Smokefree Future

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Thank you very much, Mr Sharma, for chairing this debate and for calling me to speak. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on moving the debate. He regularly secures debates on this subject, and has done so very well again today. I intended to speak on the issue of vaping, which he mentioned at the end of his comments. I agree with his point about children seeing vaping as a gateway into something, and that is very serious and needs to be addressed. It will probably be the real battleground for this issue in the future.

However, I want to turn to something else. With all policies, there are unintended consequences. I have no doubt that the Government’s intention is correct, but there are undoubtedly areas that raise unintended consequences.

I first want to turn the Minister’s attention to Northern Ireland. The impact on Northern Ireland will be significant, because under the Brexit arrangements—the protocol and the Windsor framework—the sale of tobacco products in Northern Ireland is regulated not by the UK Government but by EU law. It is therefore unclear how the Government would implement a generational ban in Northern Ireland under the current regulations and laws.

As recently as April 2022, the Danish Government tried to implement a generational ban, and the European authorities blocked them on the basis that it would impact Denmark’s European neighbours. Given the situation that Northern Ireland has unfortunately been placed in by the Government under the Windsor framework, this generational ban would not be implementable in a part of the United Kingdom, so 3% of the population of the UK do not matter when it comes to this policy. That is the impact that people will see. It one of the Prime Minister’s flagship policies, but its application would be prohibited in one part of the United Kingdom. The Government need to look at that issue if they are serious about this policy, and they must comment on how they intend to fix it.

If the UK Government were to find a means of introducing a generational ban in Northern Ireland while still adhering to the Windsor framework, they would therefore show that they are able to breach the final concluded Windsor framework agreement. If they are able to breach it on this issue, all the comments we have heard in this House over the past year—“It is finished,” “It is done,” “It cannot be changed”—are therefore set aside, as that would show that it can be done.

A generational ban in Northern Ireland would create an absurd situation whereby people living in County Armagh, County Fermanagh and County Londonderry could simply drive a few miles over the border to the local convenience shop or filling station in the Republic of Ireland and purchase cigarettes there, so I do not think the Government have thought through the implications for Northern Ireland. I would be very interested to hear how they intend to pursue these issues and address these matters.

I am an officer of the all-party parliamentary group for retail crime, safe and sustainable high streets, and I think the ban will have another unintended consequence on criminality in the whole United Kingdom, not exclusively in Northern Ireland. Every single day, there are 867 violent or abusive incidents affecting retailers across the United Kingdom. Most people working in retail shops—average corner shops—get abused at some point. I got that statistic from the British Retail Consortium, so it is an accurate figure. Asian Trader carried out a survey on the generational tobacco ban in November 2023, and it found that 86% of retailers believe that a generational prohibition on the sale of tobacco will have a negative effect on their business, and 55% say that it will complicate age checks in store and will lead to violent attacks on their staff. The majority of retailers say that the only way they can enforce a generational prohibition in the long term is through mandatory ID checks. Those are not my views; they are the views of retailers.

Of course, ID checks are an enforcement nightmare. Andrew Chevis, the founder of CitizenCard, the UK’s largest provider of proof-of-age cards, said in The House magazine in November 2023,

“I have deep concerns from both a retail and enforcement perspective”

about a generation ban. His concern is, of course, for the safety of retailers. I get that. Any of us who have retail or convenience stores in our constituencies—as we all do—will be concerned about these matters.

UK retailers already suffer sky-high levels of violence and abuse, and a generational prohibition could make that worse, as retailers will have to identify young-looking customers before they are able to sell them tobacco, and they will have to be convinced. I will be very interested to see the legislation when it is printed, and I would like the Minister to confirm whether, if a retailer decides, “Oh, that person is over the age, and I can legally sell it to them,” but it turns out that that person is not over the age—they were within a generational ban threshold—it is the retailer that has committed the criminal offence and not the purchaser. That goes right the way through.

