Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Lord Stevens of Birmingham Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Howe, for introducing this group. I will speak in specific terms against Amendment 188 and very strongly against Amendment 200A.

Starting with Amendment 188, I declare my position as a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Customer Service. I note the terrible figures from the Institute of Customer Service earlier this year—these are from people who work in all areas of public-facing customer service—which showed that 43% of those surveyed had faced some incident of customer hostility in the previous year. That figure was up nearly 20%. Some 21% of the people surveyed had also faced physical threats while they were doing customer-facing roles.

As the noble Earl said, we have a real problem with shoplifting, but we also have a problem across the board. I do not think the best way to approach this is to look specifically at retailers of tobacco, vaping and nicotine products. There is a need for government action, and I have been working with the Institute for Customer Service more broadly, as I have in the past on other legislation, to tackle this. It does not make a lot of sense to regard this as a discrete problem; it needs a much broader angle of attack.

I am very strongly against Amendment 200A, which would establish a government grant scheme to subsidise the cost of age-verification technology to reduce the financial burden on smaller retailers. I absolutely agree that the burden should not fall on smaller retailers. However, I point out that—this is based on work earlier this year by the Social Market Foundation—the big four tobacco companies make £900 million in profits annually and that their average profit margin, looking at the cost of producing and distributing tobacco products versus the price they charge to whole- salers, is 50%. There is no other product that has anything like that kind of return.

Due to being involved here, I have not had a chance to look closely at what happened in the Budget today but, so far as I have been able to discover, a fairly standard increase in tobacco duty is coming in at 6 pm today. However, the Chancellor has not, it seems, followed the recommendation of the Social Market Foundation to put a levy on tobacco products on some of those windfall profits. At the time, that was suggested for health measures, but it could indeed go into such a measure as this. It is very clear that the merchants of death should be paying for the costs associated with their products much more broadly than this. But, certainly in the context of this amendment, they should meet any burden of compliance so that it does not fall on the smaller retailers.

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

My Lords, I hesitate to interject at this late stage of Committee, but I just respond to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, who had concerns that many of the organisations giving evidence previously on the retail question were from health-related charities, and I declare my own non-pecuniary interest as chairman of Cancer Research UK.

I just inject a note of caution about relying too heavily on some of the trade associations for the small retailers that she describes, given that they have some financial vested interests. The organisation that she cited, I noticed on their website, has received a sponsorship support from Japan Tobacco International. Another major retail association declares on its website that it has received funding from Philip Morris, Japan Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco and British American Tobacco. Therefore, notwithstanding the need to consult retailers directly, I think that some of these trade associations may have a conflict of interest.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Howe, about how important it is that retailers of all kinds feel supported as we move into the transition to a smoke-free generation. Those who operate legally and who will obtain a licence to operate under the new rules will want to see the Government doing everything that they can to attack the illicit trade that undermines the profits of law-abiding businesses.

They also need protection from the wave of shoplifting, which the noble Earl, Lord Howe, talked about, which eats into their profits and sometimes puts them in physical danger. It is quite possible that progress towards gradually raising the age below which the retailers may not sell tobacco products could exacerbate this situation unless action is taken. Age verification could be seen as a problem or a solution. However, the need for age verification is already quite common and it falls upon the consumer, not the retailer. I have to verify my own age when I buy a senior railcard to use on the train, although my grey hair means that I am not challenged when I want to buy a bottle of wine. However, the fact remains that, when I have alcohol in my basket at the checkout, a member of staff is entitled to verify that I am over 18—in fact, they take one look, and they click on the terminal. They do not ask for my birth certificate, but of course they might if I looked under 18, which I do not.

However, the situation will soon change for young people only a year apart in age. Having said that, young people are already quite used to having to verify that they are over 18 when buying a drink or a packet of cigarettes or vapes. What do they do now? They use a digital age-verification tool already, and some bars issue their own card once they have verified the age of their regular customers. It therefore would not be unreasonable, and would be helpful to the retailers, if a range of age-verification mechanisms could be available to customers who would then have to show one of them in order to protect the retailers from inadvertently committing an offence. They have to show that they are over 18 now, so why not that they are 19 a year after Royal Assent or 20 the year after that?

It may be a very good idea for the Government to carry out more research on this and publish a strategy, as the noble Earl, Lord Howe, has proposed in Amendment 188. But the public are not the only ones who need guidance and information about the law well before it comes into operation; how much more important is it for retailers? We have already debated my noble friend Lady Northover’s amendment about the need for a communications strategy, so I am not sure how much Amendment 191 would add to that, but it is a useful probe.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, I do not support Amendment 200A from the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising. I do not see why taxpayers should foot the bill for creating age-verification mechanisms. I suspect that individual customers will obtain their own digital age-verification mechanism and that inventive companies will produce them and make them readily available. Of course, the vape manufacturers may also produce age-gated products, so perhaps it should be the tobacco industry that foots the bill because of its very large profit margins. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s views on this issue.