Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th October 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak very briefly. I had the privilege, before being an MP, of working as a director of one of the major advertising agencies. We had, as clients, one of the tobacco companies. I have seen the tobacco industry for 50 years and have watched what has been happening where it has been responsible and where it has not. On the whole, the industry has been responsible. I look at the NHS and the work that was done jointly with the industry on education, particularly with general practitioners, which has worked. We all know it has worked. That is why there has been a steady decline thanks to our GPs being the voice, helped by the industry itself.

On statistics, I have an upper second in economics from the University of Cambridge, but HMRC does not have a track record—whether it is a Conservative or Labour Government—of being terribly good at its forecasting. I read that, according to the brief, HMRC says that the loss from illegal importation et cetera is £2.2 billion. We have the figures from at least as good an organisation, if not better: the ONS. Its consumer spending data suggests that the figure is over £6 billion. Either way, it is a huge figure for the current Chancellor to look at very seriously. In my judgment, it is clearly nearer the £6 billion figure than the £2.2 billion.

Lastly—nobody has raised this—have His Majesty’s Government looked at what Sweden did in terms of educating young people? The success of the Government in Sweden on their particular challenges has been the in-depth education of young people in that country about the evils of smoking. If His Majesty’s Government have not done that yet, might I suggest that it is high time they did. I believe the amendments before us are worth supporting. They may not be perfect, but they are certainly a lot better than the case history we have from Australia, which is really worrying.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I want to add a brief footnote to the excellent speeches from my noble friends Lord Bourne and Lord Bethell. This group of amendments is probably the most important one that confronts this Committee because it challenges a major plank underpinning the Government’s approach to this by challenging the generational ban. It is appropriate that this group contains not just the first of the marshalled amendments but the last.

A long time ago, I held the position of the Minister as a Health Minister. From 1979 to 1981, I was in charge of the negotiations with the tobacco industry—the Tobacco Advisory Council as it then was—and I adopted a fairly aggressive negotiation tactic. When I suggested that the health warnings should not be just on the packets but the cigarettes, they told me I could not do this as the ink was carcinogenic. In 1981, my tactics proved a little too much for the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who moved me to a less confrontational position on that issue.

I have listened with respect to the arguments made by my noble friends in favour of Amendment 1, which would basically substitute the generational ban with a ban for anyone under 21. As my noble friend Lord Howe said on Second Reading, these issues involve a balance between personal freedoms on one hand and health gain on the other, a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. Noble Lords may come down on different sides of the argument in free vote territory, but it seems to me the weakness of the amendment is simply its lack of ambition. It does not appear to bring to an end the harm done by the tobacco industry which is the whole point of the generational ban. As the former Prime Minister said last week, it was one of his proudest initiatives of those he introduced when he was Prime Minister.

It is worth just reminding your Lordships that the Bill passed the other place twice, once with a majority of 415 to 47. Last year, when my party was in government and had a free vote, I noted that the vast majority of Conservative MPs voted for the Bill, with just 67 voting against, and only two members of the Cabinet of about 30 voted against. So I hope that the broad policy introduced by the previous Government will continue to be carried through by this one and that a free vote will be allowed on my side for those who take a different view. I also recognise that the Bill is actually a little different from the one that was introduced last year.

This amendment would indeed reduce the harm done by smoking, but the Government’s own assessment concludes that a generational ban promises a far greater effect on smoking prevalence and broader support among young people. We should not want a smaller scale of ambition for a product that has killed a million people in this country over the last 50 years. The increase in the age of sale was a bit of policy conceived on evidence and based on long-term public health reform. It has strong public support, and it is backed by experts.

As the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, said, this does not impact current smokers. The impact on personal freedom is less under the Government’s proposal than under the amendment. The rewards from this are substantial: fewer young people taking up smoking, fewer families suffering avoidable disease and loss, and a future in which our economy and NHS are no longer burdened by the toll from tobacco.

I will say a quick word about the black market. I can do no better than to quote what Victoria Atkins said when this point was raised when she introduced nearly the same Bill last year. On the point about

“the age of sale and the black market, tobacco industry representatives claim that there will be unintended consequences from raising the age of sale. They assert that the black market will boom. Before the smoking age was increased from 16 to 18, they sang from the same hymn sheet, but the facts showed otherwise. The number of illicit cigarettes consumed fell by 25%, and smoking rates for 16 and 17-year-olds dropped by almost a third”.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/4/24; col. 188.]