In a few years, under this generational retail ban, a person who is in their 30s and should not be buying cigarettes in the first place—but they are in their 30s and are buying them—would not actually be committing a criminal offence as an adult, but the retailer would be committing an offence for selling them. That needs to be clear: who is ultimately responsible here when adults are making adult choices? I think that that needs to be cleared up.

As I said, a survey conducted by the British Retail Consortium identified that checking for proof of age is one of the biggest triggers for violence and abuse against UK retailers. I already quoted the figure of there being 867 violent or abusive incidents occurring every day.

The Prime Minister very kindly acknowledged some of these issues, just before the recess, when I had an event in Dining Room B with the retail crime, safe and sustainable high streets APPG. He kindly indicated, from his experience of when he was a kid working in a retail shop, how these things impact detrimentally on members of staff. If the Prime Minister can see that, then I think this issue needs to be properly looked at.

The Association of Convenience Store’s crime report is published every year. Its 2023 report says that there were 759,000 incidents of verbal abuse and that 34% of verbal abuse incidents are hate-motivated. It also says that, according to retailers, 87% of convenience store colleagues reported that they had faced verbal abuse in the past year. Therefore, although I think it is an unintended consequence, creating or increasing the opportunity for that sort of abuse to take place is a consequence that the Government have to deal with. Is there a better way of doing this? Is it better, for example, for the Government to say, “You are 21 or 22. You can only buy after you become an adult, at that higher age threshold”?

[Bob Blackman]

The hon. Member is giving a very thoughtful speech about some of the consequences. Does he accept the fact that, when individuals go into a public house, they will now routinely be challenged and asked for proof of identity if they look young? The challenge is often whether they are over 21, although they could, of course, legally buy alcohol at the age of 18. Many public houses will not serve anyone under the age of 21. Does the hon. Member accept the fact that, because this is already in operation, the retailer should have the right to challenge people who look young so that they can make sure that they are only selling to people who are over the legal age to buy?

[Ian Paisley]

That is a very good point when it comes to that threshold between 17 and 21 or 22. The problem is that this generational legislation creates a conveyor belt—from 18 to 19 to 20. Eventually you will be 37 and not be allowed to buy a cigarette under the law. But, if the retailer sells it to you, whether you are a young-looking, handsome 37-year-old or an old-looking boy, you will still end up not having committed a criminal offence, even though you have, but the retailer has committed an offence for selling it to you. At that point, where do the ID checks come in?

Perhaps the intention is that there will be a time in the next five, six, seven or eight years when no one will smoke. I want to turn to that. The one issue that I have pushed hard and heavy on since becoming a Member of Parliament is the criminalisation of illicit sales of tobacco that furnish criminals’ pockets. It is that illegal crime that really worries me.

The hon. Member for Harrow East, who moved the motion today, quite rightly commented on where he thinks the level of public consumption of cigarettes is. I think that the real figure is startlingly higher, because His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs estimates that 11% of cigarette consumption and 35% of hand-rolling tobacco consumption in the UK comes from the illegal trade. People are buying it illicitly, either as stolen products or black market products that have been brought into the United Kingdom. This is happening in a huge number of areas, and it is fuelling criminal gangs.

That is the higher level. There are more people consuming tobacco than some people want to admit but, unfortunately, they are buying it illegally. The Government are not benefiting in terms of tax and legitimate manufacturers are not benefiting. In fact, the companies are disadvantaged because the product is sometimes stolen from their companies, or is a copy—a counterfeit—of their products.

The Government must decide whether they want tobacco to be supplied to UK consumers by a taxed and regulated private sector, as it currently is, or by the public sector as a medicine, which may be one way of doing it, or by the criminal sector, in the same way that cannabis is sold. Those are the choices that the Government ultimately face.

In my view, a generational prohibition will gradually hand even more of the UK tobacco market to organised criminal gangs, who use the money from tobacco smuggling to fund activities including terrorism, people smuggling, prostitution and all sorts of other things. That view is lifted from the US State Department’s 2015 report, “The Global Illicit Trade in Tobacco: A Threat to National Security”. That is why the gangs deploy such resources. When the South African Government banned the sale of tobacco during covid, illegal traders quickly stepped in. Today, 93% of tobacco sold in South Africa is illicit trade and counterfeit trade. We need to get this absolutely right or else we create a bonanza for the criminal. The sooner we do that, the better, and I am sure the Minister will consider those issues.

