Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Lord Sharpe of Epsom Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th November 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, these amendments seek to mandate further consultations on measures in the Bill. Such things always sound very reasonable. However, it seems to us that the Government either have already consulted or intend to consult where needed. I would be more sympathetic if the consultation here was with public health experts, but the focus is particularly on those who would be selling tobacco. It is clearly very welcome—and it is something of a change from previous debates on tobacco—to hear from so many speakers in other groups that there is now wide- spread acceptance of the terrible damage tobacco does. I certainly welcome that.

One thing the industry is expert at is spreading alarm through the retail sector; they have done it at every stage of tobacco control. It is usually, “This measure will kill pubs or small shops”, and when that does not happen, they say, “Of course the last lot of regulation did not kill these areas, but this lot will”. However, I have no doubt that the alarm they create would feed back into such consultation.

There is a risk of overestimating the importance of tobacco to the retail sector and underestimating its impact on the wider economy. Tobacco is bad for the UK economy. Referring back to the points made by the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, about evidence, there is plenty of evidence showing the impact of smoking. People who get ill from smoking do not need only healthcare, tobacco-induced illness means time off work, less productivity and suffering smoke-related lost earnings and unemployment. Smokers are more likely to die while still of working age. Smoking costs society in England at least £43 billion a year, which is far more than the £6.8 billion raised through tobacco taxes. Hopefully, that addresses some of the cost-benefit analysis that has just been referred to.

Even for retailers that sell tobacco products, tobacco is not a good deal and is certainly not essential for business vitality. Footfall from tobacco sales has decreased, I am pleased to say, by nearly 40% in the small retail outlets compared with less than a decade ago. We also know that the illicit trade, which needs to be tackled, has declined dramatically by almost 90% since 2000. Tobacco is very profitable for manufacturers, but less so for retailers. The Government need to work closely with the retail sector to ensure clear communication, engage with the public and support enforcement agencies to address any breaches in the law.

If there is to be more consultation, for my part, it needs to focus on those organisations which have to cope with those who have been damaged by tobacco: those in public health. As I say, however, we feel that we do not need to add this selective group of consultees.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly to my noble friend’s Amendment 114A. First, I apologise profusely for not being here in time to speak to my amendments in the last group. I feel doubly guilty about that because I am going to pick up on something the Minister said in answer to the fact I was not here.

With regard to heated tobacco products, I believe the Minister said that they are harmful. However, there is no conclusive evidence of this; as my noble friend Lord Jackson pointed out, they are a cessation product and therefore ought to be materially less harmful. The fact is that the WHO also acknowledges—or rather assumes—that they will be harmful, but it does not have any conclusive evidence to that point. Can the Minister elaborate a little on where that evidence comes from?

As regards Amendment 114C, I think we should continue to conduct impact assessments. I reject the Liberal argument, which seems, as far as I can ascertain, to be that you should not have a consultation with people you do not like because you might not like their answers. That does not strike me as much of a consultation.

I have little else to say, but I apologise again, particularly for picking up on the Minister, who did not have to answer my amendments—that is a bit of a cheap shot, and I apologise.

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, in Amendment 114A, my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough rightly highlighted the need for any regulations in this part of the Bill to be underpinned by evidence drawn from the real-world experience of retailers, manufacturers and consumers. It is a point very well made, and I hope that, even if the Minister has an issue about consulting tobacco manufacturers, which I expect she will say she does, she will see the good sense of consulting others in the supply chain to make sure that the regulations stand the best chance of being fit for purpose and avoid unintended adverse consequences.

My noble friend Lord Jackson focused much of his speech on heated tobacco, as did my noble friend Lord Sharpe of Epsom just now. One of the other main concerns about regulation, which we have already touched on in an earlier debate, is the cost of the licence fee for a small business alongside the administrative burden for existing businesses to transition across to the new system. It is important that local authorities allow enough time for applications to be considered and processed and for the operational challenges faced by retailers implementing the system to be addressed. Both retailers and consumers need to be made aware of the new regulatory regime well before it goes live.

The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, amplified that proposal in her Amendment 114C by focusing specifically on the socioeconomic impact of the generational ban on retailers. She is absolutely right to be concerned about that, but I would like to talk about a different strand of the argument from that which she focused on.

In the consultation exercise conducted two years ago by the last Government, the Association of Convenience Stores, which represents more than 50,000 retail outlets across the UK, did not object to the generational ban as a policy. However, when the current Government published this Bill, shop owners expressed immediate concern about the powers contained in it around the licensing system. The biggest worry for them is the power given to a local authority to take a decision to refuse the granting of a licence to sell tobacco and vapes based on the density of other businesses operating in a specific area, or because of that business’s proximity to a school.

We debated this issue briefly last week, but the worry persists on what the effect of these provisions will be. First and foremost, how will this affect existing businesses? Might a well-established retailer selling tobacco and vapes suddenly find that it can no longer do so? Might a new business wishing to set up in a particular area be denied that ability? The ACS has rightly asked what the evidential framework will be for deciding that the density of outlets is too high. How will the threshold be set, and how can fairness be achieved between businesses in an urban area compared to those located in rural areas? Will small shops be treated in the same way as large shops? We simply do not have answers to those questions—and they are questions that are particularly pertinent to small, family-run businesses operating on sometimes tight margins. When will guidance be published to provide the answers? If the Minister cannot reply in detail today, I shall be very grateful if she would do so in writing between now and Report.

Finally, my noble friend Lord Johnson of Lainston has raised an important issue around the need for transitional provisions covering specialist tobacconists located in Northern Ireland. We will be debating specialist tobacconists more broadly in a later group of amendments, and I do not propose to anticipate that debate now. However, in the light of what my noble friend has said, it would be helpful to hear from the Minister whether she agrees that there is a strong case for what are commonly called grandfather rights for these particular specialist outlets.