So I recognise the concerns of some of my noble friends on the libertarian wing of my party, but I remind them that crash helmets were made compulsory under the Heath Government in 1973; seatbelts became compulsory for drivers under the Thatcher Government in 1983 and for all passengers in 1981 under John Major. The previous Conservative Government introduced the Health and Care Act, which unblocked progress in adding fluoride to the water supply to promote dental health. So the generational ban is consistent with my party’s approach to public health over the last 50 years and I hope it will be sustained in this Parliament.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I just make a few points that have been raised in the debate. Noble Lords will soon find out that I do not take the same view as my noble friend Lord Scriven; I take the same view as my noble friend Lady Northover. Some of the aspects of this Bill are indeed a free vote for my party.

In this group of amendments, the noble Lord, Lord Murray, intends to remove the generational element. However, as the noble Lords, Lord Bichard and Lord Young, have just mentioned, this is not prohibition for those already addicted to tobacco. In fact, the reason why the generational ban and the way that it works through is a good idea is because it is considerate to people who are already addicted to tobacco. It allows them to have plenty of time to quit if they so wish—the fact is that most of them do, but many find it very difficult. Retailers have been mentioned. The same thing applies to retailers: this gives them an opportunity to gradually adjust their business plan as demand falls. This is a good way of doing it for them as well. Taxation has been mentioned. Of course, taxation on tobacco does not nearly cover the damage that it does, but we will come to “polluter pays” later.

The noble Lord, Lord Murray, has been shouting fire about the illicit market but, on the illicit market, the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, and I have some helpful amendments that we will discuss in a later group, which may help. As the noble Baroness, Lady Carberry, said, the central point of the powers that the Government are taking is to stop people starting in the first place and thereby reduce the market, both legal and illicit. Sadly, the Government have taken so long to bring this before us in Committee that 120,000 young people have started smoking since the Bill was first introduced. Something must be done. It is, as the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, said, a public health crisis.

My noble friend Lord Scriven talked about the difficulty where you have two people who are very close in age but have different rights of choice. However, if you move the age limit to 21, you have the same problem with the 20 year-old and the 22 year-old. Really, it does not make any difference to that point. A very small choice restriction on one person’s freedom of choice is for the greater good and their own good.

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[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendments 3 and 17. The bulk of the amendments in this group are to do with age verification, but mine are not, and I do not intend to speak about age verification. However, the process of numerical determinism that governs our actions and procedures means that I have the privilege of speaking first in this group.

My amendments are to do with the question of whether certain regulations should be approved and made by the affirmative or negative process, which I hope is a relatively uncontroversial topic. Indeed, I hope that it will find support across the Committee, because I wish to move from the current arrangement whereby these regulations are made under the negative process to the affirmative process, which generally finds favour among your Lordships.

Both amendments require certain specific regulations—not all regulations—to be approved by the affirmative process. Amendment 3 relates to tobacco sales and Amendment 17 relates to vape sales. The activities subject to these regulations are what constitute a defence by the retailer if charged with an offence under the Bill. In other words, these regulations state how a retailer must operate if they are to have a defence under the Bill from the charge of making illicit sales. To be effective, these must be highly technical and challenging regulations which will require the broadest consultation with representative bodies, including those representing not only retailers but trading standards and enforcement officers, which I think would benefit greatly from parliamentary scrutiny.

This would involve issues such as—we will come on to this—what sort of age verification would be acceptable and other matters of that sort. As I say, they are likely to be very technical and they will have to work. If they are going to work, the greater the scrutiny they are given, the better. In that sense, the argument makes itself.

I hope that the Government see that there is nothing mischievous about these amendments; the Bill and the operation of it would benefit by accepting them, and there should be little difficulty in doing so. I am not proposing to speak on the broader question of age verification that will come up in the course of this debate, but I wish to move Amendment 3.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 9, tabled in my name, would create an offence of selling tobacco products online. This is a probing amendment.

If the generational ban policy is to be effective, or the alternative policy of an age limit of 21, there would be a clear loophole if tobacco could be bought online, as roughly 9% of sales are at the moment, without any form of age verification. Such a policy would be unusual for the UK, as there is not currently a product that is available for sale in a bricks and mortar shop that you cannot legally purchase online. However, we would by no means be the first country in the world to introduce this measure: Brazil, Mexico, Finland, France and Greece, to name a few, have all banned the sale of tobacco products via the internet, so there are some clear international precedents.

