Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Debate between Lord Stevens of Birmingham and Lord Bethell

Report stage
Tuesday 24th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of Cancer Research UK. Given that smoking continues to be the single biggest cause of cancer, it will not be a surprise that I oppose the amendments in this group, which would substantially weaken this landmark legislation. In explaining why, I will respond to each of the six points made by the noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth.

First, the noble Lord argued that we do not need more tobacco control legislation anyway because smoking rates are already coming down. That is not correct; Javed Khan has pointed out that, among the most deprived parts of the country, on current trends we will not be smoke-free until 2044. In any event, some in the tobacco industry have come to the same conclusion. I quote from an advert that Philip Morris took out in the New Statesman, no doubt designed to influence people such as us: “Here in the UK, smoking rates are not declining fast enough. None of the home nations are on course to hit their smoke-free dates, and the most deprived communities are lagging significantly behind”. The suggestion that we can just assume that the status quo will produce a benign outcome is incorrect.

The noble Lord’s second argument was that, rather than having a generational tobacco sales restriction, we should instead just move towards delaying the age at which smoking can be initiated to 21. The tobacco industry would doubtless switch its efforts to targeting twenty-somethings instead of teenagers. On the surprising claims we have heard in respect of the behaviour down the decades of Gallaher or British American Tobacco, I simply say to noble Lords: google their internal documents. They have all been disclosed as a result of international treaties and court cases, and noble Lords will see the systematic duplicity, bribery and corruption that has continued across the world in advancing big tobacco’s agenda. Those documents, the internal files, are there: noble Lords can check them out for themselves.

The noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth, referred to the Republic of Ireland as an example we should perhaps be following, when it proposed to adopt the age of 21. However, the director of the tobacco industry-funded front organisation FOREST said of the effect of adopting the age of 21 as a tobacco sales restriction:

“If you’re not careful, you’re actually going to make smoking … fashionable again. You’re going to actually encourage young people to smoke”,


on the back of this proposed sales restriction to over 21 year-olds.

The third argument we heard was about the black market. For reasons that are a non sequitur, we have several times heard cited the example of Australia. The amendments in this group relate to changes to the age of sale. There has been no change in the age of sale in Australia. As far as I am aware, it is still 18 and has been for 30 years. So, whatever else is going on in Australia, it has got nothing to do with the amendments in this group in respect of age of sale. In fact, the Australian example tells us that you need rigorous enforcement. Until very recently, there was no retail licensing available for New South Wales, Victoria or Queensland, covering about 70% of the Australian population, and it has only been patchily introduced subsequently.

There is agreement that we need strong enforcement to deal with the illicit trade, but the argument that we should essentially do whatever it takes to maximise revenue for the Exchequer is a flawed one. If that were the case, as we have heard from other noble Lords, we would be legalising and licensing handguns, assault weapons, fentanyl or crack cocaine. The fact is that, when it comes to tobacco control policy, it is not the Laffer curve that we should focus on, it is the life expectancy curve.

The fourth argument has been around the impact on retailers. I accept that there are legitimate concerns, and the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, has rightly drawn attention to the epidemic of violence and also noted the provisions that will be in the Crime and Policing Bill as one step to attempt to tackle this. But the fact is that the progressive age of sale restrictions in the Bill are an evolutionary measure that will be phased over many years, giving retailers much opportunity to adjust. There are substitutes that they can sell, including vapes, as alternatives to smoked tobacco. Surely, nobody is suggesting that the trump argument should be that we need to sustain the margins of retailers at the expense of 80,000 people who die prematurely from smoking every year.

