Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Jake Berry Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

rose—

[Sir Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

rose—

[Victoria Atkins]

I will just finish this point. We are bringing forward this legislation so that we stop the start from 2027. Future generations will not have that addiction to nicotine.

[Victoria Atkins]

Yes, I can assure the hon. Lady, because the illicit trade is often the greatest in the most deprived areas of the country, and I am about to develop exactly how we will help law enforcement. I very much understand the concerns across the House about ensuring that the illicit trade does not flourish.

[Sir Jake Berry]

Has my right hon. Friend seen the latest statistics that say twice as many schoolchildren smoke cannabis as smoke tobacco? It is already illegal—for all of us, not just children—to smoke cannabis. If a ban really worked, how can she explain those statistics? How can she show that this ban to stop people who are currently 15 will be different from the anti-drugs legislation that we already have?

[Victoria Atkins]

To be clear, is my right hon. Friend suggesting that we repeal the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, under which cannabis is prohibited? Although I have no experience of it, I understand that the consumption of marijuana also involves the consumption of tobacco and cigarette papers. The point is that we are trying to move away from the idea that current youngsters will be able to buy their cigarettes legally in shops from the age of 18 in 2027, precisely because we want to ensure that they can lead longer, healthier lives. In a moment I will come to some of the myths that the tobacco industry has put around about the impact of introducing age restrictions on cigarettes, which will be interesting evidence for those who are concerned about that.

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[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

Until the early 2000s, every pub you walked into was filled with smoke. One in every four people in this country was a smoker. The last Labour Government banned smoking in public places, which had an enormous impact on the health of our nation. The following year, there were 1,200 fewer hospital admissions for heart attacks, according to the British Medical Journal. Since 2007, the number of people who smoke has been cut by almost a third. Our understanding of second-hand smoke grew, and there was a cultural change around where it was acceptable to smoke. Even at home, people went outside to smoke, instead of smoking in front of their children.

A study in Scotland found that whereas hospital admissions for children with asthma were increasing by 5% a year before the smoking ban, admissions were down by 18% in the three years following Labour’s legislation. In short, Labour helped to build a healthier society: smoking was down, the number of patients needing treatment was down, NHS beds were freed up and lives were saved. But there is more to do. During the 13 years when Labour was last in office, life expectancy was extended by three and a half years, but in the 14 years that the Conservatives have been in office, it has grown by just four months. For men, it is beginning to decline. We are falling into ill health earlier in life today than we were a decade ago, which is a shameful indication of our country’s decline.

What more motivation could this House need for once again taking seriously the health of our nation? Today, smoking remains a scourge on our society. Some 75,000 GP appointments every month are to deal with the impacts of smoking. The cost to our economy, after taxes, is £10 billion. Around 80,000 of our friends, neighbours and colleagues lose their lives to smoking every year. It is a lethal addiction, a scourge on society, an enormous burden on our NHS and a drag on our economy, and it is time to consign it to the dustbins of history. Let us act today so that the next generation of young people can live healthier, happier and longer lives than the generations before them.

Labour will give our wholehearted support to this Bill. In fact, we needed no persuasion. In an interview with The Times in January last year, I said that it was time for a New Zealand-style smoking ban. I argued that a progressive ban would have a transformational impact on the health of individuals, the health of the nation as a whole and the public finances.

After around two and a half years in this job, I am getting used to the Government nicking Labour’s policies. In the last year alone, the magpies opposite have swooped in on Labour’s NHS workforce plan, Labour’s plan to recruit dentists in the most under-served areas, Labour’s plan for a windfall tax on oil and gas giants, and Labour’s plan to abolish the non-dom tax status. Even so, I was shocked when I saw that the Conservative party—the party of Ken Clarke—is nicking the Labour party’s plan for a progressive ban on tobacco. Of all the policies that the Conservatives have adopted from the Labour party in the past few years, nothing shows our dominance in the battle of ideas more than this latest capitulation.

Where Labour leads, the Conservatives follow. Indeed, when I first floated this proposal, Conservative MPs called it “nanny state” and

“an attack on ordinary people and their culture”,

and I was accused of “health fascism”. What irony, when Conservative MPs are overseas today in Brussels, lining up with the European far right. Anyway, it is water off a duck’s back to me. I am delighted that just a few months later the Prime Minister announced this policy at the Conservative party conference, and that a Conservative Health Secretary has brought this progressive ban before Parliament today.

