Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Lord Brady of Altrincham Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brady of Altrincham (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, and I agree with much of what he said in his speech. I start by saying how much I welcome the tone of both opening speeches. That reflects that there is very broad support for the aims of this legislation. Principally, those aims are to protect children from being drawn into the dangers of vaping—we would all want to see that tackled—and to support and assist smoking cessation to encourage and help people to give up smoking. I certainly share those goals. However, I strongly endorse the initial comments made by my noble friend Lord Howe on the danger of unintended consequences—the possibility that, by regulating some things in certain ways, you might drive more people to the illegal market and that, by regulating the current products available in certain ways, you might make it less likely that people who are currently smokers would use certain types of vapes to assist them in giving up.

I was going to say that, as the 19th speaker in this debate, I was completely shocked to discover that I was going to make two points that nobody else had made, but the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, has slightly spoilt that for me. The first point I was going to make, which I never hear anybody raise in debates on this topic, and I would really like to hear something on this from the Minister, is that, as we all congratulate ourselves on the great success of smoking cessation, the number of people who have given up smoking and how the number of young people smoking has fallen, I think we all know from our own experience that anywhere you walk in London, and pretty much anywhere you walk in the country, there has been a massive increase in smoking cannabis. It is an illegal class B drug which is often smoked with tobacco, and the evidence suggests causes more damage—both in mental and physical health—than smoking tobacco would. Nobody ever talks about the percentages of young people who are now smoking illegal cannabis and the harm that might arise from that, so I would really like to hear the Government’s assessment of that. It would be deeply unfortunate if measures now being taken to regulate smoking cigarettes, heated tobacco—as my noble friend Lord Vaizey spoke about—and other products might actually drive people to some worse products instead.

The other point I wanted to raise—the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, raised some of these concerns as well—and this is why I voted against the Bill in its earlier iteration when I was a Member of the House of Commons, is that it sets a very dangerous and worrying precedent. I am talking not about smoking but about the principle which the generational ban assaults: the principle of adult citizenship. The idea that we have always accepted and worked upon in this country is the premise that when you achieve or attain an age of majority you will be in an equal position to other citizens to exercise choices as to whether you use certain legal products or not and other choices that you make in life. I cannot think of another example where legislation has so blatantly sought to discriminate against different adult citizens according to their exact date of birth, and I find that deeply worrying. It is wrong in principle, and it is something we really need to think about far more. I find it slightly remarkable that, at least until we got to the 18th speaker in this debate, nobody had even raised the concern about that.

Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Lord Brady of Altrincham Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 24th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, called this a world-leading policy. It is world-leading, because no one else in the world has chosen this policy. One wants to know why. At least the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, admitted that this was novel and therefore untested. Can we at least have a little humility by admitting that the Bill is an experiment? It is a risk.

How you do age verification, as rather wittily described by the noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, is a bit untested. How will we cope with the 84 year-old versus the 85 year-old—will there be a scrap? It is said that it is not going to happen for many years, but I thought the idea of legislators was that you were meant to think about the future, not just tomorrow, and the long- term implications of policies that pass.

Let us be honest: there is no good practice to copy with this Bill. There is no evidence about exactly how it will work or whether it will work. The claims on its behalf are largely based on modelling and speculation, and that is not evidence; it is not scientific. Therefore, the moral high ground and the sense of certainty deployed by those who are enthusiastic about the Bill, and the disdain towards those of us who are sceptical about it, are just a little misplaced.

I therefore request that, as we go through the very short Report stage, because a lot of us have been through a longer Committee stage, we are honest about things such as cost-benefit analysis—what is lost, what is gained—and, rather than moral righteousness, consider whether this is actually fit for purpose, even the purpose of those people who are putting the Bill forward. Whatever the intentions of those promoting the Bill, many of the clauses in it are counterproductive.

I know we are not on this section yet, but as an ex-smoker who started vaping, I am utterly distraught that we now have a Bill that, to all intents and purposes, treats vaping and tobacco as interchangeable, despite a denial by the Government. I do not think that there will be the health gain that is claimed.

My final point at this time—because I will be back —is that it is a little rich to sneer about freedom. Saying the word “libertarian” gives certain people a thrill; they can feel as though they are morally virtuous. I do not consider myself to be a libertarian, despite what Wikipedia says. However, I fully embrace living in a free society. I do not think that freedom is something I should be embarrassed about, nor that saying that people should be given choices about their lifestyles makes you to the right of Genghis Khan, or whatever it is that people are implying—or, worse, in the pay of big tobacco, which is the inference of many of the contributions. At some stage relatively soon, lots of adults—the 84 and 85 year-olds, because these kids do grow up to be adults—will be denied a choice. This Bill affects adults.

People can make choices about whether they take risks in their health. I suspect that practically everyone I know is using those weight-loss injections. To me they are a bit risky—I think, “Are they safe?”—but I am not mounting a campaign yet, because half this House would be out. People say it is worth the risk. A lot of people do daft things such as going skiing—mad; too risky for me. There are all sorts of things. People have been known to have the odd extra pint or eat the odd greasy breakfast. People take risks and make choices about their health all the time.

I do not want more people to smoke, but I also think that, in a free society, we have to give a certain degree of room for people to make choices—even the wrong choices. We live in a free society. Deciding the right and wrong choice is what happens in authoritarian regimes, but in a free society we say, “I don’t think you should do that, but I’m not necessarily going to legislate so that you can’t do everything I personally disapprove of”. We should not even say, “You shouldn’t do that, because I know best for your health what you should and shouldn’t do”. In medical ethics, there are times when you go to your doctor, who says, “Take this”, and you say, “I decline to take that medication; I do not want that intervention”. In a free society, a doctor cannot force you to do what you do not want to do—even the virtuous health professional who we are all meant to revere.

As we carry on this Report stage, can we all show a bit of humility? Living in a free society puts before us difficult moral decisions. There is no necessarily right or wrong. We are allowed to scrutinise a Bill that is put before us without being accused of somehow being evil because we do not go along with the Bill. Just because the Conservative Government, when they were in, and the Labour Government now agree—if that is the basis on which we should not scrutinise, we might as well all go home. I am sad to say that, for some of us, the Conservative Party has had far too much agreement with the Labour Party over recent decades.

[Lord Brady of Altrincham (Con)]

I am a Conservative Member who, in the other House, voted against this proposition. Does the noble Baroness not share my concern that one of the unspoken nonsenses of this legislation is that far too many young people are already choosing to smoke cannabis, instead of cigarettes that they might legally obtain? That proves that, however we try to legislate or regulate this market, people will do what they choose to do. Virtually no effort is made to clamp down on the illegal smoking of cannabis.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I am allowed to come back on that. All I want to say is that I do not want it to go down in Hansard that I am such a libertarian that I support the smoking of cannabis: I am not Zack Polanski. It is also the case that we have to think of the unintended consequences and the real world and real young people, rather than imaginary ones.