that imposing such measures on the handmade cigar sector is totally disproportionate when there is no evidence of youth uptake, no discernible public health gain, but the strong likelihood of catastrophic operational and economic burdens being placed on small, compliant, law-abiding businesses.

These facts would have become evident had there been a more comprehensive and focused impact assessment. The impact assessment produced by the department, which runs to 164 pages, makes just three mentions of cigars, with no quantification of the likely economic impact to businesses trading in these products, no small and micro-business assessment, and no discussion of alternatives.

In speaking to these amendments, I ask the Minister whether she can confirm that the Government’s response, which has been pending since January 2025, to the call for evidence to inform potential future regulation of standardised tobacco packaging will confirm that handmade cigars will retain their status quo, as exempted from the introduction of plain packaging.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. On Amendments 127 and 147, tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, and Amendment 126, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, I have listened to the points that have been raised by noble Lords, not just today in the Chamber but in engaging outside the Chamber, which I have been pleased to do, and I have listened to the calls for handmade cigars to be exempt from packaging provisions in this legislation.

I remind the House, as I have had to remind noble Lords in other discussions, that the powers to regulate the packaging of all tobacco products are not new; they already exist. They were first introduced under the coalition Government as part of the Children and Families Act 2014. At the time when the powers were introduced, the Government of the time rightly recognised the need to ensure that these powers applied to all tobacco products, future-proofing the legislation, so introducing an exemption for handmade cigars now would weaken what is in effect long-standing legislation. I remind noble Lords that one of the points about the Bill is to bring together legislation that is in other areas into a Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which is what we are doing.

As I have said on a number of occasions, all tobacco products are harmful. That includes cigars and those marketed as premium or handmade. When burned, all tobacco products release toxic compounds that pose a risk to the user. In fact, research has found that some toxicants, including carbon monoxide and certain carcinogens, are higher in cigar smoke than cigarette smoke, and of course the toxicants that are found in tobacco smoke in cigars increase the user’s risk of developing diseases such as cancer, heart disease or respiratory disease. As the four Chief Medical Officers of the UK set out in their technical note to noble Lords, any suggestion that cigars are substantially safer than other tobacco products is not accurate.

Given the health harms of all cigars, it is appropriate that they are in scope of the legislation and that the Government retain our current ability, introduced in 2014, to regulate the packaging of all tobacco products. Moreover, exempting product categories is likely to lead to exploitation by the tobacco industry, which will always find a loophole to exploit. For example, following the ban on menthol cigarettes in 2020, tobacco companies began marketing cigarette-like menthol-flavoured cigarillos.

I shall provide some assistance on the points being raised today. As I said, I have heard concerns from noble Lords about future packaging restrictions that could impact specialist tobacconists more significantly than other retailers, and concerns about potential unfairness arising from that. I can say, as I have said before, that it is absolutely not this Government’s intention for any future packaging requirements to put any small businesses, including specialist tobacconists, out of business. Our intent is that any future packaging regulations make the health harms of these products clear while minimising the impact on businesses.

The noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, asked about future regulation on packaging. If that is to be the case, further impact assessments will be prepared in advance, including the economic impact of any proposed regulations. The policy proposals for any packaging requirements will be a matter for consultation, and all businesses—including, I am sure, specialist tobacconists —will want to respond and will be welcome to. I want also to be clear that the Government will consider the impact any policy proposal has on small businesses, including specialist tobacconists, via future published impact assessments, as I just said. It is important, however, despite these points, that the Government retain their current powers to regulate the packaging of all tobacco products, as any carve-out would potentially create loopholes for exploitation, as other noble Lords have expressed concern about.

Amendment 192 from the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, seeks to maintain the existing exemption to allow individuals to sample cigars and pipe tobacco indoors in an enclosed and ventilated area in a specialist tobacconist shop. The Government are, as noble Lords know, committed to protecting people from the harms of second-hand smoke, which is why we launched a consultation on expanding smoke-free places on 13 February.

On the point the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, made, there are a number of exemptions to the current smoke-free legislation, including an exemption for sampling rooms—not smoking lounges, as the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, referred to—in specialist tobacconists, providing certain criteria are met, as outlined. The Government do not intend to remove this existing exemption for specialist tobacconists. The consultation explicitly states our intention for the exemption to remain.

