Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Lord Johnson of Lainston Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th November 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con)]

My Lords, in relation to this group, it is essential that trading standards have the resources they need. Although the government pledge of an additional £10 million is welcome, I feel it is probably not going to be enough. It is worth bearing in mind that trading standards are supportive of the Bill, and that is good news.

I understand the desire of my noble friend Lord Lansley to push the idea of the money being ring-fenced, as it were, for trading standards. As he acknowledged, there are dangers in that approach; we can think of overzealous traffic wardens and the criticisms that they have in relation to raising money that is ring-fenced for specific purposes, and there may be a danger of that happening here too. Still, I quite understand the desire to press for additional finance for trading standards, and I hope the Minister will say something on that in response because I think that is needed.

On Amendment 74, it seems eminently sensible to have a stepped approach to fines for offenders so that it is a proportionate response and first offenders do not have such a high fine as others. I am wholly supportive of that, and I hope the Minister is listening in that regard too.

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendments from my noble friends Lord Udny-Lister and Lord Lansley. I do not know whether any noble Lords in this Committee saw the news item, a few weeks ago, when the BBC went around looking not for under-the-counter illegal cigarette sales but for shops, well advertised with bright neon lights on the front, selling illegal vapes and illegal cigarettes. The stories of people of old going to the pub and having cigarettes passed under the table are now simply not the case; they are freely available. I have heard of people who have never bought a packet of legal cigarettes.

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All our amendments are tightly limited in scope but significant in impact. They do not challenge the Bill’s core aims; they merely recognise that not all tobacco products pose the same risks or merit the same regulatory approach. The inclusion of handmade cigars, pipe tobacco and snuff in the generational ban is not supported by evidence, and nor has it been justified by a proper impact assessment. The economic harm would be real, while the health benefits would be negligible. These amendments propose a more intelligent, proportionate and evidence-based approach. I beg to move.

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak in favour of this group of amendments, especially my noble friend Lord’s Lindsay’s excellent amendments— I commend him on his first-class speech to the Committee—and those amendments in my name, relating to the need for an impact assessment relating to hand-rolled cigars and handmade artisanal cigars, and the need to differentiate the occasionally smoked cigar and its concomitant industry from cigarettes and vapes and the issues that cigarettes and vapes clearly present. Please do not be under any illusion that I am trying to stop the control of cigarettes and vapes—I have been particularly vociferous in the importance of regulating their sale—but it is important to try to differentiate between cigars and the rest of the tobacco industry.

Noble Lords may think it slightly bizarre that we should make special reference to a certain type of product that is undoubtedly smoked. I am sure many noble Lords will simply close their ears and let their gaze drift off, as if they were smoking a delicious cigar, assuming that everything should be lumped together: ban smoking, ban all tobacco, end of. I declare that I once owned a cigar fan site—if anyone ever visited, I hope they enjoyed it—and I have smoked an occasional cigar. I think I am a better man for it. It is called freedom, and I enjoy every one.

There is a strong argument to be made to give additional consideration to the world of handmade, hand-rolled cigars as well. I strongly believe that the Bill is a direct contradiction to the freedom of choice by consenting adults. Worse, it is looking to destroy a community that benefits this country both financially and socially. For all the evidence about the iniquities of vapes and cigarettes, which I do not deny, I have seen nothing—my noble friend just raised this point—about the risks to health and society of occasional fine cigar consumption; apologies if I have missed it.

In fact, in a fractious age of division, it is around cigar clubs—people coming together of their own free will to enjoy an occasional cigar—that we see a reversal, not an accumulation, of social problems. I declare a further interest in that in my village, we gather every Friday to enjoy a cigar, to meet and to commune. In an age when we need to be brought together as a community and a nation, it is through cigars—bizarrely, but importantly—that we achieve this. How can we support measures that drive us apart when we need the exact opposite? All I ask is that we assess the facts, if noble Lords can allow for that.

This amendment asks that we ask who is smoking cigars. The demographic is almost totally advanced, as we have heard; in fact, I am probably a relatively youthful smoker of cigars at 51 years of age. The audience is 1% of the total. There is literally no risk to new smokers or children. The average price is between £20 and £30, putting them totally out of reach of minors and into the hands only of aficionados. A proper report will bear this out.

We should also assess the important contrast between cigarettes and cigars; they are totally different, and I find it personally offensive to be grouped into the simple category of “smoker”, huddled outside glass office blocks or furtively vaping into one’s sleeve. You have to actually take your time with a cigar. Those Members of the Committee who have not enjoyed one should understand that it takes at least an hour to enjoy a proper cigar; you have to toast the foot, turning it slowly—ideally using a splint or a match—and then you puff at it gently, relishing, savouring and enjoying it while reflecting that it is an act of a free and happy person.

