Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dame Andrea Leadsom)]

I want to start by thanking the many lung cancer and asthma charities, particularly ASH, for their advice, research and support. I personally pay tribute to the chief medical officer for England for his commitment to making the strongest possible case for this life-changing legislation, and to Health Ministers across the UK for their collaboration in what will be a UK-wide solution for future generations.

I was very disappointed with the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), who opened for the Opposition. I have said it before and I will say it again: I like the hon. Gentleman. He once said on air that that was death to his career! Why would he have said that, Madam Deputy Speaker? But I am really disappointed today, because he was not listening. My hon. Friends had some very sensible questions about consultation, and they raised very serious points about flavours for vapes and how they might help adults to quit. He was not listening; he was making party political points. In fact, he barely said anything sensible about the legislation. All he did was talk politics. I appreciate the fact that Labour Members have been whipped to support the Bill. On my side, colleagues are trusted to make their own decisions on something that has always been a matter for a free vote. [Interruption.] He sits there shouting from a sedentary position, political point-scoring yet again.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) raised a very serious question about stop smoking services. I can tell her that the Government have allocated £138 million a year to stop smoking, which is more than doubling. The Government’s commitment to helping adults to stop smoking is absolutely unparalleled.

I thank the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) for her support for the Bill, and for the collaborative approach of the Government in Scotland in their work bringing forward this collaboration among all parts of the United Kingdom.

I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), the Chair of the Health Committee for his excellent speech and his strong case for long-term policies that will prevent ill health and thereby reduce the pressures on the NHS, which is so important. He asked when we will see the regulations and the consultation on vaping flavours, packaging and location in stores. It is our intention to bring forward that consultation during this Parliament if at all practicable.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sir Sajid Javid) for his tribute to Dr Javed Khan for his excellent report into the terrible trap of addiction to nicotine. My right hon. Friend made the point that it is simply not a free choice, but the total opposite.

I thank the Liberal Democrats and their spokesman, the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), for saying that they will support the Bill on Second Reading. I am not quite sure where they are going on the smoking legislation, but I am grateful for their support on vaping. I hope to be able to reassure them during the passage of the Bill.

The case for the Bill is totally clear: cigarettes are the product that, when used as the manufacturer intends, will go on to kill two thirds of its long-term users. That makes it different from eating at McDonald’s or even drinking—what was it?—a pint of wine, which one of my colleagues was suggesting. It is very, very different. Smoking causes 70% of lung cancer cases. It causes asthma in young people. It causes stillbirths, it causes dementia, disability and early death. I will give way on that cheery note.

[Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for giving way. I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a practising NHS consultant addiction psychiatrist. Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that what we have heard from the libertarian right today is a false equivalence between alcohol and bad dietary choices, and smoking, and that moderate alcohol and moderate bad eating are very different from moderate smoking, because moderate smoking kills. It means that people live on average 10 years less and it means less healthy lives. Does she agree that this is not about libertarianism but about doing the right thing, protecting public health and protecting the next generation, and that is why we should all support the Bill?

[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.

[Sir Jake Berry]

Before my right hon. Friend gets too furious about vaping, may I ask her to clarify two points on smoking? First, she said that because of the addictive nature of nicotine, it is extremely important that we stop people smoking from the age of 15. I do not support that, but if it is so important, why are we not starting at 17? It is already illegal for 17-year-olds to smoke. What is the magic of 15? If we really believe in the policy, why delay? Secondly, she spoke about her own experience, and I am a former smoker myself. She started smoking at 14, and I started smoking at about 14 as well. It was illegal when I started smoking at 14, but it did not stop me. I am a lawbreaker—how shocking. Why does she think that this ban on people starting smoking when under age will be different?

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for raising those really important points. As I will come on to, we will be putting £30 million of new money each year into trading standards and our enforcement agencies to clamp down on enforcement, and we are making it illegal to sell cigarettes to anybody turning 15 this year. He asks why. It is precisely because we are trying to bring in the Bill with a decent amount of notice so that people can prepare for it, precisely to protect retailers and allow all the sectors that will be impacted to be able to prepare.

I come back to the area where I am seriously on the warpath: targeting kids who might become addicted to nicotine vapes. I went to Hackney to visit some retail shops, where I saw the vape counters right next to the sweet counters. I saw that it is absolutely not about me—it is not about trying to stop me smoking. It is about trying to get children addicted through cynical, despicable methods. Sadly, for too many kids, vapes are already an incredible marketing success. One in five children aged between 11 and 17 have now used a vape, and the number has trebled in the last three years.

[Kirsten Oswald]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way as she ploughs through all of this. I wonder whether she can share her views on the advertising of vape products on sports kits and via sports facilities.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Lady is aware that there is already very restrictive advertising for smoking and vaping. We are very concerned that some advertising is breaching advertising standards regulations, and I will write to retailers specifically about that.

Parents and teachers are incredibly worried about the effect that vapes are having on developing lungs and brains. The truth is that we do not yet know what the long-term impact will be on children who vape. Since I was appointed, I have done everything I can to ensure that this Bill will protect our children. The Government’s position is clear: vaping is less harmful than smoking, but if you don’t smoke, don’t vape—and children should never vape.

We will definitely make sure that people who smoke today continue to have access to vapes as a quit aid, which will absolutely not change, but we cannot replace one generation that is hooked on nicotine in cigarettes with another that is hooked on nicotine in vapes. That is why we are using this Bill to take powers to restrict flavours and packaging, and to change how vapes are displayed in shops. To reassure the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee and my right hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Sir Jake Berry), we plan to consult on that before the end of the Parliament, if practicable. The disposable vapes ban will likely take effect in April 2025—those regulations have already been published.

These are common-sense proposals that strike the right balance between helping retailers to prepare, giving sufficient notice and protecting children from getting hooked on nicotine, while at the same time supporting current smokers to quit by switching to vapes as a less harmful quit aid, supported by £138 million a year. Our approach is realistic for those who smoke now and resolute in protecting children. I am convinced that, just like banning smoking in indoor public places and raising the age of sale to 18, these measures will seem commonsensical to all of us in 10 years’ time. In decades to come, our great-grandchildren will look back and think: why on earth did they not do it sooner? I urge all right hon. and hon. Members to vote for this Bill as the biggest public intervention in history. I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.