Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Debate between Tim Loughton and Andrea Leadsom

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes such a powerful point and speaks with such authority. Similar points were made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), who as a paediatrician spoke with great expertise on this matter. It is absolutely true: it is a false choice. It is not a freedom of choice; it is a choice to become addicted and that then removes your choice.

Every year, more than 100,000 children aged between 11 and 15 light their first cigarette. What they can look forward to is a life of addiction to nicotine, spending thousands of pounds a year, making perhaps 30 attempts to quit, with all the misery that involves, and then experiencing life-limiting, entirely preventable suffering. Two thirds of them will die before their time. Some 83% of people start smoking before the age of 20, which is why we need to have the guts to create the first smoke-free generation across the United Kingdom, making sure that children turning 15 or younger this year will never be legally sold tobacco. That is the single biggest intervention that we can make to improve our nation’s health. Smoking is responsible for about 80,000 deaths every year, but it would still be worth taking action if the real figure were half that, or even a tenth of it.

There is also a strong economic case for the Bill. Every year, smoking costs our country at least £17 billion, far more than the £10 billion of tax revenue that it draws in. It costs our NHS and social care system £3 billion every year, with someone admitted to hospital with a smoking-related illness almost every minute of every day, and 75,000 GP appointments every week for smoking-related problems. That is a massive and totally preventable waste of resources. For those of us on this side of the House who are trying hard to increase access to the NHS and enable more patients to see their GPs, this is a really good target on which to focus. On the positive side, creating a smoke-free generation could deliver productivity gains of nearly £2 billion within a decade, potentially reaching £16 billion by 2056, improving work prospects, boosting efficiency and driving the economic growth that we need in order to pay for the first-class public services that we all want.

I know that hon. Members who oppose the Bill are doing so with the best of intentions. They argue that adults should be free to make their own decisions, and I get that. What we are urging them to do is make their own free decision to choose to be addicted to nicotine, but that is not in fact a choice, and I urge them to look at the facts. Children start smoking because of peer pressure, and because of persistent marketing telling them that it is cool. I know from experience how hard it is, once hooked, to kick the habit. I took up smoking at the age of 14. My little sister was 12 at the time, and we used to buy 10 No. 6 and a little book of matches and —yes—smoke behind the bicycle shed, and at the bus stop on the way home from school. [Interruption.] Yes, I know: I am outing myself here.

Having taken up smoking at the age of 14, I was smoking 40 a day by the age of 20, and as a 21st birthday present to myself I gave up. But today, 40 years later—I am now 60, so do the maths—with all this talk of smoking, I still feel like a fag sometimes. That is how addictive smoking is. This is not about freedom to choose; it is about freedom from addiction.

There is another angle. Those in the tobacco industry are, of course, issuing dire warnings of unintended consequences from the raising of the age of sale. They say that it will cause an explosion in the black market. That is exactly what they said when the age of sale rose from 16 to 18, but the opposite happened: the number of illicit cigarettes consumed fell by a quarter, and at the same time smoking rates among 16 and 17-year-olds in England fell by almost a third. Raising the age of sale is a tried and tested policy, and a policy that is supported not only by a majority of retailers—which, understandably, has been mentioned by a number of Members—but by more than 70% of the British public.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

If I had known that my right hon. Friend was such a keen smoker, I would not have recruited her to the Conservative party at the tender age of 18 when we were at university.

I have always taken a free-choice approach to health matters, and as shadow Children’s Minister I had to lead on both the tobacco advertising ban and the public smoking ban. We were wrong to oppose them. Who would now think it remotely normal for people to be able to smoke around us in restaurants and other public places? Does my right hon. Friend not agree that in a few years’ time this measure will seem just the same as banning smoking in public places, and people will ask why we did not do it earlier?

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

As I have said ever since I met my hon. Friend at the age of 18, he is always right. I can never disagree with him.

I want to say a few even more furious words about vaping. It is just appalling to see vapes being deliberately marketed to children at pocket-money prices and in bright colours, with fun packaging and flavours like bubble gum and berry blast, and with the vape counter right next to the sweet counter.

Online Safety Bill

Debate between Tim Loughton and Andrea Leadsom

Report stage
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda). I congratulate him on his moving tribute to his constituent’s son. It is a terrible story.

