Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness and to hear her bring her considerable expertise to bear on this Bill.

I am a smoker. At least, I think I am. I certainly smoked in the womb; my mother smoked when she was pregnant with me. I smoked as a teenager and I smoked through my twenties, my thirties and my forties. Like every smoker, I yearned to give up. I went cold Turkey, I used nicotine patches, I turned to vapes— I tried everything. Five or six years ago, I switched to heated tobacco, and that works for me. I am told by Philip Morris who makes the IQOS products that I smoke that I am not a smoker, because I am not ingesting tobacco smoke. In fact, I have taken such a great interest in this issue that I visited the Philip Morris labs in Switzerland and met some of the people who are doing the research on heated tobacco, as I have declared in the register of interests. I am a user of the IQOS products—but I ask myself, as I ask all noble Lords, am I a smoker?

It has made me think about the purpose of this Bill. The important question for me as a layman to ask the experts is what are we trying to ban? I think everyone agrees that, in a perfect world, we should ban cigarettes. Cigarettes are a vector for nicotine, but they are extraordinarily destructive, as we all know. Burning tobacco is a very convenient way to get nicotine, and also to kill oneself eventually. Nobody disputes that at all. But are we trying to ban cigarettes or smoking? What do we mean by smoking? Are we trying to ban all tobacco products or nicotine? These are important questions. There is an argument which says that people should be able to access nicotine if it can be done in a safe way. Maybe someone will tell me that this is absolute rubbish, that nicotine is very dangerous, and that we should do everything we can to eradicate it. Maybe one should be allowed to access nicotine via tobacco, provided that it can be accessed in a safe way, but maybe the experts will tell me that it cannot be done.

I fully accept that measures which appeared unpopular at the time have had a huge and good impact on smoking. I have a fond memory of voting against the Labour Government in 2006 when they were tightening up their legislation on banning outside smoking. The only reason why my memory is so fond is that, as I went through the No Lobby, John Reid, who was then a Cabinet Minister, walked past me and thanked me for voting for the Labour manifesto. The original proposals in the Labour manifesto were being taken further by the Government. There were huge rows about the impact on communities. I find it unimaginable now that I was able to smoke on an aeroplane, in the Tube, and so on and so forth. I fully support that ban.

There are questions to ask. Let us look at Sweden, which describes itself as smoke free. Some 5.4% of its population smoke cigarettes—the lowest in Europe—but 22% use this thing called snus. I grant that the Swedish can be odd. This is basically tobacco put into the mouth. Sweden has the lowest rate of lung cancer in Europe, but I do not know from the people who briefed me whether it has the highest rate of mouth cancer. I would love to know. Is Sweden a success story from the perspective of this Bill, or does it remain a complete basket case and a disaster?

I went to Philip Morris to find out more about their product. I met the people working on it, which included a former academic molecular biologist, a neuroscientist who has worked in public health for 25 years and a physiologist who has spent his entire life fighting addictions and coming up with drugs to combat things such as opioid addiction. I want to say something controversial: a lot of the tone of this debate looks backward at the sins of the big tobacco. It does not perhaps acknowledge—though that might be too kind a word—that big tobacco has perhaps moved forward in terms of heated tobacco.

As we debate the Second Reading, the question for the House is what are we trying to get rid of—cigarettes, tobacco, nicotine or smoking?

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin (Lab)]

My Lords, I am delighted to participate in this Second Reading debate. I feel pretty clear about what we are trying to do here. This is a forward-looking Bill. It is about creating opportunities for the future, to have the next generations come through free from the dreadful impacts of tobacco on their lives. The Bill is about reducing the harms associated with tobacco and taking a broad view about that. I can understand why a trip to William Morris would—

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

Philip Morris.

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin (Lab)]

Philip. I should not say William Morris, I rather like William Morris. I understand why such a trip would prompt these questions, which is what we are trying to do. I think the Bill is forward-looking, focused, proportionate and well balanced.

I want to talk, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, did very movingly, about the impact that smoking has had on my family. I do not know whether I would define myself as a smoker. I certainly smoked when I was a rebellious teenager, but my family was terribly affected by the impact of smoking. My father was diagnosed with lung cancer when I was a teenager, which caused immense hardship for my family, propelled me and my sisters on to the free school meals list, queuing up with all the other children in the special school meal queue in the way we used to in the past. Both my parents went on to die prematurely of smoking-related cancer. It has been a terrible blight on my family and many thousands of families in this country. So, I am hugely in favour of the Bill.

I have enjoyed listening to colleagues from all sides of the House looking back at the journey we have been on to get here, the different debates we had in 2006 that looked at advertising and so on. We have come such a long way and it has been in the face of enormous opposition. To add my anecdote to the journey, when I first came into this House in 2004, smoking cigars and pipes in the Peers’ Guest Room was considered absolutely acceptable. As the day went by, you might bring a guest in and gradually the height of the smoke would descend to such a level that by about 5 pm you could not go in there without a gas mask. We have seen such an enormous amount of progress in tackling the blight of tobacco.

People think that tobacco—smoking—just affects the lungs, but I served as the chief executive of a breast cancer charity for a few decades and, over those years, I have seen the evidence building to show that smoking causes breast cancer as well as lung cancer and all the other impacts that we know about. Cancer Research UK now says that it causes around 2,200 breast cancers a year. So, we need to be mindful that evidence is unfolding all the time about the impact of smoking on our health.

We have heard that around four in 10 cancers in the UK are preventable and the biggest step forward we could take to prevent cancers would be to reduce cancers caused by smoking. We know that vaping, as we have heard, provides important assistance to those who want to quit smoking, and it is absolutely right that the Bill takes that into account. We know that a lot of the marketing and so on, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, so clearly demonstrated, is targeted at children.

I close by saying that I fully support those aspects of the Bill. I really congratulate the Government on taking seriously the terrible issues around single-use vapes. Only two weeks ago, I was in a children’s playground looking after a great-nephew. He said to me, “Do you know what? You can find a red box that can make smoke come out of your mouth—sweet smoke. It’s really great”. He is six, and he found a single-use vape in the bushes in the park and had a go on it. We do not want to see that as the norm in our society. This Bill is about the future and the kind of future that we want for our young people—I support it wholeheartedly.