I do not want to criminalise shopkeepers, and I know the hon. Member for Harrow East does not want that, but that will be an unintended consequence. As people get older, it will be very difficult to judge whether they can be sold a cigarette. Shopkeepers will have to ask for ID, and we do not have ID in Great Britain. In Northern Ireland, we have a form of ID in our electoral cards, but they do not carry a date of birth, although they do show that a person is over the age of 18. That would have to be changed if they were to be used in Northern Ireland.

What are the alternatives? Many retailers and others have suggested that raising the age of sale for tobacco products to 21 would be much simpler to implement and would avoid this potential negative consequence, and the nightmare of regulation. It would be far easier to implement and enforce, and would avoid the complete takeover of the UK tobacco market by criminals. I urge the Government to consider those alternatives in pursuing this incredibly important flagship policy. For the record, I do not promote smoking, but I believe in adults making choices. We have to try to solve the real problem, not create another one.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

Yes, I know. You can’t believe that, can you?

Even to this day, talking about smoking all the time, I sometimes think, “Ooh a cigarette.” That is how addictive it is—40 years on and I still think, “Ooh!” It is that addictive, and that is absolutely appalling.

We have announced that we will more than double the funding to local stop smoking services across England to a total of £138 million a year, which will help around 360,000 people to quit every year. We are backing these efforts with substantial new money to support marketing campaigns. These measures are easy, common-sense and cost-effective ways to help people to kick the habit.

As colleagues will know, I am passionate about helping new mums, mums-to-be, new parents, new families and their babies, which is why I have asked officials to redouble our efforts to tackle smoking in pregnancy. Women who smoke during pregnancy are two and a half times more likely to give birth prematurely, and smoking is a significant driver of stillbirth. I want to do everything I can to spare parents the awful and heartbreaking tragedy of losing a baby, which we have heard so much about in this place only recently.

On average, just over one in 10 mums smoke at the time of delivery, but that number is as high as one in five in certain parts of the country, as some colleagues have spoken about already. We know that pregnant women who receive financial incentives are twice as likely to successfully quit throughout pregnancy compared to those who do not, so we are working to roll out a national financial incentive scheme by the end of 2024 to help all pregnant smokers and their partners to quit. This will build on our work over recent years to develop high-quality stop smoking support for pregnant women and their partners, with programmes such as the NHS long-term plan commitments on maternal smoking and the saving babies’ lives care bundle.

Thirdly, as I said at the start of my remarks, youth vaping has tripled in recent years. One in five children have now used a vape. I am especially worried about the damage being done to children’s bodies by illegal vapes, which is a growing concern for mums and dads across the country. The health advice is clear: young people and those who have never smoked should not vape. We have a duty to protect our children from underage vaping while their lungs and brains are still developing. There is not yet enough evidence on the long-term impact of vaping on young brains and lungs. I will not stand by while businesses knowingly and deliberately encourage children to use a product that is designed to help adults quit smoking. Those business do so with full knowledge that our children will become addicted to nicotine—well, not on my watch.

We have announced that we will take tough new action to reduce the appeal and availability of vapes through the tobacco and vapes Bill. In our recent public consultation, we sought views on restricting flavours, point-of-sale displays and packaging. On a visit to retail outlets in Hackney, I saw sweet counters and vape counters side by side, with the vapes in pretty packaging with cartoon characters and in little things that look like Coke cans. These vapes are not designed for 60-year-old smokers; they are designed for children, to get them addicted to nicotine.

The consultation has revealed something we already know: there are serious and justifiable environmental concerns over disposable vapes. It is a simple truth that more than 5 million disposable vapes are either littered or thrown away in general waste every week. That number has quadrupled in just the last year. Being sold at pocket-money prices, easy to use and widely available, disposable vapes are, of course, the product of choice for children. More than two thirds of current youth vapers use disposable products. We must and will take action.