Finally, Amendments 18 and 19, tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, seek to maintain the existing exemption for specialist tobacconists to display tobacco products. There are several exemptions to the current tobacco display legislation, including an exemption for specialist tobacconists. In England, this allows specialist tobacconists to display tobacco products as long as they are not visible from outside the premises. The Government’s intention is not to remove this existing exemption for specialist tobacconists. This will be reflected when we consult on future display regulations later this year.

It is important that the Bill balances the public health aims with any disproportionate impacts on businesses, including specialist tobacconists. However, we will continue to monitor this niche market to ensure that it is not targeting young people or exploiting the existing exemptions. I hope that, on this basis, the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[The Earl of Lindsay (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the thoughtful answers she has given to the various points my amendments have raised. I am also grateful for the time she allowed for discussions between Committee and Report to understand the issues better; my thanks to her. I am grateful to my noble friends Lord Johnson of Lainston and Lord Kamall for the support they have offered for these amendments.

Before coming back to what the Minister said, I say to the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Northover, that there is quite a lot of confusion over the statistics relating to cigars as a generic category. I remind both of them that my amendments deal solely with handmade cigars, not with cigars as a single generic whole.

As I said, handmade cigars are not inhaled. They are relatively expensive compared with other smoking options. A lot of cigars out there on the market are machine made; some of them are small enough to be cigarillos. The statistics about young people indulging in cigar smoking almost wholly relate to people who are smoking not handmade cigars but other types of cigar.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I am very aware of the hour, but I just had a quick look online and saw “Andrew Tate’s favourite cigars”—exactly the kind of very expensive products that the noble Earl is talking about. That is what is being promoted to young men in particular.

[The Earl of Lindsay (Con)]

I remind the noble Baroness that very expensive cigars are usually unaffordable to young people, which is why the vast majority of cigar smokers are over the age of 25 and most of them are over the age of 35. The statistics bear that out.

I am grateful for all the interest that these amendments have inspired. Most of all, I am grateful to the Minister for the very thoughtful response that she has given and for her undertakings that it is not currently the Government’s intention to remove certain practices that allow the specialist tobacconist sector to continue. These are important because, despite what has been suggested, I re-emphasise that handmade cigars are not inhaled or habitual. They are almost solely associated with occasions such as Christmas and birthday parties and the up-market hospitality venues. For the continued survival of the almost always family-owned specialist tobacconist, continued access to handmade cigars for those types of events and occasions is extremely important to maintain. The Minister’s assurances will be valued by all those in the handmade cigar sector.

Amendment 18 withdrawn.

Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Earl of Lindsay Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th November 2025 Grand Committee

Moved by

[The Earl of Lindsay]

102: Clause 45, page 23, line 5, at end insert “subject to section (Impact assessment before further regulation of certain tobacco products)”

[The Earl of Lindsay (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as president of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, which is relevant to the last group of amendments but not to those I will speak to in this group—namely, Amendments 102, 104 to 106, 108, 109, 112, 156 to 159 and 201. These 12 amendments stand in my name and the names of the noble Lords, Lord Mendelsohn and Lord Fox, who sadly is involved right now in the International Agreements Committee. These amendments are also variously co-sponsored by the noble Lord, Lord Strathcarron, and my noble friend Lord Moylan.

Eight of our 12 amendments propose exempting handmade cigars, pipe tobacco and nasal tobacco, more commonly known as snuff, from the generational sales ban outlined in this Bill, as well as from the broad regulatory powers it grants the Secretary of State concerning plain packaging, other retail packaging and product related requirements. Our remaining four amendments focus on the need for impact assessments. At the outset, I reiterate my support for the Bill’s overarching objective: to prevent the youth uptake of smoking and nicotine products, thereby to protect future generations from the health risks that stem from tobacco addiction.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

The Bill is very focused on the smoke-free generation, but we also know that existing legislation and practice in this country are about not only encouraging people not to take up smoking but helping them to quit. That is the focus of the Bill, not every potential health harm.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Fox and Lady Hoey, the noble Lord, Lord Strathcarron, and other noble Lords referenced what is included, particularly for cigars. I had to remind myself—so I am happy to remind noble Lords—that most of the current legislation on tobacco control, such as the existing age of sale, health warnings and advertising restrictions, is already in place. So the regulation of cigars is not new.

Noble Lords asked about packaging restrictions for cigars. Again, this is not a new concept. Indeed, many countries already go further than the UK and require all tobacco products to be sold in plain packaging. That includes Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Ireland. I say to the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, and the noble Lord, Lord Strathcarron, that any new restrictions will be subject to a consultation process and an accompanying impact assessment.

