Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Andrew Rosindell Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 26th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I recognise that there are people who have the freedom and the liberty to smoke today, the vast majority of whom, by the way, want to stop and struggle to do so. That is why we are announcing support to enable people to do that, with £70 million of investment in smoking cessation services. That is important, but for a future where people are no longer able to smoke, a phased approach is the right thing to do. It is also essential for the health of the individual, the nation and our economy.

Since 2018, our productivity has dropped by £25 billion due to worsening health alone. Some 900,000 more people are off work than would have been on pre-pandemic trends. That is more people than are employed by Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda put together. Smoking alone accounts for more than £18 billion in lost productivity. The rising tide of ill health, coupled with our ageing society, presents an existential challenge to our health service. If we do not act now, ever-increasing demands for healthcare threaten to overwhelm and bankrupt the NHS. That is the choice that we face.

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

Surely the Secretary of State realises that banning things rarely works. When tobacco was banned in South Africa during the covid pandemic, 95% of the trade went underground. Surely we should be promoting the concept of freedom with responsibility and allowing people to make choices about their own lives. I am glad that he goes shopping in Barkingside—he should go and speak to the shopkeepers in Collier Row, where local retailers will lose a lot of potential business if the ban comes in.

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful for the intervention, because I anticipate that there will be similar arguments made from the Opposition Benches, particularly from a right-wing libertarian perspective. I want to engage seriously with those arguments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hoare]

The hon. Gentleman takes me neatly to my closing point. If I understand him correctly, he is making an argument about civil liberties and freedoms. One does not have to be a libertarian to cherish freedom and liberty, as I hope we all do in this House. Libertarianism is the extreme form. It is the difference between liberty regulated and controlled—parametered, if one will—and liberty laissez-faire. It strikes me as rather incongruous for a libertarian to wish to become a lawmaker, because most laws are there to control, prohibit and regulate. It seems masochistic: “I am a free market libertarian, yet I have decided to put myself in the shackles of lawmaking in order to restrict the liberties that I cherish.” The hon. Gentleman makes a serious point, but we have to deal with society as it is, rather than as we might like it to be. Things have changed.

The ultra-libertarian would ask why we force people to wear seatbelts, as people should be free to hurl themselves through their windscreen at speed. Why do we have speed limits? The libertarian would say that we should be absolutely free to drive at whatever speed, irrespective of the conditions. I remember, back at university, hearing an eccentric American—that can sometimes be a tautology—questioning, from the extreme wing of libertarianism, the merits or otherwise of ages of sexual consent.

I suggest that all we do, and our inspiration for doing it, is benign and kindly. Too often, it is interpreted as being paternalistic and patronising, but I like what the Secretary of State said about this approach to lawmaking being in the proud one nation tradition of the Conservative party, because Tories like order, not disorder.

[Andrew Rosindell]

rose—

[Simon Hoare]

Here is a man who adores order nearly as much as he adores Margaret Thatcher.

[Andrew Rosindell]

One of my reasons for getting involved in politics is that I believe in a free society, and I believe that people should make choices about their own life. I do not believe that the state should govern how people live their life, but that does not mean I am an extreme libertarian. It just means that I believe in freedom with responsibility.

As my hon. Friend has said, attitudes to tobacco have evolved over the years. People have naturally decided not to smoke and, speaking as a Conservative, surely it is better to educate and let people make their own choices than to impose decisions on them.

[Simon Hoare]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I readily accept that it has a huge intellectual underpinning, but we have had public health campaigns for years on the dangers of smoking tobacco. In some instances, it has worked. We have also used taxation and the pricing mechanism. My late father told my mother that he would give up when cigarettes reached 10 shillings a packet. He eventually gave up when smoking was banned in public buildings and the like. The question that remains is: do we allow unfettered freedom if it harms only the individual who is exercising it, and step in when the exercise of that unfettered freedom has negative impacts on society?

The Secretary of State and others have dilated, perfectly correctly, on the impact on demand and supply in the national health service. A disproportionate amount of resource goes to dealing with smoking-related diseases, illnesses and conditions. We can do something about that. We know full well the negative impact of passive smoking on other people’s health, so the impact of the exercise of that liberty is not limited to the individual. I suggest respectfully that my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) would have a stronger point if it was limited to the individual. Then we could say, “Provide the information and let the individual take the decision.” However, that decision impacts many other people. It affects the productivity of the nation and the national health service, and the health of family and society.