They are artisanally crafted, derived from a specific place—where, by the way, we wish to trade. Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and, of course, Cuba are all countries with which this Government have made it a priority to increase trade. It is an all-natural product, not filled with chemicals. It is vegan compliant and fully biodegradable, which should please the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, who wishes to reduce pollution—I cannot see her in her usual place, so that joke is lost on her.

We should carefully consider the loss to our domestic economy too. It is an industry made up almost entirely of small and micro-businesses, as we have heard. They are mostly family owned. From Hunters & Frankau, the main Cuban importer, to the incredible Sahakian-owned Davidoff, via Fox’s and Cigars.com, all contribute to a legal and important industry, employing nearly 800 people and generating nearly £100 million in taxes. We should be aware that these specialist retailer characteristics are well established as exceptions and are protected under the 2002 Act and the tobacco and promotion regulations. I am not asking noble Lords or the Minister to do anything out of the ordinary; I am simply asking for consistency in establishing the basic facts.

I did some research over the past few days on their importance to our economy—not by smoking copious cigars to see how delicious they were, I assure you, but by visiting the shops down St James’s Street. It turns out that hundreds of people a week come to London, including non-smokers who have never smoked a cigar their lives, simply to visit these stores. They go into Davidoff’s to meet Mr Sahakian, or Fox’s, because they want to see our heritage. These icons of our culture, beacons of our heritage, are vital to tourism in London. Dismember these totems at your peril.

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[Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)]

Forgive me, but this is exactly why we need a proper impact study. In 2023, a different deal was done to supply cigars, and the prices have gone up significantly. Numbers and actual overall sales volumes are totally different, so it is misleading to introduce the idea that, just because the sales have gone up, the numbers have gone up. It is a directly inverse correlation because all of the prices have gone up. The UCL study shows that the big products that are moving are not tobacco products. Snus is a nicotine-based product, and shisha has gone up hugely, but that is not the same. It is important to be clear about these things. I urge the Minister to be very clear about the granularity of these figures because, otherwise, we end up in the wrong place.

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

It is a very interesting statistic that 2.4% of 14 to 16 year-olds have tried cigars in the last 30 days. That does not sound quite right; maybe it did not come out right. I would be grateful if we could have clarification on that piece of data.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

We can bandy all sorts of statistics around, but my noble friend is right that it is important to be absolutely accurate. I say to him that my reference was to sales of other tobacco products, which is a broader reference than to just cigars; I am happy to clarify that. I will also be pleased to write to the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, to be crystal-clear and to add anything else that I can in respect of the statistics.

The noble Lord, Lord Bethell, talked about the tobacco industry being incredibly—this is not a direct quote—innovative. He said that the industry is likely to adjust its business model as it has done before—for example, when the menthol flavour ban was introduced. That legislation did not cover cigars so, in response, as the noble Lord said, the industry produced cigarettes in a tobacco wrap, which are available in branded menthol packs of 10. Now, in the United States, a whole new category of small cigars has emerged to exploit the tax advantages over cigarettes, so I listen to the point that the noble Lord makes about the creativity and determination of the industry. I just ask noble Lords to hold that point in their head when we are talking about loopholes.

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I urge the Minister, who I know is fair minded and open to debate, to heed these warnings, listen to the experts and consult on the product scope of the generational ban so that unintended mistakes, as we have heard, are not made in the name of public health. I beg to move.

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

I shall speak to my Amendments 135A and 136A, as noble Lords would imagine. I will be brief. I hope these will meet a sympathetic ear from the Minister, who has oozed reasonableness from every pore during this debate. The specific amendment relates to Northern Ireland but—I am afraid my timings were off in terms of tabling the amendments—I hope it would actually cover all specialist tobacco stores, which naturally, because of their nature, are often concentrated in one single street.

It is absolutely right and sensible that there should be a density measure for tobacco-supplying shops in the UK regarding where they are located and so on, but we have some historic shops down St James’s Street that, if the council had to follow the letter of the law, might have to close—or some stipulation might result in that. That would be totally contrary to the Minister’s ambitions, particularly when she has rightly stated that the whole principle around the Bill is not to affect the status quo for people who are already smoking cigars, or whatever it may be.

Specifically in Northern Ireland, there is a famous tobacconist called Miss Morans, which has already been mentioned. I read a delightful and heartwarming story that her portrait was given by the Northern Ireland Executive to the peoples of America and hangs in the White House, or certainly did until quite recently. That must be a good sign that they are encouraging our trade. But this is a very serious point.

I would like there to be not exceptionalism but some guidance that makes clear that these existing speciality shops, which are naturally in a cluster, should have some elasticity around how the density regulations are interpreted.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 114A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, and shall speak to my Amendment 114C on the socioeconomic impact of the generational ban on the retail sector.

