Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Lord Sharpe of Epsom Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath, but I am afraid I have some philosophical reservations about aspects of the Bill, in particular about the proportionality in the relationship between the individual and the state. I believe that individuals should be free to make choices for themselves, and that, of course, includes bad choices. Nevertheless, it is incumbent on all of us to ensure that individuals are armed with as much information as possible to encourage them to make good choices, so I accept that the Bill has at its heart good aims and intentions that I broadly support. Who could realistically argue against reducing harms for young people? There is no argument that some vaping products deliberately target young people, which, if nothing else is, is immoral.

While acknowledging this and speaking solely on the subject of the sale of tobacco, like the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, I do not think that writing a law where those born at one minute to midnight on 31 December 2008 have more freedoms than those born two minutes later makes any sense at all. Surely it would be far better to introduce a much higher age limit before individuals can legally make that choice, while increasing education and incentives to help them make a good choice. I accept that that would negatively impact a small group of people who are currently smoking legally. I also acknowledge the apparent illogicality of making this argument, as the Government intend to legislate to allow someone born on 1 January 2009 to vote in public elections. If they can make that informed decision, then maybe for the sake of consistency, we should argue for lower legal age limits across the board.

I also have some practical concerns about how the Bill would be enforced, and others have also made this case. What actually happens in a few years’ time, when two young men visit a corner shop late at night and decline to provide age verification to the only staff member working? If the shopkeeper hands over the tobacco, they will commit an offence. If they do not, what might they face? Perhaps it might be rather more than my noble friend Lord Blencathra’s choice language. The Labour Party has a proud tradition of standing against harassment of and violence against retail workers—indeed, it has made it clear that it would like that to be an aggravated offence—so does it make sense to create conditions that seem highly likely to increase precisely that behaviour? I thought that was described very eloquently by my noble friend Lord Moylan. Some will argue that this will encourage smaller shops to cease selling tobacco and vaping products, and that is obviously a good thing, but history and current events teach us what happens when there is an absence of a product for which there is considerable demand or when that product becomes prohibitively expensive. What happens is, of course, that organised crime spots an opportunity.

Prohibition is the most obvious example of the former, and that did not work, although it did help the Mafia establish solid roots in the United States. A more current example is provided by the enormous wealth of the drug cartels. On the subject of the cost, we need only to look at Australia, already mentioned by my noble friend Lord Naseby, where a packet of cigarettes costs more than $50 and where a vicious gang war has broken out to control what 9Network news describes as a booming black market. This is not, to use the word in the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, a zombie argument but a factual one. One in five cigarettes sold in Australia is apparently supplied by a criminal syndicate. This gang war is so vicious that it has led to a spate of fire-bombings of in excess of 200 small shops.

As my noble friends Lord Naseby and Lord Blencathra and the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, pointed out, criminal activity is already a problem here. I looked at it from the bottom up, and a cursory survey of recent BBC News stories indicates that, for example, trading standards and police raids on only 50 stores in Devon and Cornwall yielded £186,000-worth of illegal product in March. In Northamptonshire, 30 shops in the north of the county yielded £394,000-worth. In Grimsby and Cleethorpes, 90,000 cigarettes, 20 kg of rolling tobacco and 4,800 vapes were seized in April. I commend the agencies for their efforts, but that is sure to be only the tip of a much larger iceberg because, again, the zombie objection makes no allowance for the fact that organised criminals are not stupid. I cannot see how writing laws that will inevitably encourage criminal activity can ever be justified.

The fact is that demand will always be satisfied, so it is surely much more effective to tackle the demand side of the equation. We should educate, incentivise and encourage. We should not place unnecessary burdens on small businesses and, in particular, on small shopkeepers who are having a hard time of it at the moment for all sorts of other reasons. We should not place individuals in those shops at personal risk because in 2034 they are unable to judge whether a 25 year-old was born on or before 1 January 2009.

A smoke-free future is obviously in everyone’s interest, and I say that as an unrepentant smoker, but so would be an alcohol-free future, a drug-free future and probably a cream bun-free future. These are noble aspirations, but in practice they are not going to happen. This aspect of the Bill as written will cause more problems than it solves. As this is St George’s Day, we should channel that spirit and slay the right dragon, which in this case is demand.