Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Drefelin, for the wonderful work she has done as chief executive of the Breast Cancer Campaign, fighting cancer there, and for her wise words in this Chamber of Parliament here today. My concern with the Bill is that we might not hear those wise words—or anyone else’s wise words —in Parliament again, since the Government in this Bill are taking so many powers away and delegating them to Ministers.

Like every other Member who has spoken, I generally support the thrust of the Bill. As we know, the last Conservative Government introduced a similar Bill with these generational restrictions, and which many people thought were possibly unenforceable. The new Government have also reintroduced it with the generational powers, which again may be possibly unenforceable.

My main concern about the Bill are the unacceptable parts with excessive amounts of parliamentary scrutiny being taken away and given to Ministers and others in the delegated powers. As has been said by others, the previous Bill had 33 delegated powers and this one has 66. Some are repeats of the same powers, duplicated for Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England but, nevertheless, the extent of the delegated powers is a slap in the face for the report from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, Democracy Denied? The urgent need to rebalance power between Parliament and the Executive, which was praised by the current Government.

In that report, we warned about the four major abuses we increasingly see in legislation—but this Bill has every sin we warned against. It has 17 Henry VIII powers, enabling Ministers to change Acts of Parliament, avoiding proper parliamentary scrutiny. It has skeleton clauses saying that Ministers can create offences on a range of topics and set a maximum penalty. That is not good enough. Any and all criminal offences should be set out in detail in primary legislation.

It has subdelegation of powers. It is bad enough that Ministers have been given excessive delegated powers, but some clauses permit subdelegation of these powers to other organisations. Clause 104 simply says:

“Regulations under this Part may confer discretions”.


There is identical wording in paragraph 10 of Schedule 1 and local authorities are given carte blanche to invent their own licensing conditions without Parliament ever looking at one word of them. At least with statutory instruments there is a slim chance that Parliament can debate them, but not when the power to make these laws is delegated to some other body.

The Delegated Powers Committee also slammed the increasing trend for disguised legislation, where the Minister issues guidance which everyone must have regard to. This is a way to get round making a statutory instrument, which of course might get some Parliamentary scrutiny. Technically and legally, the words “must have regard to” are not compulsory, but they can only be disregarded if the target organisation or persons can show exceptionally good reasons not to follow them, which is a heavy bridge to cross. Of course, all government information when the guidance is issued gives the impression that it must be followed on pain of death—we have that here also in Schedule 1.

We have heard from every noble Lord today that there is a justifiable case to add more restrictions to the sale of tobacco and vapes. If that is the case, the myriad offences in the Bill should be set out in detail and not hidden. Let us justify what the Government are doing in legislation.

I leave it to other noble Lords to point out the difficulties of enforcement of the age and generations restrictions, not least the thousands of extra inspectors who may be required and the impossibility of retailers checking the ages of people between their twenties and thirties, thirties and forties, and forties and fifties. Two weeks ago, I was in the Little Waitrose down Victoria Street, and a lady in front of me was stopped at the till because they wanted to check her age for a bottle of Nyetimber champagne that she was buying. She said, “I’m in my forties”, but the assistant said they needed to check her age. The rather elegant lady in her forties had some choice language to give to the Waitrose staff who wanted to check the age of a lady who was obviously older than 21. That is just in a professional Waitrose store; I shudder to think of what will happen in the thousands of little retailers around the country.

I conclude with a word about the illicit market. Illicit is not counterfeit, but real cigarettes made by legitimate companies in Romania, say, and intended for the Romanian market or other eastern European markets—where there may be no duty or taxes—are being brought here illegally. It is massive, and this Bill will add to it. In 2023, one in four cigarettes consumed was illicit—that is 6.7 billion cigarettes—losing HMRC £3 billion per annum. Every single expert, and everyone in the tobacco companies, says that this Bill will further boost this dodgy market. My concern is not around the potential loss of revenue to HMRC but that 25% of cigarettes are able to be sourced illegally in pubs around the country.

We have a Bill with excessive powers and with large parts that are possibly unenforceable; it will lose the Government money and give young people a way to get cigarettes illegally in any case. Although I support the Bill, I hope that we will explore these issues in Committee.