Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Chloe Smith Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

Fifteen years of experience of leading and scrutinising complicated legislation tells me to be cautious with the Bill. I strongly admire its aims, but I have some questions to set out as to whether it will work.

With direct knowledge of cancer and deep commitment to cancer awareness, I want people to smoke less. As we have heard, smoking causes around one in four of all UK cancer deaths. Tobacco, especially cigarette smoking, is the single most important and, as we have heard, preventable cause of ill health, disability and death in this country. I agree with the Bill’s hope of reducing that suffering. I also desire the Bill’s aim to realise an economic saving on healthcare, named as more than £3 billion in the impact assessment, and a productivity gain of £24 billion over 30 years. My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), the chair of the Health Committee, is right that we should be taking the long-term view and looking for the gains from prevention. For all that to be possible, however, the legislation has to work.

I am joining today’s debate—I shall keep it concise, Madam Deputy Speaker—because I care very much about politics and democracy working. As I stand down from Parliament this year, this is one of the final pieces of draft legislation for me and it is a significant proposition, so I will raise some points that are all intended to be thoughtful and are based on five terms of constituency work and ministerial experience in six Departments. In one of my past roles, I had to undo legislation that I had helped to implement, because it did not work.

The age-of-sale mechanism in the Bill is the untested thing. It would be the first of its kind in the world, but that accolade would come only because a few have tried and failed to carry support. The Bill as a whole has an imperfect evidence base—that is clear throughout its analysis, in particular because we do not yet have the full data picture about the effects of vaping—so what is in front of us today is inherently risky and theoretical. It is also possible that it may be divisive by asking one group of adults to live under rules different from those for another. I understand that the Malaysian equivalent was challenged on equality grounds and I would be really interested to know what lessons the Minister has drawn from that.

It is legitimate to be worried that something so novel may be unfair on retailers. The British Independent Retailers Association points out that the quite sophisticated enforcement needs of the mechanism fall on its members. As the Association of Convenience Stores adds, the

“proxy purchasing of any age-restricted products is extremely difficult for retailers to detect and prevent.”

Indeed, the deterrent in the Bill for proxy purchasing is just £50, if a person caught and pays promptly. After my right hon. Friend the Chancellor’s efforts at the latest Budget, that is actually only the cost of about two or three packets of cigarettes. I am therefore concerned that the design of the proxy-buying deterrents in the Bill could be fatally impractical for what is trying to be achieved. Let us put that in really super-practical terms. A person’s friend, a year older, may well be able to go into a shop or online and get two packets and let their friend have one, and the cost of their doing so adds up in the end to only three or four packets for themselves. We ought to give considerable thought to that.

The British Retail Consortium says that a better policy is needed on ID. I agree. I was surprised that the impact assessment says nothing about the impact of individuals needing to provide ID throughout their life, instead of just up to the age of adulthood. The document, of course, does deal with the costs to retailers of checking ID, but it is silent on the burden of asking a particular group of adults to have to prove their date of birth for life. I am talking about those who are or look, and would continue to be or to look, just above the age stated in the Bill. Healthy or unhealthy, right or wrong, they have every right to buy cigarettes and would remain in possession of that right, but they would have to prove it for life under the Bill.

When I took the Bill that became the Elections Act 2022 through the House, we were rightly questioned hard about the notion of asking adults to bring identification to polling stations. We acknowledged up front that not everyone holds a driving licence or a passport, and ensured that other forms of ID were available, given the importance of people’s democratic rights. This is a slightly different point and I am not making a direct comparison, but for the purposes of retail, free ID—for example, the CitizenCard—is already available. However, it needs to be renewed every few years, and a new requirement in the Bill means that it would need to be used for life. I think the Government should have more reassurances to give law-abiding people than silence.

I said that I strongly admired the aspiration of the Bill. For the sake of all those who are entangled in a lethal addiction, I would like to see smoking stop in this country, so I am not standing here on ideological grounds. I am making sensible points about whether the Bill is going to work. We have had—rightly—a wide-ranging, reflective and constructive debate, but good intentions and heroic ambitions are not enough. If we are to do something very novel and use the power of legislation to do it, we need to have confidence that the legislation is workable. I hope that my fellow legislators will rise to the challenges that are presented by this idea, and will scrutinise it carefully.