Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. There are more people here than I was expecting, so I hope we can limit our remarks to about five minutes each, please.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I must impose a time limit of five minutes.

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[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

What a fascinating afternoon of different speeches. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) has just indicated, there are two very different ways of approaching the Bill. It is very much a personal matter: tonight’s vote is not whipped, and therefore all of us will have our different perceptions, but I start by saying that we are not all here—as one Member said—to try to prevent restrictions on human activity. I do not see that as the reason I was sent to this House, but surely we were all sent here to try to achieve a better future for the children and grandchildren of our constituents. Once we have all agreed on that, we can discuss whether a ban on children smoking now that will, in time, mean a ban on everyone smoking is a wonderful way of preventing what is not a liberty but an addiction, or whether taking away that freedom is just a slippery slope towards taking away all other freedoms.

Of course, although we cannot measure precisely the future damage of allowing people to carry on as they have been—being able to do themselves considerable damage—we know that the NHS calculates that the current financial cost of smoking is £17 billion a year. For those of us who are also concerned about the size of the state, the use of resources, the productivity of the NHS, and the ability of our constituents to have elective surgery when they want it and to see doctors when they wish to, this is surely a huge opportunity to make a massive difference—not just to future generations’ potential to avoid addiction to tobacco, but to their ability to get the health services that they want at a cost that this country can afford. That is the crux of what we have been discussing today.

It is very interesting to me that all the doctors in the House and all the health professionals in our constituencies—as my neighbour and hon. Friend, the wonderful Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie), has highlighted in Gloucestershire—are absolutely united that this is one of the single most important and useful interventions that this House could make. It is a huge credit to this Prime Minister that he has set out a vision with clarity and pursued it with determination, and is absolutely clear that were this House to vote this Bill through, it would be part of whatever legacy he leaves in the future, as a politician keen to make a difference.

I believe the idea that, on the contrary, encouraging worse health outcomes should continue because it somehow benefits people’s freedoms would be a valid one only if the whole business of smoking was harmless and largely cost-free, and we know that that simply is not the case. We have heard the data and the calls: 75,000 GP appointments a month, 690 premature deaths in the Gloucester Royal Hospital alone, and every minute of every day a new patient somewhere in a hospital in the UK because of smoking. We cannot argue that the freedom to smoke and to be addicted comes cost-free, and I cannot imagine opposing a Bill that supports better health and better life outcomes. For the libertarians, it will in fact help to reduce the size and cost of the state. Therefore all these things are fundamentally Conservative goals. In fact, they are not even just Conservative goals, but surely human goals that all of us in this House can share.

In all this, we do not need to think too much about a nanny state—none of us is keen on the phrase “nanny state” or the concept—but how many people here would stand up and vote to take away safety belts in cars, or suggest that everyone could drive motorbikes without a helmet? I believe that what may seem like a slight increase in bureaucracy will, in a few years’ time, be seen as so obvious that we will all be astonished there was any opposition at all. I believe strongly that protecting children, just as we banned children from being chimney sweeps in generations gone by, by banning them from smoking for future generations is exactly what a progressive Conservative Government should do. This Bill, if passed, will be one of the most far-reaching laws that this Government and this Parliament have made. I am absolutely convinced—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order.

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[James Grundy (Leigh) (Con)]

I rise in an unusual position, because I smoke like a chimney, but I will give the Government the benefit of the doubt tonight, even though I have concerns about the enforceability of some of the Bill’s measures.

Those who are regular readers of the Leigh Journal—I realise that my audience might not include too many of those—will know that I have written repeatedly about the problem of illicit and illegal tobacco and vapes in Leigh. The simple truth is that there is real concern that a lot of these products are a means to money launder for the gangs who cause the heroin problem in Leigh and for the people smugglers. I have spoken in the Leigh Journal about how Leigh was one of the end points of an international smuggling gang based in the Balkans that used illicit tobacco and vapes as part of their criminal enterprise.

Some people have spoken today about how they do not think the Bill is right and will not support the Government. I will support the Government, but I will complain about the Bill too, because the Government must go further. If someone is selling illegal tobacco and vapes, they should be held accountable. If someone was selling beer or spirits made out of turpentine or toilet water, for example, people would be outraged and there would be a demand for action, but that is happening day in, day out and week in, week out with illegal and counterfeit tobacco and vapes. Some products are made illegitimately to copy “legitimate” products in sweatshops in the far east, and some vapes contain up to 10 times the legal limit of nicotine. As some colleagues with medical knowledge have spoken about today, we simply do not know what damage that will do to young people.

The way we should go further is through a mechanism that we already have to license shops, which is the alcohol licensing scheme. We should expand that scheme, which is run by local authorities, to tobacco. It should be an alcohol and tobacco licence, so that someone cannot apply for one or the other, but has to apply for both. If someone is caught selling a dodgy £2 vape to a 14-year-old, they should have their licence taken away so that they can no longer sell alcohol either. I guarantee that that would basically clean up the system, because nobody will take the risk of selling a dodgy £2 vape to a 14-year-old and risk the loss of their ability to sell alcohol to a much wider pool of people. Those who do will, I suspect, be the organisations that are fronts for the drug dealers and people smugglers. We should also trigger an automatic investigation by His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs into those people and follow back the chain of the dodgy vapes and dodgy tobacco to find out who they are. Not only should we take away their licences so that they cannot sell alcohol and tobacco; we should fine them, and not £50 as said earlier, but £10,000. Let us really go for this and teach those people a lesson, because the black market in tobacco and vapes already exists, and it is costing the Treasury millions. It is funding other criminal activity such as heroin dealing and people smuggling, so it must come to an end.

My only criticism of the Government with regard to the Bill is that it does not go far enough. We need more robust regulation, because a giant black market in tobacco and vapes is already there. It needs to be done through the existing licensing system for alcohol, and it needs to have concrete outcomes that will shut down the dodgy shops and cut off a source of funding for the dangerous criminal gangs who also operate in heroin dealing and people smuggling.

The Government have the right intention. I have doubts about some of the detail, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt. However, I urge them to strengthen the legislation; it would be to the benefit of us all if they did so. Let us deal with these criminal gangs while we deal with this public health issue, because I am afraid the two are deeply intertwined.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the shadow Minister.