Tobacco and Vapes Bill (First sitting)

Liz Jarvis Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 7th January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

We have one more question, which I am afraid is probably the last one to this set of witnesses, from Liz Jarvis.

[Liz Jarvis (Eastleigh) (LD)]

Q I would like to understand more about how you think the gradual change in age of sale will affect tobacco and vaping behaviour, compared with increasing the age of sale in one go. If a child has an older sibling or someone who may be bringing the products into the home, or has older friends, I do not see how this will change the behaviour or the desire to try the products.

Professor Sir Chris Whitty: It is important to be realistic about the fact that—as I suspect you will all remember from your schooldays, and if you have children, you will know from them—people do not stick exactly to the current law as it is. The idea that, magically, there will be a cut-off and people will exactly follow it strikes me as flying in the face of lived reality. However, as the age of sale moves up over time, I am very confident that it will lead to a significant reduction over time in the number of children buying cigarettes, because it will be illegal for people to sell them to them. It will not be illegal for them to possess cigarettes—that is an important distinction—but it will be illegal for people to sell them to them. If you are a 17-year-old you can usually pretend to be an 18-year-old, but pretending, or even wanting to pretend, to be a 30-year-old is a different thing completely. Over time this measure will become more effective.

The impacts will be seen first in things such as children’s asthma and developing lungs. It will probably next be seen in birth effects, because the highest smoking rates are in the youngest mums: the rates are up to 30% in people who have children before they are 20, but much lower in people who have them in their late 20s or early 30s. In that younger cohort, the effect on stillbirths, birth defects, premature births and so on will be the next big impact that the Bill will have, and gradually it will roll over time.

It is not a perfect mechanism—I do not think any piece of law that has been designed is a perfect mechanism—but, as a way of gradually driving smoking down in a way that does not take away anyone’s existing rights, it seems to me a reasonable balance between those principal aims. To go back to my first point, in reality the borderline will probably be a bit fuzzy, because it always is, but over time the effects will be very substantial.

[The Chair]

I have about three minutes left, so I will ask Mary Kelly Foy to ask a very brief question with a very short answer, because we will be finishing spot on 10.25 am.