The fifth argument we heard was around the Windsor Framework. It is fair to say that alternative legal opinions are available. Member states are free to determine the age limit that they see as appropriate on their territory. This does not constitute a trade restriction within the meaning of the EU treaties. In any event, even if a court found that it did, it could be justified on public health grounds. Perhaps the Minister can confirm that the Bill has the support of Northern Irish Health Ministers and that legislative consent has been received from the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Lastly, we come back to the liberty argument: the freedom of unborn smokers to become addicted in decades to come. Well, those of us who take the opposite view judge that this is a proportionate response to a great harm. It is a novel piece of legislation; we will need to see how it plays out in practice. One of the government amendments that will be before us on Report will be precisely a report on its real-world effects in the coming years. In the meantime, to weaken what has the potential to be one of the most fundamental health-improving pieces of legislation this Parliament has ever enacted would in my judgment be a grave error.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, who gave a pretty good summary of many of the arguments against this group of amendments. I join him in all that he said. My fundamental motive is twofold. First, I would like to see the eradication of smoking in this country. That is a vision that we should embrace and be proud of. Just kicking the can and putting up the age limit, as this group of amendments seeks to do, would simply extend a very large and unfair addiction that kills two-thirds of its users and that we could all do without.

Secondly, I am very proud that my party was leading on this issue and brought about the generational ban. I remind noble Lords to have a moment of self-awareness. This is a measure that is massively supported by voters, taxpayers, smokers, Conservatives, retailers and even by the tobacco companies which, at least in this country, have a notional commitment to the eradication of smoking. You can judge whether to take that at face value, but that is at least their rhetorical position. So it seems out of date for my noble friends Lord Murray and Lord Naseby to be stalwarts for the permanent establishment of smoking in the face of such opposition.

Health and Care Bill

Debate between Lord Stevens of Birmingham and Lord Bethell

Committee stage
Friday 4th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Schedule 17 generally and in support of Amendment 244 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. In doing so, I declare my wife’s interest as a board director of Tesco and Diageo.

I will focus my comments on the amendments supported by my noble friends Lord Vaizey and Lord Moylan. In doing so, I seek to address all the amendments they have put forward, which seek to: extend the implementation period for the new restrictions; introduce brand advertising exemptions; and bring in effectiveness reviews and sunset clauses, and all the other clauses that seek to water down the really important measures in the Bill on junk food advertising. I recognise that the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, has already gone through some of these amendments in detail, so I do not want to go through that again. However, I am aware that my noble friend Lord Vaizey and other noble Lords have brushed off the Government’s obesity strategy as wrong-headed and doomed; indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has shared his view that the measures in the Bill are disproportionate.

I want to reflect for a moment on what we are trying to do here. As a country, we have got into a situation where, by every measure, we are seriously overweight. The worst affected are our children. We have heard, both in this debate and many times in this Chamber, that two in five children are overweight. The worst-affected children are the poorest children, who are twice as likely to be overweight. In thinking about the environment our children are being brought up in—this question of environment is absolutely critical—what are our values as a nation if we knowingly create an environment that encourages children to develop addictions to foods that we know will hurt them, adversely affect their moods, hold back their learning, reduce their self-worth and damage their health for years to come?

Through the pandemic, we have seen that now is the time to lean into this ongoing national disaster. The measures in this Bill are necessary because they are an essential condition for an overall change in the direction of travel of childhood obesity prevalence. The challenge is going from an increase in the weight of our children of around 1% per year to a decrease of 4.2% per year. That is an astonishing mission and a massive challenge. No country has ever undertaken such a thing.

However, I am not convinced that we can just hope that our primary schools will do all the heavy lifting to achieve this. Somehow, as a country, we have to change the way in which we run our lives. This will require a change in the environment in which our children learn about, engage with and buy food—and that includes the media they consume. If we fail, for every year that this is not achieved, the rate of change needed in future years will grow, and thousands more children will be exposed to the physical and mental health impacts of obesity.

The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, talked eloquently about how, 20 years ago, the Hastings report had this research nailed. There is now a sense of urgency, which is why these measures are needed. It is why we cannot seek to extend the implementation periods for new restrictions; this will just drag them out indefinitely and undermine the seriousness of the programme. It is why we cannot give brand advertising an exemption that clearly leaves the door wide open for the same old advertising in different ways. It is why we should not commit to effectiveness reviews that will become a rear-guard action to unpick these regulations, nor commit to sunset clauses that will give industry false hope that somehow the Government will just give up on these measures or the problem will go away.

To reach the 2030 target, it is absolutely crucial that the Government continue with these plans to restrict junk food advertising on TV and—as the noble Viscount rightly said—online, and do not waste any more time. It is also crucial that we introduce fiscal measures to speed up reformulation at the same time, making healthy eating more accessible to everyone. It is absolutely clear from our data that any delay in action or the implementation of proposals to address childhood obesity will have a significant impact on the ability of the Government to achieve their ambition. More children will grow ill and live shorter lives.