However, it seems that not every Conservative Member got the memo. It has been widely reported, and we have seen indications of it today, that there are still Members on the Conservative Benches—as many as 100, if we believe rebel Tory briefings to the media, although in our experience these Tory rebellions tend to evaporate when the moment comes—who resist the new interventionist consensus, who continue to fly the flag for small-state libertarianism, and who believe that the Health Secretary and the Prime Minister have surrendered to the lobbying of big health and those tyrants in Action on Smoking and Health, the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Diabetes UK, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Mind, Asthma and Lung UK, the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the Royal College of Midwives and the British Medical Association. Well, we happily align ourselves with big health in defence of the nation and we are only too happy to defend the Health Secretary against the siren voices of big tobacco that we see gathered around our former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), in the corner of the Chamber today.

[Sir Jake Berry]

On the issue of unity, does the hon. Gentleman agree with the comment made by his colleague the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) that if we bring in a progressive ban on cigarettes, we should mirror it with a similar ban on vaping? If he becomes Health Secretary, will that become the policy that he will promote?

[Wes Streeting]

My hon. Friend the Member for York Central made the really good point—a point that needs to be well understood in the context of this debate—that vaping is undoubtedly, unquestionably a useful smoking cessation tool, but we should not send the message to the country that vaping is good for our health or that it is without harmful consequences. When it comes to banning things, it should be on the basis of evidence and there should not be a predisposition to ban. I have not yet seen evidence to persuade me that vaping is harmful enough to introduce a ban of the sort suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central. I hope I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman that, when the general election eventually comes, the Labour party will not go around trying to ban things left, right and centre, but I certainly want to consign to the history books the 244,000 people on NHS waiting lists in his area as a direct result of the policies of the Government whom he supports and has served.

[Sir Jake Berry]

rose—

[Wes Streeting]

I will happily give way. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would like to take the opportunity to apologise to his constituents in Rossendale and Darwen for his abysmal record in government.

[Sir Jake Berry]

I will resist the hon. Gentleman’s offer. He has just said that vaping should only ever be used to help people to stop smoking cigarettes. If this Bill passes, it will be illegal for people who are now aged 15 ever to smoke cigarettes, so there will be no requirement in his world for them ever to vape. So I repeat the question, which he has refused to answer: will the Labour party bring forward—this is supported by his own party—a ban on vapes to mirror the tobacco ban? Yes or no?

[Wes Streeting]

The record will show that I answered the right hon. Gentleman’s question. I talked about banning things and taking away people’s choice, and there are plenty of things that we do on a daily basis that might be harmful to our health in some way. Indeed, participating in most physical contact sports carries a risk of injury, but we are not going to ban football, rugby or boxing. I refer him to my previous answer, which is that I have not seen evidence to persuade me to ban vaping in the way that this Government are proposing to phase out smoking. I have answered that question already and I answer it again now, but I am sure that it will not be lost on the people of Rossendale and Darwen that he did not take the opportunity to apologise to the 244,000 people in his area who are stuck on record long waiting lists.

Once again, the Prime Minister has shown that he is too weak to stand up to his party. The psychodrama in the Conservative party is being put before the interests of the country. In the press today, the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Kemi Badenoch) is the latest to let it be known that she will be opposing this Bill. Journalists were helpfully pointed towards comments about her belief in the limits of the state made during her last leadership campaign. I say “her last leadership campaign”, but I am sure that it will not be her last leadership campaign. Indeed, I do not think it has ever stopped. Anyway, that is what she said. In fact, she bemoaned Governments who try to “solve every problem”. Well, if she has a problem with Governments solving problems, she must be delighted with the record of this Government, who can barely solve any problems. They cannot even solve the chaos in their own party.

The Business Secretary is not the only one who is desperate to tell Conservative party members that they oppose this Bill. The former Prime Minister joins us today. The right hon. Member for South West Norfolk and recently declared candidate to be the next leader of the Conservative party, has said that the Bill is “profoundly unconservative”. A stopped clock is right twice a day, and I find myself agreeing with the former Prime Minister. This is absolutely an un-Conservative Bill. It is a Labour Bill, and we are delighted to see the Government bring it forward. [Interruption.] Yes, even this stopped clock is right twice a day for the Trussites in the corner. The right hon. Lady is in fine company when it comes to former Prime Ministers. Boris Johnson has said that this proposal is

“absolutely nuts…It’s just mad”.