Fourthly, a strong approach to enforcement is vital to ensure that our policy actually takes effect. The underage and illicit sale of tobacco, and more recently vapes, is undermining the work the Government are doing to regulate the industry and protect public health. We are cracking down on this evil and illicit trade by backing enforcement agencies including Border Force, HMRC and trading standards with £30 million extra per year. We will introduce powers in the tobacco and vapes Bill to give on-the-spot fines to tackle underage sales. I am pleased we can count on the strong support of trading standards officers right across the country.

Our public consultation closed on 6 December and we received nearly 28,000 valid responses. I am happy to assure all colleagues that we will publish our response in the coming weeks, ahead of the introduction of the tobacco and vapes Bill. I believe that our actions in this space show that the Government are willing to take tough, long-term decisions to protect our children and safeguard the health of future generations.

I will now answer some of the questions raised by hon. Members today; I thank them again for their contributions. In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East, our public consultation closed on 6 December and within the next few weeks we will publish the consultation. Of course we will then bring forward the Bill, which is, as everybody knows, a top priority for the Prime Minister.

As for the point about a polluter pays levy, the Treasury has looked at that in detail, but so far it has decided against it. I absolutely assure colleagues that I will take that point away and consider it again.

I thank the hon. Member for City of Durham for her invitation to visit her constituency, which I would be delighted to accept. She highlighted the fact that the discrepancy in life expectancy between different parts of her constituency is 50% attributable to smoking, which is a shocking figure. That is not uncommon around the country, so we need to tackle that issue.

I say gently to the hon. Member for North Antrim that when the legal age for smoking was raised, it reduced illicit tobacco sales by 25%; the evidence suggests that far from increasing criminality, raising the legal age for smoking decreases it.

The hon. Gentleman also asked a question about Northern Ireland specifically. I am pleased to tell him that in the Bill we propose to give Northern Ireland the powers to regulate in the same way as the rest of the United Kingdom. There has been a lot of consultation with the devolved Administrations and once the Stormont Assembly—which I urge him to get back up and running —is back up and running, Northern Ireland will be able to legislate to have exactly the same regime as the rest of the United Kingdom.

[Ian Paisley]

I do not know whether it is relevant, Mr Sharma, but for the completeness of the record I ought to have referred to my registered interests. I chair a charitable trust on employment and skills development that is named after Tom Gallaher, a leading industrialist of his age who was a tobacconist. I should just declare that on the record.

On the point that the Minister has just raised, may I ask her to go back to the Department and get advice for us? If Northern Ireland is restricted from regulating on this issue, because of our EU connection through the Windsor framework, even the Assembly would not be able to legislate on it, in the same way that the Danes were unable to do it. I really seek advice on that from the Minister.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

I am very happy to write to the hon. Gentleman on that point to give him absolute clarity.

I thank the hon. Member for Strangford for his contribution today. I very much enjoyed the visit that I made to his constituency, which was a long time ago—indeed, many years ago. He spoke about the importance of the four nations working together. I completely agree with him; the UK is much stronger together. I hope that in my remarks I have answered his other questions.

I also thank the hon. Member for Blaydon for her support for the Bill and for pointing out that it is vital, particularly in the north-east where smoking prevalence is higher than average in many other parts, that we really take steps to tackle the issue. I echo her expression of gratitude to local councillors, the NHS and to Fresh, the charity in her constituency, for the work that they have done to try to tackle smoking.

As I have said to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston, I hope we can work together constructively to ensure that we introduce these changes as soon as we can.

In closing, I will quickly address the New Zealand Government’s announcement that they will no longer introduce the smoking measures that had been planned there. There have been many calls, not least from the tobacco industry—I wonder why!—for us to row back on our plans following that decision. In response to those calls, I stress that the New Zealand plans included a licensing scheme to limit quite significantly the number of retailers able to sell tobacco and plans to limit the amount of nicotine in consumer products. Our Government are introducing a smoke-free generation, by protecting future generations from the harms of smoking while leaving current adult smokers the freedom to continue smoking if they choose to do so.