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.