Tobacco and Vapes Bill (Fourth sitting)

Danny Chambers Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 9th January 2025 Public Bill Committees

The prospect of the next generation of children becoming adults in a smoke-free country, where they will never be able to legally purchase tobacco products, and where the older generations will never be able to legally buy the products for them by proxy, leads effectively to tobacco being a thing of the past for the next generation. For me that is a real prize in terms of public health, the NHS and the economy.

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

I agree with everything that has been said; the Minister has given a powerful summary. We have discussed freedom of choice and the lack of it, and I remind hon. Members of the extreme examples provided by some of the expert witnesses yesterday: they talked about someone who had their leg amputated purely because of complications as a result of smoking, and who, the same day, felt the need to light up another cigarette. There is no freedom of choice when someone is addicted to this substance.

This might sound comical, but it shows that there is no safe level of passive smoking: as vets, we struggle to manage asthma in pets—in dogs and cats—that come from houses where the owners smoke. That is how dangerous it is. This Bill is obviously about public health—I am not trying to conflate human and animal health—but the perception that there is a safe level of smoking is utterly wrong.

[Andrew Gwynne]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Anyone who heard the evidence on Tuesday cannot but have been shocked at what medical professionals see with their own eyes—not just the procedures they have to use, such as amputations, but the people who are so addicted to that product that they have to light up, even having lost both legs. That was a powerful contribution, and he is right to labour the point that there is no freedom in addiction. We are seeking to free the next generation from ever being in the situation that, as he reminds us, was outlined in detail by professionals in the evidence session.

That leads me to the amendments. Simply raising the age of sale to 25 will only raise the age at which people start smoking; it will not meet this Government’s, or indeed the previous Government’s, ambition to make the United Kingdom smoke-free. We also know—and we heard this from the four chief medical officers of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, in unison—that whenever there has been a change in tobacco control legislation, the tobacco industry is clever; it is smart; it sees that one road has been blocked, so it finds another. The industry has been swift to refocus its tactics. For example, when flavoured cigarettes, including menthol, were banned in the UK, the industry used product innovation to exploit loopholes in the ban. It created new products, such as menthol filter tips and cigarette-like menthol cigarillos.

Those examples demonstrate how the tobacco industry will always regroup and refocus its efforts to respond to whatever regulations are in place. If we raised the age of sale to 25, the industry would likely change its business model to target older age groups.

Let us be clear here about what we are seeking to do. We are not criminalising current smokers; people who are legally able to purchase tobacco products and consume them will always be able to do that. However, we are having a cut-off point. We are saying to the tobacco industry, “This is your customer base now. That’s it. Game over. What you have got is all you have got. You can’t kill two thirds of your customer base and expect other people to come along the conveyor belt. We’re stopping the conveyor belt. What you have got is it.” We will do all we can to make that customer base even smaller through smoking cessation services and effective targeting of existing smokers to help them to quit. But this is it—this is the customer base, and it will shrink rapidly over the next few years, so that no child born after 1 January 2009 can ever legally be sold tobacco products.

That means that the examples we have heard from Members in this debate about a 45-year-old being asked to show ID are an irrelevance. They miss the point. The impact assessment that accompanies the Bill says really clearly that in 25 years’ time—in 2050, which is not that far away—we expect smoking prevalence among people aged 30 and below to be near zero. The logical consequence of that is that there will be very few people of middle adult age going into shops to purchase tobacco. The reality is that there probably will not be a market for tobacco products by then. Retailers will have diversified into selling something else, because there will not be a market of sufficient scale for tobacco to be sold.

All the arguments that we have heard—they have actually been pursued by the tobacco industry—as to why these things are not workable are for the birds. They are for the clouds. They are for another world that does not exist, because the measures in the Bill will ensure that we are smoke-free, and I find that really exciting.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I certainly do not want to press the amendments to a vote, but it may be that other members of the Committee do.

[Dr Chambers]

On a point of order, Mr Dowd. I am not sure whether this is a point of order, and I am not sure how the other parties voted on this, but this was a non-whipped vote for the Liberal Democrats. It is not a Liberal Democrat amendment; it is an amendment from an individual MP. The entire Liberal Democrat health team certainly do not support the amendment to change the minimum age of sale to 25, and the majority of the Liberal Democrat party voted in favour of the Bill as a whole. I want to put it on the record that the Lib Dems are not in favour of the amendment.

[Jack Rankin]

I would like to press the amendment to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jack Rankin]

My hon. Friend makes a very reasonable point, but there is not a single adult in this country who does not know how bad cigarettes are for them. It is an important function of Government to make that educational point. Governments of all colours have made it systematically, and it has massively changed the way people, including the new generation, perceive cigarettes. That education battle has been won. Once we have won that game, which I think we have, and once we have no longer socialised the healthcare cost to others, which is what I suggest cigarette duty should be doing, we are starting to make moral choices on behalf of others.

[Dr Chambers]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jack Rankin]

I am sure I am winning some hearts and minds here.

[Dr Chambers]

We could rephrase the way we talk about civil liberties. We currently have a generation among whom some are addicted and have no choice, and we will be allowing a future generation to be free from having their choice taken away by addiction.