Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Baroness Meyer Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

My Lords, there is a real problem about being number 39 to speak in this debate, because other noble Lords have said everything that I am going to say. There is an even bigger problem in that the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, stole my speech. I do not know on how many other issues we would be on the same side, but on this one we are 100%.

Of course we should support smokers to quit, and of course we must discourage young people from ever starting, but I do not believe that this Government’s ban is the answer. As many other noble Lords have said, imagine a 40-year-old going to the shops and buying a pack of cigarettes, which for his friend next to him, who is a day younger, would be doing something criminal. This does not work. It is silly and unfair. It undermines equality before the law. It is discriminatory.

The policy is also impractical. It forces retailers to check birth dates indefinitely, creating confusion and increasing the risk of fraud. Retailers are already under financial stress. The British Retail Consortium reports 2,000 incidents of abuse a day. This ban would make it worse. Many retailers say that they would have to close, leaving communities without vital services.

Meanwhile, the black market is thriving. As we have already heard, UK consumers spend £21 billion on tobacco, including £6.1 billion on illegal products. With legal cigarettes at £16.60 a pack and illicit ones at £3, the incentive is obvious. This is not about saving a few pennies, as the Minister said; it is about saving pounds.

We know where this leads. Operation Machinize exposed hundreds of high-street shops, many of which were barbers, fronting for organised crime, including illegal tobacco. This ban would only strengthen criminal networks.

History also shows that bans do not work. Remember prohibition in the United States in the 1920s. It did not end up stopping drinking; it empowered gangs and created the mafia. In 2021, South Africa’s Covid tobacco ban saw criminals fill the gap, with 93% of smokers switching to illegal sources. In Australia, a similar crackdown led to turf wars and gang violence. Yet the warnings from their law enforcement were ignored by the Public Bill Committee. The lesson is clear: bans do not stop demand; they push it underground. Illegal drugs continue to flourish despite decades of enforcement, because demand drives supply.

I speak as a former smoker. I managed to quit only with the help of Nicorette inhalators, which many noble Lords may have seen me using. A ban would not have stopped me; it was the alternative that did. Smoking rates among young people have fallen, thanks to safer alternatives and effective campaigns. If we are serious about reducing smoking, we should focus essentially on demand and seek a more balanced approach.

The Bill also raises serious constitutional concerns. It gives Ministers sweeping powers, about which many noble Lords have spoken. These include 17 Henry VIII clauses, some allowing the creation of new criminal offences without parliamentary scrutiny. This is executive overreach. No proper impact assessment has been made. Small businesses, retailers and the hospitality sector were excluded from the committee. Even the Government’s own consultation promised targeted restrictions, as opposed to a ban. Does the Minister not agree that raising the legal age to 21—a policy which retailers support—would be a fairer, more enforceable and simpler way to deter children from smoking?

I do not have any more time, but I just want to say that, as a smoker, I think people need to realise that it is a personality trait: you are a smoker, or you are not a smoker. I do not think a ban will solve it.

Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Baroness Meyer Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th October 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to all the amendments in this group to which I have added my name and all those in the names of my noble friend Lord Murray and the noble Lord, Lord Strathcarron. Basically, these amendments offer a far more practical and balanced way for the Government to meet their goal of reducing youth smoking. Simply raising the legal age to buy tobacco from 18 to 21 would be more effective, easier to enforce and less damaging to small businesses than the proposed generational ban.

The idea of banning tobacco by birth year might sound bold but, in reality, it will be a bureaucratic and economic nightmare. Allowing one person to buy tobacco products for themselves but not for their friends born a few weeks later will complicate enforcement and lead to discrimination between people based solely on their date of birth. No other country has introduced such a complicated and confusing ban; as my noble friend Lord Murray said, this would not wash under European Union legislation.

Retailers would also be forced to check birth dates indefinitely, creating confusion and increasing the risk of violence and abuse against their staff. As noted, before, according to the British Retail Consortium, there are more than 2,000 incidents of violence or abuse against shopkeepers every single day, 70 of which involve a weapon. Retail crime costs businesses £4.2 billion a year, including £2.2 billion in theft, yet these same shopkeepers would be expected to enforce an ever-changing age threshold. This would inevitably lead to further violence and intimidation towards them and their staff.

It will also create unnecessary harm to small businesses. Independent retailers are already struggling with rising business rates, higher national insurance and the overall cost of living. Small manufacturers and importers have repeatedly warned that a generational ban would be devastating. For some, it would mean gradual decline and, for others, business closure. For a Government who pride themselves on being pro-growth, this is quite a strange way to go about it, extinguishing the future of many small, often family-run, businesses that have traded for generations.

By contrast, raising the age to 21 would achieve the same public health goals, by the Government’s own figures, without punishing retailers or driving trade into the hands of criminals, as so well explained earlier. The truth is that the generational ban, combined with already very high excise duties, would hand a huge advantage to organised crime.

We can reach the Government’s public health objective without punishing shopkeepers, small producers and law-abiding adults. Raising the legal age to 21 is proportionate, workable and enforceable. It is a policy rooted not in ideology but in common sense. So I, too, urge the Minister to review the generational ban and look at the amendment. It offers a practical path to the same goal—a smoke-free generation—without the confusion, complexity and unintended consequences on businesses.

[Baroness Carberry of Muswell Hill (Lab)]

I am very sorry that the Committee stage of this Bill has kicked off with an attempt to remove the intergenerational ban for tobacco products, because these amendments self-evidently attempt to severely weaken the Bill and run counter to its central objective of ensuring that those born after 1 January 2009 will never be legally sold tobacco. I know that all noble Lords present know that, but I think we need to go back to basics here.

The objective is also to break the cycle of addiction and disadvantage, which starts very young. This is made very clear in the Explanatory Notes to the Bill and I know that all noble Lords will have read them. I wonder whether the sponsors of these amendments in this group actually support the intention of creating a smoke-free generation. The Government’s own modelling says that the Bill would virtually eliminate smoking in under-30s by 2050. These amendments would make this desirable objective far less likely.

I shall not bore the Committee with the statistics that we are all very familiar with about the extent of the harms of tobacco. They are readily available and we all know them. But it is not in doubt that the Bill’s measures, if enacted in full, would result in fewer addictions and a reduction in harms and untimely deaths. The amendments in this group would dilute these desirable benefits.

I turn to the references that have been made to the possible replacement of legal sales by the black market. I am not sure that we have sufficient evidence to make the confident predictions that we heard at the beginning of this debate. Even if we had, I would suggest that the measures in the Bill, in full, do not preclude separate government actions to tackle illicit sales—if indeed such sales and such criminal activity are a consequence of the Bill. As I said, at the moment we do not have enough evidence to predict that with total confidence.

I will make two further small points. If the Bill ends up, as these amendments seek, specifying a lower age of sale than 21, tobacco companies would be very likely to target their marketing at the threshold age, resulting in more addiction, more ill health and a greater mortality risk.

Finally, the objective to create a smoke-free generation, which the Bill unamended would do, is publicly extremely popular. In the October 2023 UK-wide consultation, 63% of the public supported a sales ban on tobacco for those born after 2009. That public support has been fully endorsed by many other opinion polls since that government survey. I would hope that those supporting and proposing the amendments in this group will not persist.