Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Debate between Lord Mawson and Baroness Walmsley

Report stage
Tuesday 3rd March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mawson (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Young. Supporting a smoke-free society is the right direction of travel, in my view, but I also worry about contact with reality.

A road map should also include the potential unintended consequences of cannabis smoking in a smoke-free country, with real targets and interventions. Walk across London and other towns and cities and smell the cannabis smoking on every street corner. People are breaking the law, with the police doing virtually nothing about it.

Cannabis has profound long-term health implications in the young. Some of us have worked in this space and have to deal with them. What are the unintended consequences of the Bill for the uptake of cannabis smoking among the next generation? I ask the Minister: what work have the Government done on the unintended consequences of this policy, and what do they plan to do about the potential uptake and increase in cannabis smoking, and the increase in illicit dealing on our streets?

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young, for tabling Amendment 202, to which I have added my name. It would require the Government to publish, every five years, a road map to a smoke-free country: in other words, a plan for the event rather than a review after it.

There are two essential components to achieving a smoke-free country. The first is that no one should start smoking at all. I hope that the Bill will successfully achieve that over time; the Government have shown great ambition in this area. The second component is that all current smokers are supported to quit, so that everyone stops. On this second part, the Government have been a little quieter, until recently. We have heard about the recent success of targets met for the number of pregnant women smoking at the time of delivery: I think it has gone down by half. However, the rates for other groups remain stubbornly high and we are not seeing the same targeting interventions. We need to ensure that we have this type of focus, energy and commitment with other groups, where we know that smoking rates are higher. Plans for these groups could be located in the road map being proposed.

For example, mental health is a key priority area for the Liberal Democrats. There is a dual causal relationship between smoking and mental health: if you smoke, it increases your chances of developing mental health conditions and, if you already have a mental health condition, you are more likely to smoke. Nearly half of those with a serious mental illness in England smoke, alongside a quarter of people with depression or anxiety, compared with 11.6% of the general population. High rates of smoking in this population have a disastrous impact on physical health, particularly for those with a serious mental health illness who, on average, live 15 to 20 years less than someone without. It is estimated that smoking accounts for about two-thirds of this reduced life expectancy.

The pervasive false narrative that smoking somehow alleviates mental health symptoms urgently needs to be addressed, as it creates so many challenges when we are trying to support these smokers to quit. If the Government are going to publish a strategy, a dedicated section on how they will bring down smoking rates in this group would be extremely welcome and needed. I welcome the Government’s concession that vaping vending machines should be allowed in secure adult mental health settings; this should certainly help this population to quit.

Amendment 206, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, would require the Government to publish a review of the Bill. I welcome government Amendment 205, which does something similar but with a lot less granularity. However, would the Minister give us a little more information about where the Government will get their evidence to underpin the review? Can she assure the House that that evidence will be independent and not influenced by any lobbying or so-called evidence put before the Government by big tobacco, or anybody else who would benefit from slowing down the elimination of smoking in the UK?

The intent of this review should be to support the legislation. As several noble Lords have said, the smoke-free generation is a novel policy and we need to demonstrate the impact and evaluate implementation to encourage other countries to follow. There are also many regulations on the way, along with those from other government departments, on nicotine products. A clear analysis of how these policies will work together would be very welcome.

However, the review must not be viewed as a sunset on the smoke-free generation, and I would welcome comments from the Minister on what, at this point, we know will not be in the Government’s review. For example, the Bill’s impact assessment notes that many of the health impacts of the rising age of sale will not be seen for 10 years, so we should be mindful that this part of the Bill is playing a very long game. There may be early data that we are on the right track and the review will perhaps be able to look at compliance, retailer feedback and all the other things that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, mentioned. I feel that much of this falls into the scope of her Amendment 207.

Finally, Amendments 91, 120, 201 and 216, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, raise concerns about the Bill’s implementation in Northern Ireland. I have been reassured by the Government’s response to the TRIS process, which lays out in some detail their response to the concerns raised, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Forbes of Newcastle, mentioned, the legal opinion published in the Daily Mail was commissioned by the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association. Without seeing it, I cannot really comment other than to say it is not surprising that the industry is laying the ground for future legal challenges. It is, as we know, highly litigious and wants to chill the appetite for tobacco control globally. It all goes to show, I suppose, that if you put two lawyers into a room, you get three opinions. There are, as we have heard from the Minister on other occasions, other legal opinions out there that say that the Bill is compatible, but I leave the noble Baroness to answer for those concerns. However, I support the Government to press on with this vital public health legislation, and to plan it and review it as required.

Health and Care Bill

Debate between Lord Mawson and Baroness Walmsley

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Tuesday 11th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mawson (CB)]

My Lords, I was one of the people, along with Paul Brickell, who wrote for Hazel Blears the structure for the Olympic Park Legacy Company. I was involved in that project from day one—along with Lord Rogers, who, sadly, has recently died—and for 19 years. We thought a lot about this question because, in east London, we had to engage with six different boroughs around the 248-hectare Olympic Park. We knew that if we simply brought together representatives, many of whom did not have good working relationships or the necessary practical skills, to deliver that project, we would have another Olympic failure on our hands.

The structure that we wrote for Hazel Blears at that time suggested that we needed to bring the right people together for that project: for example, Keith Edelman, who had just successfully built the Arsenal stadium might be a rather important person to have on the board because he understood the detail about stadiums and how you run them—and we were about the build a half-a-billion-pound one. Or perhaps we would need someone like Nick Bitel, who had set up the London Marathon and knew something about sport and the politics of sport; I discovered a great deal about how complicated all that actually was. Or we might need on the board the most successful Labour mayors in that area—Sir Robin Wales of Newham and the mayor of Hackney.

I am very supportive of what the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, is saying. We built a team of the right people to ensure that we delivered a serious legacy on that 248 hectares in east London. I suggest that noble Lords go and have a look at what happened as a result. Empowering the chairman to choose the right team with the right skill set is absolutely crucial if we are to transform the NHS and make it fit for purpose in this century.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I wonder if I may make a slight clarification; I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, will agree with me. It is not that we believe that the people who we specify should be representatives of the sectors from which they come. Rather, given the functions of NHS England, the three of us who have signed this amendment feel that those with background knowledge of the sectors that are absolutely key to the success of NHS England should be on the board. They would be there not as representatives behaving in a unitary way, as the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, said, but having the background knowledge and information that can be shared with the rest of the board to make decisions.