I suggest to my hon. Friend that it is an entirely Conservative instinct to say, when all the levers have been pulled and buttons pushed—when there has been public information, education and some forms of prohibition—“It has worked up to a point, but not enough and not at the right speed. We will have to do something else.” I accept that not everybody who describes themselves as a Conservative, as my hon. Friend and I both do, will make the same analysis and arrive at the same position as me. I voted for the Bill in its last iteration, and I will vote for it again today, because I think it is the next lever that we need to pull and the next button that we have to push.

[Simon Hoare]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. One can nudge, prod, push and exhort as much as one can, but the Bill is probably the final stepping stone in quite a long line of stepping stones to try to wean people off their dependency on tobacco.

The House has been generous with its time, as have you with your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker. In closing, I echo and endorse the point made by the Secretary of State and other contributors from the Government Benches: people who have an addiction are not free. They are trapped by their addiction, and that affects many areas of their life. If someone is terribly well off, they can afford the addiction to tobacco, and it will make not a jot or tittle of difference to the household budget or income, or to their standard of life—

[Andrew Rosindell]

On that point, will my hon. Friend give way?

[Simon Hoare]

I will not, I am afraid, because I want to conclude. The disproportionate hammer blow is felt by families who would describe themselves as poor, on low or fixed incomes. When the choice between feeding the addiction and feeding the children comes into play, then feeding the addiction seems to have the trump hand. The Government are right to have picked up the ball and taken the Bill forward. It is an entirely Conservative measure. This is not a restriction of liberty in the abstract. The Bill is about public health. It is about taking the data, extrapolating the facts and recognising the harms, and, as responsible legislators, responding to that to make a difference to all our communities up and down the country.

[Tristan Osborne (Chatham and Aylesford) (Lab)]

Like previous speakers, I have not been challenged on my age, even though I use moisturiser; perhaps it is my receding hairline. I thank the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) for his eloquent speech about the Conservative party’s one nation tradition and his support for the Bill. It is absolutely the case that this legislation comes on the back of decades of other Bills and Acts that have acknowledged the challenges around smoking in our society. He eloquently articulates that evolution in our body politic.

I celebrate the fact that the Bill follows other landmark Acts of Parliament under the previous Labour Government, one of which had an impact on me when I worked in the retail industry. The ban on smoking in workplaces made a fundamental change to many people’s lives and overnight improved the life chances of many millions of our citizens. As has been said by Members across the Chamber, there is a consensus that smoking remains one of the leading causes of death, claiming 80,000 lives annually and costing the NHS billions of pounds, with some estimates putting it at between £3 billion and £5 billion.

[Andrew Rosindell]

On that basis, would the hon. Gentleman also ban alcohol? Would he ban all types of unhealthy foods, or chocolate—where does it end?

[Tristan Osborne]

We have age restrictions on alcohol sales and the Bill proposes doing the same. Similarly, for other substances in society, we look in a proportionate way at their health consequences; for instance, we class particular categories of drugs as A, B and C. All those things need to be taken as individual elements. Certainly, we will look at other proposals, but on this particular element, smoking and tobacco have been widely acknowledged as a public concern over many decades.

The vaping industry has seen some positive outcomes, with people transferring from cigarettes to vaping, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend (Mary Glindon) pointed out. Indeed, that use for those products has been acknowledged by the NHS. As a former teacher, however, I have also seen the consequences for young people and that has been acknowledged by many parents in the Chamber. I have unfortunately seen in the classroom, through confiscation and the illicit behaviours of some young people, that blue razz lemonade, watermelon bubble gum and strawberry raspberry cherry ice are all flavours of vapes. They are being marketed at young people, whether directly or indirectly, because we know, as does the tobacco industry, that young people are where the use of tobacco-based products starts.

I have seen at first hand the consequences of the proliferation of vaping in schools and its ubiquitous presence across my area in Chatham and Aylesford. I agree that the Bill’s removal of disposable, single-use vapes, which are currently so easily accessible and cynically marketed, is a sensible move and should reverse the recent trend of young people who have never smoked turning to vapes as an initial access point. It should also stop vapes being seen as a gateway to other types of drugs. Sadly, I have to report that cannabis-based products and other illicit products are gaining ground among disposable vape products.

At the same time, millions of single-use electrical devices blight our local landscapes. Many disposable vapes are deposited on roadsides and in parks, and while it is not specifically part of the content of the Bill, the reality is that vapes have environmental consequences.

The branding of some flavours has been a key driver of youth take-up. To prevent under-age appeal, flavours should be adult-focused and restricted to such flavours as tobacco, menthol and a handful of responsibly branded fruit flavours. I note that some in the industry are already promoting that agenda.

The age restrictions are sensible, and I think that the rising age escalator will be enforceable. Indeed, many supermarkets already have an age limit well above that which is legally required and challenge at the point of disposal.