Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th November 2025 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

My Lords, we are debating Amendment 102 to Clause 45, and the noble Earl, Lord Howe, was in full flow.

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, I need no persuading about the damage to health caused by both active and passive smoking. However, throughout my years in dealing with health matters, I have also been consistent in acknowledging that there are one or two narrow areas of tobacco regulation in which the health gain to be derived from such regulation is outweighed by considerations of personal choice, commercial freedoms and—not to sound too high-flown—the national interest.

Handmade cigars are one such instance; I would venture to say that they are the most important one. There is, therefore, a necessary challenge that must be made to the Government—a challenge issued by my noble friend Lord Lindsay in his excellent speech. The challenge is to demonstrate evidence that the strictures that apply to cigarettes apply equally to every single type of tobacco product when consumed. These include heated tobacco, which is a relatively novel product but could have a role in smoking cessation—we do not know that yet, but it might—snuff, pipe tobacco and, in particular, hand-rolled cigars.

Noble Lords have articulated why this challenge must be made. I want to distil those arguments by focusing, as others have done, on handmade cigars. For official statistical purposes, sales of handmade cigars are lumped in with the sale of a whole range of other tobacco products—a fact that precludes any detailed analysis of the market relating to handmade cigars on their own. In the UK, that market is tiny by comparison to the market in cigarettes, but it is a market of very high value. Depending on its age and provenance, one box of Havana cigars can sell for many thousands of pounds. Retail outlets for such cigars are very few in number, but their combined activity is enough to make the UK one of the leading centres in the world for high-quality cigars imported from Caribbean countries. The historical links between British importers and retailers and small producers in those countries go back many years, making it a trade that is the polar opposite of that associated with cigarettes. I should add that highly specialised retailers of handmade cigars in this country are one of the many reasons why very rich people from around the world see London as a destination of choice.

However, relevant as they are, these arguments around the market tell only half the story when it comes to considering this legislation. We need to be clear about the facts relating to health. Hand-rolled cigars, costing hundreds of pounds apiece, are decidedly not a cause of young people taking up smoking, nor is doing so a route to addiction for those who choose to smoke such cigars. Very few people would think of smoking them with anywhere near the same frequency as smoking cigarettes; that just does not happen.

In general, cigars of this kind are bought as luxury items for occasional enjoyment, the main attraction being their unique tobacco flavour. I am not for a minute suggesting that handmade cigars are without any health risk whatever—that would be absurd—but there is a distinct difference between the dangers posed by cigarettes, which have all sorts of carcinogenic chemicals added to them during the course of their manufacture, and the dangers of a hand-rolled cigar, which consists of pure tobacco and whose smoke is not inhaled.