Well, now he knows how the rest of us felt when he was Prime Minister.

The right hon. and learned Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman) could not be with us today because she is currently in Brussels surrounded by the police who are trying to shut down the event she is attending with some far right fanatics, with whom she has much in common. A source close to the right hon. and learned Lady has said that she is “not a fan” of the Bill. Well, now she knows how the rest of us feel about her, too.

Some dark horses have also spied an opportunity to play to the gallery. It seems that even my former bête noire, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), fancies his chances in the ongoing battle for the Conservative leadership, because he too has come out against this Bill. To be fair, he has a strong case for the leadership of the Conservative party. As Health Secretary, he had to face a workforce in constant dispute with him, which is good practice for dealing with the party, and he has to deal with a steady stream of toxic sewage in his current job, so who could be more experienced in coping with the travails of the modern Conservative party than the right hon. Gentleman?

I want to praise the one member of this Government who has consistently made the case for the Government’s Bill. No, of course I am not talking about the Prime Minister. Since his party conference speech in October he has shrunk away from the debate, once again too weak to stand up to his own party, and instead left it to others to make the case for him. To her credit, the Health Secretary has cast aside any leadership ambition she may have once held and come out in full-throated defence of Labour’s policy. So let me assure my comrade opposite that we will stand with her today in the voting Lobby, even as the forces of conservatism stand against her.

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[Sir Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

I start my speech by saying that there are some good parts of this Bill. The banning of disposable vapes and preventing children from starting smoking or vaping is something that anyone with a brain—there are perhaps more of them on the Government Benches than on the Opposition Benches—would support. I will address my remarks to whether banning all children who are now 15 from ever smoking is the right way to stop them smoking, as well as talking about whether any Government have a mandate on removing personal liberty.

I am sorry to see the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) leaving his place, because I was about to address some remarks to him. It is unfortunate for the quality of debate to label someone standing up to ask whether this measure will be effective as someone who wants children to smoke. I am an ex-smoker and I do not want children to smoke; I just want to pass decent laws in this House to ensure that we can reduce the number of young people smoking. That is why, when I look at this ban, I question whether it will work.

I put it to the Secretary of State that 20% of young people say they have tried cannabis. Those are not my statistics, but those of the Office for National Statistics. That is twice as many as the number of young people who say that they have tried tobacco, I think within the past 30 days. If bans worked—cannabis is banned—no child would ever have tried cannabis. It is illegal not just for those who are 15, but for all of us, whatever age we are. I went to Aintree this weekend to enjoy the grand national. I was amazed that people were walking around at one of the most heavily policed events in the UK openly snorting cocaine. It is a class A drug, and the police were doing nothing about it. If bans worked and the police enforced them, no one is this country would take drugs. I therefore question whether banning people who are now 15 from ever starting smoke will work. To me, the answer is no.

I will move on to the mandate for any MP or any Government in this place to seek to bring in such a measure in advance of a general election. If Members go to Washington and have a look at the Korean war memorial, they will walk past thousands of names—it is an extraordinary memorial—and at the end there is a bold statement: “Freedom is not free”. All the freedoms that we enjoy in this country have not been given to us; they have been fought for. People have died to ensure that we keep those freedoms.

What we are really talking about today is removing from a group of people in our society—they may be young now, but do not forget that, at the general election after next, some will be 18 and banned from smoking, while some 19-year-old voters will be able to smoke—the right ever to have the agency to make their own decisions. If we believe in freedom, we must accept that people have to be free to make bad decisions as well as good ones. If we live in a society where the only decisions that we are free to make are those that the Government tell us we are free to make, we might as well live in a socialist society—we may as well live in Russia or China. For me, freedom means the freedom to get things wrong.

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making some extremely valid points. Freedom with responsibility and freedom of choice are surely what the Conservative party should stand for. We can think of all kinds of reasons to ban all kinds of things, but surely the choice of the individual should be paramount. It is not for Government to dictate to individuals.

[Sir Jake Berry]

My hon. Friend is quite right. That is the legal position under the law in this country if we have capacity, no matter how bad the decisions we make. Constituents have contacted me about elderly relatives who are making poor financial decisions, but because they have capacity they are free to make those decisions, albeit bad ones in some cases.

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Jake Berry]

I will not. I have given way once and want to stick to my time. I will not support the Bill, because I believe in freedom.