I move on to heated tobacco and will respond to amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe. There is evidence of toxicity from heated tobacco, and the aerosol generated by heated tobacco also contains carcinogens. There will be a risk to the health of anyone using this product.

Clause 45 gives Ministers the ability to extend the restrictions under Part 1 to cover devices that allow the tobacco products to be consumed. That allows us to adapt to any new products that enter the market and prevent loopholes. I assure noble Lords that there is a duty to consult before making any regulations under this power. As I have mentioned many times before, those regulations will be subject to the affirmative procedure, ensuring an appropriate level of parliamentary scrutiny. Any additional requirements would be overly bureaucratic. Given the known harms of tobacco and the need to protect from any loopholes, I ask noble Lords not to press their amendments in this group.

[The Earl of Lindsay (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who contributed to this group of amendments. I am especially grateful to those who managed to pick up the issues that I had to drop in order to keep to time—such as hospitality and the letter from Caribbean ambassadors to the Prime Minister.

I will respond quickly on one or two issues. The first is definitions, which are really important. That is why this group of amendments seeks to define precisely what a handmade cigar is, for instance; we recognise that loopholes could be exploited. If, when we have reflected further on what has been said today, this comes back on Report, we will look again at just how tightly the definitions can be drawn, as we accept that there is scope for mischief otherwise.

I thank the Minister for the consideration she gave in the various points that she made. I continue to be concerned about the extent to which the UCL study has some use. Even the authors of that report have acknowledged the weaknesses in the methodology that they used. This lies behind the amendments about additional impact assessments. I think I heard the Minister say that, prior to secondary legislation being brought forward, there would be additional or further impact assessments. I welcome that in principle, but one of the amendments tabled said that there should be further impact assessments before the provisions of the Bill—not the secondary legislation but the provisions of the Bill—are applied to the three nominated categories. There is still considerable uncertainty about the exact risks and impacts of these three products.

It is easy to say that all tobacco products are potentially harmful. It is equally easy to say that for all alcohol, sugar et cetera. Those types of products are potentially harmful, but the one word that I used repeatedly in speaking to these amendments, which did not come up at all in the Minister’s response, was “proportionality”. We propose a proportionate approach to the availability of certain OTPs in future.

I am grateful for all the contributions and to the Minister for her response. I beg to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 102 withdrawn.

Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Earl of Lindsay Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Lindsay (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley.

I declare two somewhat different interests. One is as president of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, in which role I welcome the additional £10 million for enforcement that the Minister mentioned. The other, though, is as a cigar lover, and it is in the latter capacity that I am speaking today.

I support any and all efforts to discourage young people from taking up cigarette smoking, but I am disappointed about the inclusion in the Bill of cigars and pipe tobacco, which the Government themselves do not consider to be a significant public health concern. These products differ markedly from cigarettes and rolling tobacco in their consumer base, their usage patterns and their risk profiles. Representing less than 2% of the UK tobacco market, the consumption of handmade cigars is statistically insignificant, leading the ONS to cease data collection in 2016 and the DHSC to ignore it in its 2023 adult smoking habits report.

More pertinently, cigar usage is not prevalent among the 18 to 24 age group, primarily due to its higher cost. The evidence indicates that cigars and tobacco are predominantly used by an older demographic, with 78% of cigar smokers being 35 or older and the average age of a cigar smoker being 52. Usage patterns also diverge significantly, with cigar consumption being occasional, driven by appreciation rather than by nicotine addiction and limited by price and availability.

The most compelling fact is that there is no evidence suggesting that cigars act as a gateway product to cigarette smoking. The lack of data linking cigars to youth uptake of tobacco products, addiction or significant public health harms explains why previous legislation has consistently differentiated cigars from cigarettes in respect of packaging and other requirements. The inclusion of cigars and pipe tobacco in this Bill is therefore at odds with the principles of evidence-based and proportionate regulation. This echoes the concern expressed by my noble friend Lord Howe about proportionality and the balance between personal freedom and health gain.

The Regulatory Policy Committee, among others, raised concerns about the impact assessment, which relies almost entirely on cigarette-related studies, with cigars hardly mentioned and their distinctively different consumer profiles, demographics and levels of risk completely ignored.

The IA also fails to adequately assess the Bill’s impact on businesses specialising in cigars and pipe tobacco. The specialist tobacco sector is composed of over 130 enterprises, supporting 794 jobs. They are mostly small or micro family-run retail businesses, with generations of experience and expertise in the niche and complex supply chains around handmade cigars. Being small-scale and specialist, and with handmade cigars constituting up to 70% of their turnover, these businesses will be facing closure if their primary revenue from cigars begins to dry up.

