Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th October 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I do not want prohibition and I do not want smoking to be illegal, but I feel that I would be having a more honest discussion if that was what was being proposed. I feel that, in the end, this is a Bill about prohibition. One reason I am so uneasy about the generational smoking ban, which is only part of the Bill, is that it restricts individual autonomy by ultimately denying adults the right to make their own choices about a legal activity, whatever its harms. We are asked to focus our eyes on young people, but those born in 2009 will grow up to be adults who are then denied the choice. In the end, that restricts adult freedoms—and that is a problem.

I appreciate that that is a matter of principle that some people do not think very important. By the way, one reason I am nervous about the specific amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth, is that I am not convinced that moving the legal age from 18 to 21 helps my conscience matter at all, however well motivated the amendments are. I understand their intention but they muddy the waters around adult autonomy.

I was interested in the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Carberry, about polling saying that the public are all behind this. In fact, in one poll in August 2025, 59% of respondents thought, because the question was posed differently, that if a person can vote—and that age, as we know, is getting ever younger—drive a car, join the Army, buy alcohol and possess a credit card, they should be allowed to purchase tobacco. In other words, they could see that when asked that, they thought that. By the way, only 29% thought it should not be permitted and 11% said that they did not know. Mind you, the same polling asked about the 10 most important Bills, this being one of them, and this Bill came ninth on the list of what should be seen as important, progressing through the House. The 10th, by the way, was the hereditary Peers Bill. I thought that might appeal to some people; I was playing to a certain crowd. No, but anyway, that is what the polling said.

One thing I want to ask the Minister, in all seriousness, because I still cannot understand it, is: how can the Government justify a ban that creates an unequal application of the law, whereby one group of adults, born before a cut-off date, can legally purchase tobacco while another group, born after, cannot? I just do not understand how that arbitrary cut-off point is not discriminatory by treating people solely based on their birth. I asked that at Second Reading and nobody answered me.

I also wanted to ask whether it is realistic to think that this will stop young people smoking. At the moment, young people are not allowed to smoke. However, according to ASH, in 2023 11% of 11 to 15 year-olds—400,000 people—had tried smoking, 3%, or 120,000 people, had carried on smoking, and 1% were smoking regularly. In other words, even though it was completely against the law for them to do it, they carried on smoking. The idea that the Bill will magically stop that seems a little ambitious.