I consider the noble Lord’s amendment to be an important one, calling for consultation and a review of the impact of a generational sales ban for tobacco products on retailers, manufacturers and consumers. The noble Lord has concentrated on heated tobacco, but there is a broader question here about what kind of evidence is being used and what kind of consultation there has been on the practicality, enforceability and efficacy of this policy, which is the core of the Bill.

We need that evidence, because my dread about the Bill is that at the moment it is evidence free, or it makes too many evidence-free assumptions. My fear is that the Government—and in fact the previous Government, so I am not sectarian in my criticism—have failed to ask whether a tobacco control policy that adopts an aggressive prohibitionist approach towards consumers is the most effective means of achieving its stated aims. That is not me using the phrase “aggressive prohibitionist approach”, by the way; I am quoting a document produced by trading standards of Wales that went on to advise the Welsh Government to

“examine closely the reasons why this health measure was unsuccessful in New Zealand and repealed in February 2024”.

In fact, the New Zealand Government revoked their planned generational smoking ban, first because, once they had scrutinised their own plans and done their own cost-benefit analysis, they were concerned about the impact of similar legislation to this on the cost of living crisis—and secondly, they were worried that it would trigger the emergence of a booming black market.

The lack of evidence for the efficacy of the policy in this Bill is admitted in its own impact assessment, which recognises the “uncertainty” over the impact of the policy and that there are no international case studies to follow. If there are no international case studies to follow, that means there is a danger that we will make mistakes. In fact, international experiments should give us pause, because a similar ban was rejected by the Attorney-General in Malaysia, which ruled it unconstitutional on the basis that it would have denied Malaysians equal treatment before the law and would lead to age discrimination.

All of the evidence that we have on what the Welsh trading standards memo labelled an “aggressive prohibitionist approach” is alarming. South Africa, which temporarily banned tobacco products during Covid-19, found that criminals filled the void and supplied the demands of 93% of South African smokers, who switched to purchasing illegal tobacco through criminal channels. I mention this because I know that it has become a bit of a mantra for the Minister and supporters of this Bill to dismiss concerns about the black market as a big tobacco talking point. In the briefings that we have been sent, I have noticed that the glib dismissal of genuine concerns about a black market is actually a talking point being put forward by ASH and anti-smoking lobbyists. I appreciate that everyone is planning the future, but give me a break. After all, it was only last year that HMRC and Border Force’s new strategy on illegal tobacco admitted that,

“no matter how much we strengthen our current strategy, supply will always find a way to enter the market where a demand for it exists”.

That brings me on to what is happening with retail and my amendment. There is obviously a clear link between the regulation of tobacco and the serious organised crime groups that are exploiting difficulties in accessing tobacco for certain groups. A recent BBC investigation that has already been referred to—I commend it as good journalism, by the way; I wish that there were more of it—exposed an already well-established network of pop-up high street shops, including barber shops but also retail shops. They are often run in plain sight by human trafficking gangs, using illegal asylum seekers to man them; they are all trading in illegal unregulated cigarettes and vapes; and they are openly targeting the young. We need to be sure that this Bill does not supercharge the growth of an alternative black market retail arena, because that is already a huge social problem in many of our towns around the country.

One thing that was made obvious by the BBC documentary was that this was happening in front of police and local council officials. People just go in and buy from these shops. We do not want to make that any worse. The trend could be—this is what we have to worry about—that law-abiding and compliant retailers will have to compete with increasing numbers of openly flagrant black market purveyors of tobacco products of one sort or another.

My concern here is that, at the moment, we are absolutely clear that we want the UK to empower the private sector to drive economic growth and recovery. I know that this Government care passionately about the retail sector, especially small shopkeepers and retailers—in part of another Bill, they are passing a special law to protect them from assault—but the reason why I have asked for an impact assessment and a cost-benefit analysis for the retail sector is because I fear that there will be unintended consequences with the introduction of this generational smoking ban.

I want to emphasise why I have used the word “prohibition” so much and to contrast it slightly with the way in which the emphasis in most of our discussions has been on prohibiting the young from accessing cigarettes, in particular, and even vapes. The problem with the generational smoking ban is that the people who are banned or prohibited from purchasing it grow up and, for the rest of their lives, when they are adults, they are victims of a prohibition that will affect them. The people who will have to enforce that prohibition are often shopkeepers, at the heart of their communities, who will be asked to police adults and say to them, “No, you can’t buy this legal product because it would be illegal for me to sell it to you”.

Not enough attention has been given to the amount of money that these shopkeepers will lose, which is projected to be in excess of £26 million for retailers. This is at a time when retail profitability is already suffering significant headwinds for a wide range of different reasons. So I would like the Minister to consider a special consideration for the retail sector—particularly small independent shopkeepers, given what will happen if they become mired in difficulties because of the unintended consequences of this Bill. I ask her to consider what impact that will have not just on their socioeconomic livelihoods but on the communities that they serve so admirably.