Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Earl of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th November 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I was going to give way to the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, but I will go ahead. I was not intending to speak on this. I also wanted to sign the amendments, but such was the popularity of them that there were too many signatures. I support completely what the noble Earl and the two noble Lords who have spoken have said. I think they have covered practically everything that could be said about this issue. If the Minister is listening—and particularly if her officials in the Department of Health and Social Care, where I expect this has been pushed, are listening—I really cannot see why she would not consider, even at this stage, just dropping the whole thing about cigars.

I am particularly concerned about the issue of cigars and handmade cigars. I really do not understand why this is happening now, after all the years when there has been other legislation about tobacco—cigars have been left out and not included. Parliament has always recognised the unique aspect of this. I would hope that, after this debate in Committee has finished, the Minister will go back and recognise that taking this out now would solve a lot of problems with timing and getting things through quickly, given this whole debate. I would certainly support that.

The Government’s own impact assessment has been mentioned. It does not mention handmade cigars at all, and it mentions cigars very little, so I do not think any of us can really feel that a proper impact assessment has been done on the effects of cigars. I share the concern that has been expressed. I have also seen the letter from the three ambassadors—from the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Cuba—to the Prime Minister. Up until last week, there had not been a response. It was sent on 20 October, and I know that the Prime Minister has been quite busy recently, but I hope that they will get a full response to it, because it is very much going to have an effect. We always say that we care about what is happening to poorer communities across the world, and here we are going to have a situation that, without doubt, will lead to a real effect on smallholder farmers in rural communities. It is also very much a cultural thing in those countries. We should be taking that into account, apart from just the effects.

I have yet to see a 16 year-old, a 14 year-old or a 12 year-old standing around smoking a cigar. Now, maybe I have missed out, and maybe the Minister has seen that. I do not think that this is an issue about age—well, it is, in the sense that it is older people. There is absolutely no doubt about that. Apart from the cost of it, young people do not think of cigars as something that they would want to smoke. So it will make no impact whatever, in my view, on the health situation.

Years ago, in 1968, during my radical student days, I visited Cuba to plant coffee. I never went back to see whether the coffee that we planted actually grew—but we came back from Cuba, and of course in those days I brought lots of Che Guevara T-shirts and Cuban cigars. Sadly, people were more interested in having a present of the Cuban cigars than the Che Guevara T-shirts. So my interest in cigars goes back quite a long way.

But seriously, this proposal is really not sensible. It is not necessary and is not going to affect the health of one single person, but it will really affect those lovely, niche, small tobacco shops. There is one in Belfast, in Church Lane, called Miss Morans, which is visited by tourists because it is tiny and historic—I think it was started in 1870. Those are the kinds of shops that are going to be affected. People will be put out of jobs, not just in the handmade cigar places but in those kinds of shops. It is just not necessary. Although I recognise that the Minister perhaps cannot withdraw the whole clause today and take cigars right out of this, I hope that she will reflect on what has been said today, which is a very strong case for why cigars should not be part of this Bill.

[The Earl of Liverpool (Con)]

My Lords, as this is the first time that I have risen to speak on this Bill, I should immediately declare an interest, as shown in the register: I am a member of the Commons and Lords Pipe and Cigar Club. It may be no surprise to the Grand Committee that I strongly support the amendments that have so far been spoken to.

This is an industry that goes back 6,000 years—some people would say 6,000 but maybe 1,000 years will do. It is a very specialised business and, as my noble friend Lord Johnson said, cigar consumption and the purchase of cigars in this country is of great benefit to our tourist industry. People really do come to look at what we have to offer in St James’s Street and elsewhere. It is a wonderful thing, and I offer my full support to these amendments.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I put my name to some of these amendments, but so much has been said, and so eloquently, that I will speak only briefly in their support. I have no personal interest in this. I used to smoke, but I stopped three years ago. I have never smoked cigars or pipes, and I never took snuff. I probably experimented with all of them at some stage, but they were not for me. So I have no personal interest in this—but I was moved to take an interest in it because of being approached by a neighbour, recently retired from the family business of Hunters & Frankau, which specialises almost exclusively in cigars and is a successful British business that has been around for a long time, bringing pleasure with very little harm to its customers and giving jobs to people in the economy. He and his colleagues pointed out to me that the way in which this Bill operates will be absolutely destructive to their business; they will no longer be able to continue in business as a result of this Bill, for reasons that have been explained by my noble friend Lord Lindsay and other noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. I really do not think that that is what the Government intend.