I hear—loudly and clearly—the concerns of my noble friends Lord Vaizey and Lord Moylan, and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. I hear their concerns about the science, the research and the public health epidemiology that underpin these measures. I do not agree with their scepticism but I do hear their concerns, so let me pick off a couple of them.

My noble friend Lord Vaizey expressed scepticism about the effectiveness of these measures. He is right that these advertising restrictions will not work on their own. Obesity is a complex issue and no one single policy can solve it. However, small steps matter. It can take as little as 46 extra calories a day for children to gain excess weight, and seeing just one minute of HFSS adverts leads to children eating an extra 14 calories a day on average.

As I said earlier, this question of environment is absolutely critical. I accept that we need population-level structural policies to address the social and economic drivers of obesity, to then address the growing inequalities between the most and the least-deprived children. That is why the levelling-up White Paper earlier this week that tackles housing, education, deprivation and many other aspects of British life was critical to this debate and forms the context in which we should discuss these measures. It is also why my noble friend should not feel that the broadcast and food industries are in some way being uniquely scapegoated. This is a national programme that will touch on many lives.

My noble friends are right to express concerns about the fortune of the broadcast and internet industries, two jewels in Britain’s creative industries and employers that drive local economies. I want to reassure them. I once worked in the media industry and have not forgotten the intense competition for advertising and the existential battle with big tech, but my noble friend Lord Vaizey spoke as if many of these companies would find that all communication by these companies on all their products to all their target markets would somehow be terminated forthwith and that the British public service broadcast industry would be thrown into destitution. That is just not quite right. Cancer Research UK found that ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky One derive a small proportion—just 8% of their total ad revenue—from adverts for HFSS foods.

It is true that almost two-thirds of HFSS product adverts aired between 6 and 9 pm fall within the category that UKHSA has identified as the highest contributors of sugar calories in people’s diets, a fact that I found quite alarming, but under a 9 pm watershed broadcasters would have lost only 5% of their total advertising revenue if all HFSS adverts were removed completely, without anything in their place. Noble Lords should know that over three-quarters—79%—of potential revenue loss from removing HFSS adverts could be mitigated against by companies advertising their existing non-HFSS products instead of promoting their HFSS products. Healthy foods can still be advertising.

It is just not right to call these measures appalling and crude or ridiculous and blunt. To change the environment in which our children make decisions about food is critical for this national mission, and to contribute to a campaign to improve the health of children is a commendable aspiration for these government measures.

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

My Lords, perhaps channelling the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, from this morning, I congratulate the Government on including in the Bill these measures to tackle childhood obesity. As we have heard, with one in four children not just overweight but clinically obese, we are storing up huge problems for the future because we know that what starts in childhood continues into adulthood. In that sense, diet is destiny. Unfortunately, obesity is the new smoking. We know that it is the cause of avoidable heart attacks, strokes, 13 different types of cancer, and respiratory disease, and causes a far higher risk of dying from Covid. Clearly action is needed, and the Bill makes a start.

If anything, these measures, which are certainly proportionate, may be overly targeted. Some of the criticisms levelled at the Bill should have given rise to amendments to extend its scope to deal with some of the loopholes or to level the playing field into other digital aspects that people are concerned about. That would have been a constructive response to legitimate concerns. Instead, I cannot help feeling that this morning we have heard from opponents who are simultaneously arguing that the measures in the Bill go too far and at the same time will not be effective enough, and to ensure that this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy they have included amendments which would essentially fillet the Bill of its active ingredients.

These are familiar tactics. This is the tactic of deny, dilute and delay. The first is denying, claiming to us as parents that ads and marketing make little meaningful difference to kids’ consumption; but on the other hand we have companies—presumably rational economic actors—spending maybe hundreds of millions of pounds every year on the basis that exactly the opposite is true. Like Schrödinger’s cat, which is simultaneously dead and alive, it seems that junk food advertising and marketing simultaneously does and does not work. What is at stake here is not quantum physics but the physical and mental health of millions of children.