A considerably more urgent concern for them with the Bill, however, is the proposed power to extend standardised packaging to handmade cigars. Handmade cigars and their packaging are artisan products produced by small manufacturers, mostly in developing countries, with low-volume runs of diverse product lines that are packaged manually. Unlike the highly automated cigarette industry, with a high volume production of limited product variations, the handmade cigar sector has over 2,000 distinct products, with unique packaging for each one. This makes it impossible for producers to accommodate specific packaging for one small market, such as the UK, and extending standardised packaging to handmade cigars would require importers to develop packaging in the UK and repack each cigar manually. That is financially unviable, and a disproportionate requirement compared to other mass-produced tobacco products.

As importers will not be able to meet plain-packaging requirements, choice and supply to retailers and consumers will be dramatically reduced. Consumers will choose to purchase from other markets, leading to the closure of all specialist tobacconists in the UK and the likely loss of nearly 800 jobs within an estimated two to three years. That sounds alarmist but it is based on evidence: in the Republic of Ireland, similar measures in 2017 resulted in specialist tobacconists seeing their sales of boxes of handmade cigars drop from around 70% to zero.

The Bill’s one-size-fits-all approach to tobacco products is, as I have said, at odds with the Government’s own better regulation principles when it comes to cigars and pipe tobacco. There is no clear evidence that they contribute to youth cigarette uptake or to public health issues. It will endanger jobs and businesses without achieving corresponding health benefits. A more intelligent, proportionate and evidence-based approach would be to exempt cigars and pipe tobacco from the Bill and to exempt handmade cigars from plain packaging. Other options that might be considered alongside exemptions could be raising the minimum purchase age of cigars and pipe tobacco to 25 or introducing a five-year post-implementation review to assess the consequences of such exemptions.

Care Quality Commission (Fees) (Reviews and Performance Assessments) Regulations 2016

Earl of Lindsay Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Lindsay (Con)]

My Lords, I want to address some of the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, especially in respect of the need for the Care Quality Commission to minimise the burdens on those it is regulating, including the financial burdens of these proposed regulatory fees, going forward.

I recognise that the CQC cannot be readily excluded from the Government’s full cost recovery policy for the setting of regulatory fees in all sectors. However, I believe that there are opportunities for the CQC’s regulatory inspections to be less burdensome and less costly without compromising robust and effective oversight. This particularly applies in the care sector, where care home providers currently face significant challenges, as we have heard, and the CQC faces significant budgetary pressures.

I am speaking in my capacity as chair of the United Kingdom Accreditation Service, or UKAS, which is the sole national body recognised by government for the accreditation of organisations providing inspection services, as well as certification, testing and calibration. We welcome the active encouragement by this and previous Governments of UKAS accreditation as an alternative to regulation as an intelligent, efficient and effective approach to inspection.

UKAS stands ready to assist all regulators in all sectors which wish to develop a more risk-based approach. This includes the CQC, which has indicated particularly that it plans to inspect adult social care services less often and to concentrate its efforts on providers perceived to pose the greatest risks to their residents, such as those homes that have been inspected by the CQC and given summary ratings for their quality of care of “Inadequate” or “Requires improvement”.

UKAS has been developing expertise and experience in the social care sector, having launched a pilot programme in 2014 for the accreditation of independent inspection companies in the care home sector. It has accredited one organisation, RDB Star Rating, which provides comprehensive ratings of the quality of care homes on the basis of wide-ranging inspections. We expect to accredit a number of similar inspection organisations over the coming months. These organisations all believe that there is an important role in the care home sector for independent quality assurance underpinned by UKAS accreditation. In turn, the part played by UKAS as the national accreditation body is key to this role—I am reminded here of the reference of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, to safeguards and triggers.

To ensure reliability, UKAS will verify that any organisation that it accredits as an inspection body in the social care sector has proven its competence, impartiality, operational capabilities and consistency, and the equivalence of its assessments. Importantly, UKAS also ensures that accredited inspection bodies use standards that map on to those used by the CQC, so that their findings can be drawn on by the CQC in support of its regulatory responsibilities. If the CQC were to take account of the findings from UKAS-accredited inspection bodies as part of its risk-based assessment of services—as it so easily could—that would enable it to have a credible, up-to-date and holistic view of homes, and one in which it could have trust and confidence.