Tobacco and Vapes Bill (Thirteenth sitting)

Alex Barros-Curtis Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th January 2025 Public Bill Committees

Amendment 94, as the shadow Minister says, reinserts a proportionality clause that was in the previous Bill. I would be interested to understand from the Minister why that has been taken out. He said that there is no safe level of smoking, which I agree with. I would probably also agree with him were he to say that there is no safe level of passive smoking either. To me, it comes down to vaping, where the science is not yet settled. I know that the hon. Member for Worthing West will pop up in a minute and tell me about the precautionary principle, as she has so many times in this Committee, but some proportionality needs to be reinserted into the Bill so that the public understand the differences and the dimensions of what is more harmful.

[Mr Alex Barros-Curtis (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I rise to speak to amendments 4, 95 and 94; as they are very similar, my comments will apply in the generality. It is disappointing to hear the shadow Minister’s cynicism about the commitments made by the Minister at the Dispatch Box.

[Dr Johnson]

I was merely giving examples.

[Mr Barros-Curtis]

She may well have given a few examples—I can think of a litany of examples from the previous 14 years of Tory Government. However, that would stray from the amendments, and as we do not have the time, I will not indulge the Committee with that. But I would suggest that that cynicism is not merited because, as the Minister and his colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care have shown in these sittings—

[Gregory Stafford]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Mr Barros-Curtis]

I will.

[Gregory Stafford]

I entirely agree with the shadow Minister’s point about broken promises from the Labour Government, but I do not think she was saying, and I certainly was not saying, that we currently hold any untoward view of the Minister or the Secretary of State. However, does the hon. Gentleman not agree that we do not know who the Secretary of State or the Minister might be in future Governments, and that they might not wish to be beholden to previous statements? That is why it is so important to make sure that we are clear about which open spaces we are talking about when we restrict people’s right to smoke and vape in them.

[Mr Barros-Curtis]

I am grateful for that intervention. I point the hon. Member to proposed new subsection (4), which reiterates that the Secretary of State “must consult” before any such regulations can be made. I am sure that will assuage his concerns about whoever the future Secretary of State may be, whether they are from this side of the House or, God forbid, the other side in a few decades’ time.

I will point out a couple of issues about the drafting of the amendments. Although I understand the position of Opposition Members, I think the proposals inadvertently cause issues and risk causing more confusion than may have been intended. For example, does

“an NHS property or hospital building”

include private healthcare providers that are undertaking NHS work either on NHS premises or off-site? What about subcontractors? When the amendment mentions

“a nursery, school, college or higher education premises”,

are we talking about where premises have had to be vacated because of the RAAC—reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete—crisis and where children are being taught in portacabins in a council car park, one or two miles away from the original site? These definitions are lacking and may inadvertently cause gaps in the application of the measures, if the amendments were successful. What about premises used for youth prisons? Should that be captured or not, given what was said about protecting children from the dangers of smoking?

Notwithstanding the fact that I understand the intention behind the amendments and what Opposition Members have said, I think the drafting may inadvertently cause issues and undermine what the Minister has said, both here and at the Dispatch Box, about the parameters in which this set of regulations would be brought in. Those would be underscored by consultation and the commitments that have been made at the Dispatch Box. Although I appreciate and understand hon. Members’ comments, I suggest that the amendments are not necessary, for the reasons I have outlined, and I would encourage them, if the amendments are not withdrawn, perhaps to vote against them if they are pushed to a Division.

[Sarah Bool]

I respect the points made by the hon. Member for Cardiff West, because I understand that we do not want any unintended consequences. However, I would counter that by saying that although we perhaps need better definitions—that may be something we can consider—clause 136, as drafted, is incredibly wide, and any of the assurances that have been given to hospitality are merely words. There is absolutely no carve-out for the hospitality sector as this stands.

As much as I think the Minister is honourable in his intentions, unfortunately, we all know that we can go only on the law in front of us in black and white, and there is currently no security for the hospitality sector in this regard. We need to be incredibly clear about this with the hospitality sector, and we need the exclusion. One of the bigger concerns is that if people are not able to smoke—perhaps in a pub garden—it will force them into their homes, where they are actually more likely to drink and smoke more because they are not within that limited capacity of being out in public. We have to think about what the dangers are. Are we actually forcing people to take up worse habits in their private residence than if we allow them a little bit of flexibility in an open space?

I have a question about NHS properties generally. I appreciate that we want smoke-free places and that one wants to go into hospital and walk past people smoking, but I worry about those who have an addiction. Where do they go if they need to smoke, as they would if they are going through a process of cessation? What ends up happening as a result of all these provisions is that the smokers will just be forced down the road away from the property, but that has not really addressed the issue. We have just pushed the problem a few metres away.

We need to think in the round about how we best achieve our aim, how we deal with addiction, and how we clean up the hospital environment in a balanced and proportionate way. Perhaps the Minister has some other ideas, but I do not like the idea of just pushing some smokers down the road, rather than dealing with the issue at hand.