Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Baroness Bray of Coln Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bray of Coln (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Russell. I was a smoker for about 50 years or so and gave up seven years ago. If I am honest, it was not that hard. I do not find it possible to support the Bill as it stands. I am one of the Conservative libertarians that my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham referred to earlier today.

As we know, the Bill is designed to achieve a long-term aim of ending smoking, with the introduction of a growing, year-by-year ban on our centuries-old freedom to buy tobacco products. Through those centuries, we have learnt about the health hazards attached to smoking, but we have also been learning how to handle them with rules of containment and treatments, based on growing scientific knowledge, but not before now with a total ban.

Let me be clear: I recognise that smoking can lead to serious, sometimes life-threatening, health conditions, and I support limits on where smoking can take place. A ban on smoking in indoor public places makes sense—and indeed, outside schools—but certainly not outside pubs and their gardens. Smokers should always be mindful of people around them when they light up, but there is space for considerate smokers, and that is surely a reasonable balance.

Smoking can be a very expensive burden on the NHS, but so can other choices we make. What about sports with high injury rates, such as boxing, football or ice hockey? What about the growing obesity problem? Should there be more control over what people can eat? And, of course, alcohol causes huge additional pressure on the NHS, serious health problems as well as damage and injuries from drunken behaviour—but I do not hear a call for a ban for grabbing a pint or two, and nor do I want to.

Meanwhile, smoker numbers in the UK have fallen significantly over the years. Back in the 1960s, some 51% of the population smoked, which was down to around 11% by 2023. The figures go up and down, but the overall direction is clear. This fall is due to successful health campaigns and a growing interest in healthy living, not a total ban.

As we have discussed, we face an extraordinary proposal in this Bill: anyone born in 2009 onwards will not be allowed to buy cigarettes at any age, while those born even a day before them can. Surely that is simple generational discrimination, which will continue until the last person born before 2009 has passed on? In 2027, two adults of a similar age will have different rights, based entirely on their birth date—this is arbitrary lawmaking and very divisive.

Further regulation of vapes is also planned, despite them being considered less harmful than smoking cigarettes, because young teenagers are attracted to them. Disposable vapes are to be banned—I agree that they pile up as horrible litter. The advertising designed to promote vapes, because they appeal to a young audience, is also to be banned. Many of the popular vape flavours are to be banned. It is right to try to protect young people from getting hooked on vaping, but this will also affect many adults who are finding that various vape flavours they like are helping them give up cigarettes. There needs to be a balanced approach to this. It is already illegal to sell cigarettes and vapes to under-18s.

The Bill proposes new demands on retailers, including requiring much clearer evidence of purchasers’ birth date details. This needs careful thought. Some retailers may decide to close due to the increasing demands, including the introduction and management of new age-verification systems, more training for staff and compliance with regulations. Some reports suggest that many closures are possible. As we have been hearing, if those local shops—which have always been one of the main sources for buying tobacco products in local communities—start to close, the black market is always there to fill the gap. That way, there is very little control over who buys and what they buy. It is a very dangerous presence where it sets up.

As I said, the Bill proposes that everyone born in 2009 onwards will be banned from buying all tobacco products, but it seems that there is no ban on possession or consumption, so presumably that means that at 18 they will be allowed to smoke, just not to buy the products. Although it will be illegal for those who can still buy tobacco to buy for someone who cannot, how on earth will that actually be policed? Will sharing a cigarette also be illegal, and how will that get policed? New Zealand has now dropped its plans for a similar ban. So should we—and we should allow the number of smokers to continue to dwindle, as it is, as smoking becomes increasingly uncool.