Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome this legislation and am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for outlining the rationale for the Bill. I support the principles, which I believe we should all embrace. We have had a very interesting debate this evening, ebbing and flowing between those who totally embrace those principles and the libertarians who have certain reservations. I think people are generally united on the viewpoint that there should be some way to deal with smoking and the side-effects of smoking and vaping.

I am also grateful to Asthma + Lung UK and the BMA for their briefings. I come with a personal testimony as well. Both my late mum and my late cousin had lung cancer. Neither of them smoked, but they were exposed to passive smoking because in all public arenas—some 40, 30, 20 and even 15 years ago—there was a lot of public smoking.

As this legislation extends to all of the UK, I want to give a Northern Ireland-specific viewpoint. This legislation was given consent by the Northern Ireland Assembly on 10 February. To ensure that the legislation is meaningful and given its best chance, I urge my noble friend the Minister to encourage the Minister for Health in Northern Ireland to introduce lung screening. It does not exist on a scheduled basis in Northern Ireland but is vital, as it can look for a cancer or other lung-related disease in a person long before they have developed all the various symptoms. There is growing evidence supporting the benefits of early detection. Although screening and research projects are under way, a fully funded and implemented programme has yet to be established. I therefore urge my noble friend to make contact with the Northern Ireland Minister, urging him to move from thinking about the issue to actually doing something about it. I have talked to consultant oncologists who deal specifically with lung cancer in Northern Ireland and they urgently want to see this lung screening implemented, because they believe that if it is implemented, they can deal with the disease in patients before it has reached such an advanced stage, when they have restricted means of dealing with it.

The statistics are there as evidence. Around 2,400 people die every year in Northern Ireland as a result of smoking-related conditions, and there are around 35,000 smoking-related hospital admissions in Northern Ireland annually. I join my friends from Northern Ireland, the noble Lords, Lord Weir and Lord Dodds, in asking to ensure that the enforcement measures in the Bill are made effective and capable of implementation, because in Clause 81 it is up to district councils. There are 11 district councils in Northern Ireland, and I would like to think that they were all on the same page and did not operate a variety of implementation enforcement schemes. It is important that the legislation is sufficiently mandatory to ensure that happens, because we want to eradicate disease and to ensure that everybody is on the same page and that the impact of smoking and of using tobacco and vapes is mitigated.

Finally, I ask that drastic funding cuts for smoking cessation services be reversed. Also like my friends from Northern Ireland, I suggest that not only enforcement but other measures to do with money laundering must be ensured. There must be work between all the law enforcement agencies, the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department of Health in Northern Ireland to ensure that it does not happen. If people can purchase vapes and tobacco under the counter or by some other means, that will not help in dealing with disease eradication in the various cancers and emphysemas that are prevalent in Northern Ireland.

Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 3rd March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, who deserves much personal credit for his work on these issues. The noble Lord, Lord Forbes of Newcastle, and I are on the same side on these issues. I will speak in support of Amendment 202, because it would be a good thing to require the Government to publish five-yearly reports, setting out a clear road map towards a smoke-free country.

While the smoke-free generation policy will rightly protect future generations from the harms of tobacco, it does not in itself sufficiently address the needs of the 5.3 million people who still currently smoke. If we are serious about creating a smoke-free country then we cannot afford to overlook them. Smoking remains responsible for around 74,000 deaths each year and a national strategy would ensure a focus on getting smokers the support they need to live healthier lives, free from the harms of tobacco. The UK’s tobacco control policies have, over many years, delivered a remarkable decline in smoking rates, representing a major public health success story, but further progress is not inevitable without sustained action.

This can be shown by the example of Germany, where smoking rates have remained at around 30% since 2017. Key differences are the absence in Germany of a comprehensive national strategy and Germany having weaker restrictions on tobacco. Without a clear plan, progress can stall. Crucially, this amendment includes targets and specific interventions for groups and areas with a persistently high prevalence of smoking. This matters because smoking rates remain deeply unequal. In the most deprived areas of the country, one in five people, 21% or so, smoke, compared with just 6.2% in the least deprived areas. Around half of the gap in healthy life expectancy between these groups can be attributed to smoking. Supporting people in these communities to quit would make a significant contribution towards the Government’s stated ambition to reduce health inequalities and make our country more productive, as well as happier. We need to do more to reach groups where smoking prevalence remains stubbornly high, such as people with serious mental illnesses, those living in social housing and those in routine manual occupations.

The Bill will help to ensure that nobody starts smoking, but it must be the first step in a wider national road map to ensure that everyone is supported to kick the habit, which is what most smokers seek. The publication of a road map would complement the Government’s own Amendment 205, which sets out how the implementation of the Bill will be reviewed. A clear plan would articulate what the Government aim to achieve in future and by when. It could also encompass further measures, long called for by the APPG on Smoking and Health, including action on so-called cigarette filters, the publication of industry sales data and warnings on individual cigarettes.

Amendment 202 urges the Government to be bold, set a new target and back it with a credible long-term plan. The APPG examined evidence last year and recommended a national target of 2 million fewer smokers by the end of this Parliament, alongside a clear ambition to make smoking obsolete within the next 20 years. These goals are achievable. I urge the Minister to seize this opportunity by indicating that there will be a road map of the kind that we seek very soon.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to the amendments in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, and the noble Lord, Lord Dodds.

I support a smoke-free generation policy, which is central to the Bill. We who support a smoke-free generation want to achieve better-quality health for all, particularly young people, to ensure that they have better health outcomes in terms of heart disease and various types of cancers. Looking at the proposal made by the UK Government to the European Commission in respect of this, it is quite clear that the number of deaths caused in Northern Ireland as a result of smoking is quite high. We should be making every effort to ensure that it is lowered.

We also need lung screening in Northern Ireland. That would help oncologists to identify those individuals who are liable at a later stage to develop lung cancer. I hope that my noble friend the Minister can pass on to the Minister of Health in Northern Ireland that request for the prioritisation of such resources. I have some family members who are involved in oncology in lung specialisms at Belfast City Hospital. They have told me that it would make their job much easier, in identification and in diagnosis, if that screening was available.

The proposal made by the UK Government to the EU clearly demonstrates that these clauses and this Bill are not at variance with the Windsor Framework. Tobacco products will continue to be available in Northern Ireland. The Bill received legislative consent. Northern Ireland is a divided society where there are different views on the Windsor Framework. I support it, but I respect that others are opposed to it. But if the Executive and the Assembly—made up of various parties in a mandatory coalition, with different political perspectives on the constitutional issue and on Brexit and the Windsor Framework—had noted a breach of the principles of free movement of goods and conflicts with the EU, the Windsor Framework et cetera, the Bill would not have received legislative consent.