My second point is about mandate. The Prime Minister does not have a mandate to bring forward this legislation, and no Labour or Liberal Democrat MPs—in fact, no MPs in the House—have a mandate to vote for it, because it was not in our manifestos. We are just months away from a general election. If people believe that this measure is so important, they should put it in their manifestos. The Conservative party could put it in our manifesto and let people vote for it.

The powers that we have in this House of Commons are not ours; they are lent to us by our constituents between general elections. We are quite rightly getting to the point where we have to return those powers to our constituents and try to persuade them that we have done a good enough job to get them back. Before we start giving away their freedoms and liberties, let us at least give them the opportunity to have a say.

There is one addiction in this country that I am even more concerned about than the addiction to nicotine: the addiction of the Government to telling people what to do. I want to live in a free society where I am free to make both good and bad decisions. As people go through the Aye Lobby to support the Bill this evening—I shall be going through the No Lobby—I ask them to cast their mind back to the last time we were all washed through the Aye Lobby together on a wave of health and science and righteous hope to keep people safe, which was during the covid pandemic.

I am proud of furlough and all sorts of things, but I regret closing schools. It was the wrong thing to do, but I was washed along on that wave. I opposed some of the covid proposals. People should look back to that and think, “That was the last time we took people’s freedoms away from them. Did we always get it right?” In my view, the answer is no. We got lots of things right, but we also made lots of mistakes. As people march through the Lobby, they should think about whether in fact they urgently need to support the Bill or whether it should wait until after a general election—we may have a different Government then, if polls are to be believed—when the British public will have at least had the question put to them.

The addiction of our Government to telling us what to do goes beyond whether we should smoke. During covid, they determined who we could go to bed with, whether we could sit in the park and read a newspaper, and whether we could go to work. We are now told how we can heat our homes and whether we can drive an older diesel car in London. Unfortunately, we live in a country where those freedoms—those freedoms that are not free—are being eroded every single year of our lives. That is not something that I am comfortable with, and it is not something that I am prepared to support.

There are good bits to the Bill, but we cannot allow the fact that good bits of legislation have been annexed to this terrible legislation, which in my view will not work, to force us to support it. The Government could bring in the vaping measures on their own, and I would support them. I just do not support the creeping ban on tobacco. When people reach the age of 18 in a free society, they must be free to choose for themselves.

I will finish with this. If Members find themselves in the No Lobby tonight—I hope I will see a few colleagues in there—they should keep in their mind that freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it. In my view, by voting no tonight, we defend the freedoms of our constituents and our country. It is the right thing to do, and I look forward to seeing as many colleagues in there as possible.

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[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

As I have said ever since I met my hon. Friend at the age of 18, he is always right. I can never disagree with him.

I want to say a few even more furious words about vaping. It is just appalling to see vapes being deliberately marketed to children at pocket-money prices and in bright colours, with fun packaging and flavours like bubble gum and berry blast, and with the vape counter right next to the sweet counter.

[Sir Jake Berry]

Before my right hon. Friend gets too furious about vaping, may I ask her to clarify two points on smoking? First, she said that because of the addictive nature of nicotine, it is extremely important that we stop people smoking from the age of 15. I do not support that, but if it is so important, why are we not starting at 17? It is already illegal for 17-year-olds to smoke. What is the magic of 15? If we really believe in the policy, why delay? Secondly, she spoke about her own experience, and I am a former smoker myself. She started smoking at 14, and I started smoking at about 14 as well. It was illegal when I started smoking at 14, but it did not stop me. I am a lawbreaker—how shocking. Why does she think that this ban on people starting smoking when under age will be different?

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for raising those really important points. As I will come on to, we will be putting £30 million of new money each year into trading standards and our enforcement agencies to clamp down on enforcement, and we are making it illegal to sell cigarettes to anybody turning 15 this year. He asks why. It is precisely because we are trying to bring in the Bill with a decent amount of notice so that people can prepare for it, precisely to protect retailers and allow all the sectors that will be impacted to be able to prepare.

I come back to the area where I am seriously on the warpath: targeting kids who might become addicted to nicotine vapes. I went to Hackney to visit some retail shops, where I saw the vape counters right next to the sweet counters. I saw that it is absolutely not about me—it is not about trying to stop me smoking. It is about trying to get children addicted through cynical, despicable methods. Sadly, for too many kids, vapes are already an incredible marketing success. One in five children aged between 11 and 17 have now used a vape, and the number has trebled in the last three years.