Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Library, to ASH, to Professor Theresa Marteau of Cambridge University and to the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, for which I am an ambassador.

It has been a privilege to listen to reflections across the House from those noble Lords who have helped steer the country along over recent years on this important legislative journey to help save lives and improve the nation’s health. I express my gratitude to my noble friend the Minister for taking up the baton or the cudgels—I do not know which of those my noble friend thinks she has taken up.

My professional interest in helping people stop smoking began over 20 years ago when I became chair of Lambeth Primary Care Trust just across the river. Smoking was the main cause of preventable ill health and health inequalities, resulting in poor quality of life and premature mortality. The then Labour Government required local primary health services to provide support and advice to smokers wanting to quit, as well as prevention activities to stop youngsters taking up smoking, to tackle underage and counterfeit tobacco sales and to promote smoke-free environments to minimise the effects of second-hand smoke, as so eloquently described by the noble Baroness a few minutes ago. Over three years, smoking in Lambeth fell from 35% to 28%, with more than 9,000 smokers quitting and a decline in cancer and circulatory disease.

But my personal interest in stopping smoking, as for many others in this Chamber, dates to much longer ago than that, when as a child I sat in the back of our family car, travelling weekends up and down the M6 motorway between the Midlands and Lancashire to visit family. The car filled with my dad’s cigarette and sometimes pipe smoke. I loathed it, as did my younger sister. Neither of us has ever smoked, and we longed for our father to give up. He tried and tried, which in the 1970s seemed to consist of him eating a lot of Polo mints and other sweets, and it failed, no matter how hard he tried. He had started smoking when he was 12, picking up the ends of his older brother’s cigarettes and soon becoming a committed smoker. He died far too soon, in 1990, of lung cancer, and then my older sister also died of it, sadly, in 2018. So, as a result of both personal and professional experience, I cheer every development that prevents or reduces people’s use of tobacco and dependence on it.

The Bill provides the opportunity for a huge step forward, a big next step, seeking to prevent today’s children ever becoming smokers by making it illegal to sell them tobacco for the whole of their lives. Tobacco manufacturers and their supporters argue that this is a matter of civil liberties. They ask why today’s children should not be free to choose to smoke when they turn 18. The plain answer is that smoking is an addiction and the only free choice is that first cigarette, as I saw at first hand. Two out of three people who try one cigarette become daily smokers, and on average it takes 30 attempts to quit, which is why implementing this Bill has the potential to prevent hundreds of thousands of cases of serious illness and tens of thousands of premature deaths. Even this is not enough for the tobacco lobby, which likes to claim that the tax take from smoking is greater than the cost to the NHS. It conveniently ignores the huge cost of time off work, which far exceeds the income generated.

Moving now to vaping, I am delighted to see the provisions in the Bill to put the necessary regulations in place because while vapes may be helpful for smokers wanting to quit, they are harmful to non-smokers and, in particular, to children by introducing them to a world of nicotine and addiction. Some studies have suggested the possibility of vaping acting as a gateway to smoking, and while others have simply suggested correlation rather than causation, why would we want to take a chance on our children’s health?

As well as the well-established health concerns around vaping, there is the risk that some vapes can pose for people with severe allergies. Many people are not aware that vapes can cause a severe allergic reaction, but in 2019 a 16 year-old boy from Nottingham suffered potentially life-threatening lung failure after a suspected allergic reaction while vaping, in a case which doctors say highlights the potential dangers of young people using e-cigarettes. The evidence linking vape smoke and allergic reactions is still emerging, but we know that propylene glycol, one of the two ingredients in most e-liquids, is a known allergen. As we continue to learn more about the effects of vaping, it is vital that people have a clear understanding of the risks and that labelling law keeps up when it comes to highlighting allergens. I would be grateful if the Minister were willing to meet me and the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation in the near future to discuss these concerns in greater depth.

For all these reasons, I am delighted to support the passage of the Bill.