This measure does not mean that the business will be destroyed. The businesses will be destroyed but not the commerce, because it will still be perfectly legal to buy these things in foreign countries and import them into this country. One can never imagine the French to be so idiotic as to clamp down on a luxury trade that brings custom to their capital—nor the Germans, for that matter. These products will always be available, but the businesses in this country that have operated for such a long time will be reduced to cinders and ashes if the Government do not step back at this stage—I hope the Minister will say that she is willing to do this—and say that they will reconsider this whole question before coming back to the Bill at a later stage.

NHS: Wound Care

Earl of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Liverpool (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Kakkar, if I may call him that. He always speaks with great knowledge on medical matters and I will not be able to follow him down the same path, as I unfortunately have no medical qualifications. I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for enabling us to have this important debate. I am sorry that he is not able to be here with us, as I know he is keenly interested in the subject. I, like other noble Lords, was looking forward to hearing what the noble Lord would have to say but the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, covered his unavoidable absence well and set the scene for tonight’s debate.

I say straightaway that I have no medical background nor any interest to declare in this matter, other than as a somewhat accident-prone individual who has had more than his fair share of injuries and operations where wound care has been an issue. We are told in the briefing papers from the House of Lords Library that the NHS treats an estimated 2.2 million wounds each year, at an estimated cost of £5 billion. Several noble Lords have already mentioned this, but having done the maths I have worked out that it comes out at an average cost per individual wound of £2,300. Quite obviously, this is an extremely costly problem, which we must address. It is imperative that less expensive and more effective ways are found of dealing with these injuries as a matter of urgency; I am sure that we could all agree on that. We are running out of options as far as antibiotics are concerned, and I believe that we need to turn to Mother Nature for help.

I was introduced to the amazing healing properties of one product in nature’s armoury some 25 years ago, while taking on the somewhat ambitious project of building a house on a remote hillside 1,500 feet up on the Greek island of Samos. I was being helped by four or five locals from the nearby village and work was progressing well, until I stumbled and cut my hand quite badly. One of the men dashed off into the forest nearby and came back, moments later, with several pine tree branches. He proceeded to milk them of their sap, which he then used to completely cover the wound. It was then bandaged with an old shirt—I hope noble Lords are keeping up. I never had to go to hospital or have any other intervention. After three more applications of pine sap over the course of a week, the wound had completely healed and there was no scar tissue. I have since looked up the healing properties of pine sap on the internet and discovered that it is not only antiseptic but an anti-inflammatory.

Since then, another even more extraordinary product of Mother Nature has come to my attention, and that is honey. My noble friend Lord Colwyn spoke persuasively and movingly about this when he mentioned reactive oxygen, but in fact the main component of the product I will talk about is honey. I said a little earlier that I am somewhat prone to accidents, and honey has now supplanted pine sap as my wonder potion. My noble friend Lady Harding, who sadly is not in her place tonight, first told me about it as she had had astonishingly successful results from applying manuka honey to the badly injured leg of one of her horses. I thought that I had better try it myself and I subsequently used manuka honey to good effect on burns and cuts.

More recently, I have been using Surgihoney reactive oxygen. This can be bought on the internet and rapidly destroys the bacteria that cause wound infection, including MRSA. It can be used for all stages of healing on a wide range of acute and chronic wound types including leg ulcers, pressure injuries, burns and surgical wounds. The Surgihoney website has a 20-minute video on it, which I venture to recommend to anyone with an interest in this subject. It shows the near-miracle healing properties of this product.

My question to my noble friend the Minister arises from an Answer that the then Minister, my noble friend Lord Prior, gave to a Written Question from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. It was answered on 10 March 2016 when my noble friend Lord Prior said:

“In order to progress this work, from April 2016 a new NHS Clinical Evaluation Team will be put in place. The Clinical Evaluation Team will assess wound care products through a comprehensive evaluation process, which will have extensive engagement with NHS clinical staff”.


Can my noble friend the Minister assure me that that NHS clinical evaluation team will include, or is including, Surgihoney reactive oxygen as one of the products in its wound care assessment? I will quite understand if he is unable to answer this evening, but a letter in due course would be much appreciated.