This Bill will be life changing for many, but I am sorry to say that it has taken far too long to get to this point. The Government promised in 2015 to end children’s exposure to harmful online material, and in 2017 they committed to making the UK the safest place for children to be online. This morning, as I waited in the freezing cold on the station platform for a train that was late, a fellow passenger spoke to me about the Bill. He told me how happy he is that action is, at last, under way to protect children from the dangers of the internet. As a father of three young children, he told me that the internet is one of his greatest concerns.

I am afraid that, at the moment, the internet is as lawless as the wild west, and children are viewing images of abuse, addiction and self-harm on a daily basis. As others have said, the stats are shocking. Around 3,500 online child sex offences are recorded by police each month, and each month more than a million UK children access online pornography. It has been said that, in the time it takes to make a cup of tea, a person who joins certain popular social media platforms will have been introduced to suicidal content, “Go on, just kill yourself. You know you want to.”

I am incredibly proud that our Government have introduced a Bill that will change lives for the better, and I hope and expect it will be a “best in class” for other Governments to do likewise. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and her predecessors for their ruthless focus on making the online world a safer place. Ultimately, improving lives is what every MP is here to do, and on both sides of the House we should take great delight that, at last, this Bill will have its remaining Commons stages today.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) and for Stone (Sir William Cash) for their determination to give the Bill even more teeth, and I sincerely thank the Secretary of State for her willingness not only to listen but to take action.

New clause 2, tabled by my hon. Friends, will not be pressed because the Secretary of State has agreed to table a Government amendment when the Bill goes to the other place. New clause 2 sought to create a backstop so that, if a senior manager in a tech firm knowingly allows harm to be caused to a child that results in, for example their abuse or suicide, the manager should be held accountable and a criminal prosecution, with up to two years in prison, should follow. I fully appreciate that many in the tech world say, first, that that will discourage people from taking on new senior roles and, secondly, that it will discourage inward investment in the UK tech sector. Those serious concerns deserve to be properly addressed.

First, with regard to the potential for senior tech staff to be unwilling to take on new roles where there is this accountability, I would argue that from my experience as City Minister in 2015 I can provide a good example of why that is an unnecessary concern. We were seeking to address the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and we established the possibility of criminal liability for senior financial services staff. It was argued at the time that that would be highly damaging to UK financial services and that people would be unwilling to take on directorships and risk roles. I think we can all see clearly that those concerns were unfounded. Some might even say, “Well, tech firms would say that, wouldn’t they?”. The likelihood of a criminal prosecution will always be low, but the key difference is that in the future tech managers, instead of waking up each day thinking only about business targets, will wake up thinking, “Have I done enough to protect children, as I meet my business targets?”. I am sure we can agree that that would be a very good thing.

Secondly, there are those who argue that inward investment to the UK’s tech sector would be killed off by this move, and that would indeed be a concern. The UK tech sector leads in Europe, and at the end of 2022 it retained its position as the main challenger to the US and China. Fast-growing UK tech companies have continued to raise near-record levels of investment—more than France and Germany combined. The sector employs 3 million people across the UK and continues to thrive. So it is absolutely right that Ministers take seriously the concerns of these major employers.

However, I think we can look to Ireland as a good example of a successful tech hub where investment has not stopped as a result of strong accountability laws. The Irish Online Safety and Media Regulation Act 2022 carries a similar criminal responsibility to the one proposed in new clause 2, yet Ireland remains a successful tech hub in the European Union.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is rightly dispelling all these scare stories we have heard. One brief we had warned that if new clause 2 were to go through, it would portend the use of upload filters, where the system sweeps in and removes content before it has been posted. That would be a good thing, would it not? We need social media companies to be investing in more moderators in order to be more aware of the harmful stuff before it goes online and starts to do the damage. This should lead to more investment, but in the right part—in the employees of these social media companies. Facebook—Meta, as it now is—made $39 billion profit in 2021, so they are not short of money to do that, are they?

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Of course, as I have said, tech managers who wake up trying to meet business targets will now look at meeting them in a way that also protects children. That is a good thing.

We will look back on this period since the real rise of social media and simply not be able to believe what millions of children have been subjected to every day. As the Government’s special adviser on early years, it seems to me that all the work we are doing to give every baby the best start for life will be in vain if we then subject them during their vulnerable childhood years to the daily onslaught of appalling vitriol, violence, abuse and sordid pornography that is happening right now. It is little wonder that the mental health of young people is so poor. So it is my hope that this Bill will truly support our attempts to build back better after the covid lockdown. The Government’s clear commitment to families and children, and the Prime Minister's own personal commitment to the vision for “The Best Start for Life” is apparent for all to see. Keeping children safe online will make a radical improvement to all their lives.