Banning the online sale of tobacco was recommended by the Khan review in 2022 and the World Health Organization, which argued that internet sales constitute

“display at points of sale”

and

“inherently involve advertising and promotion”.

Today you can look up tobacco products on any of the major supermarket websites or shopping apps and see reviews, such as:

“Quite nice for relaxing on a summers day, beside a bubbling brook perhaps or at a test match”,


as one purchaser of Pall Mall Flow Red Superkings commented. Last time I went to a test match, smoking was prohibited.

Separately from the point about the delivery of smoking products, are these the messages that we want smokers to see about such a lethal product, given that such advertising was banned on television some 60 years ago? When retailers sell tobacco products, they are not permitted to display them, yet there are pictures of products online. This seems inconsistent. Products such as heated tobacco and cigarillos have colourful packaging, as they are not captured by plain-pack laws, which seems to be a regulatory oversight. I appreciate that the Government may be doing something about this, so perhaps the Minister can give us some details—but it feels like the online world is somewhere where rules are often bent with little repercussion, and the amendment would address that.

At the moment, online sales are not heavily exploited by underage individuals attempting to circumvent the law. However, we should be mindful of that possibility in the future. If the Government are minded to resist the amendment, I hope that the Minister will explain how age verification will be secured at the point of delivery. Someone born after 2009 can order their groceries online and include tobacco, but they could not buy it in the shop. How might this be enforced without the amendment? Does the Minister plan to go down the route that we have taken for the delivery of knives? Since 2022, a retailer has to verify the age of the purchaser before he or she sells a knife and, if that knife is delivered after an online order, it has to be checked at the point of delivery. Does the Minister have that in mind for tobacco sales? Who will be responsible for ensuring the implementation of the policy if tobacco products are available online? I look forward to her reply in due course.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Moylan for introducing this group of amendments, and I agree with his proposals relating to the mechanism by which the House looks at statutory instruments. I also agree with my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham about the desirability of further constraining online sales. However, I do not want to talk at length about those; I want to talk simply about age-verification technology and the potential that it offers.

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[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, my amendment is grouped with Amendment 199, in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Northover and Lady Walmsley, and Amendment 193, in the name of my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham. I repeat my declaration of interest that my wife is a non-executive director of Tesco. I will speak to my own amendment and leave it to others to speak to theirs.

I remind noble Lords that the ambition of the Bill is nothing less than the wholesale eradication of smoking. I laid out the costs of smoking to our society in my Second Reading speech: the immense economic impact on our national finances, the relentless pressure on our health system, the toll on our human capital and the deep corporate injustice that sees tobacco companies profit while society, particularly the poorest, pays the price. I also laid out the benefits of getting rid of smoking, so I will not detain noble Lords by restating that.

The purpose of my amendment, and the opportunity presented by the growth of vaping, is a natural extension of the Bill’s intent: a logical, fair and legally robust endpoint, in 2040, to the regulatory ratchet that is already contained within the Bill. It would give clarity and confidence to consumers and industry alike, deal with the long tail of divided rights between generations and be fair to retailers, offering certainty, managed transition and guidance towards new business models.

We know that a hard stop with a long run-up can work because we have done it plenty of times before. Under John Prescott, the Asbestos (Prohibitions) (Amendment) Regulations 1999 completed a phased ban that took nearly two decades and provided industries with time-limited exemptions and sunset clauses. Today, I am pleased to say that workplace asbestos exposure has fallen by 80%. Another example of a full-stop measure was the phase out of leaded petrol, initiated in 1987 and completed in 2000, which gave manufacturers and motorists 15 years to adapt. I am pleased to say that lead levels in urban air have fallen by 94%. Thirdly, the elimination of CFCs under the Montreal protocol, signed in 1987 and implemented through UK regulations in the 1990s, relied on structured deadlines and support for innovation. I am pleased to say that global CFC consumption has dropped by 98%.

Each of those measures that tackled toxins that poisoned our society followed the same formula: clear deadlines, fair transitions and decisive action. Each was thoroughly opposed by the industry. There were warnings of economic collapse on each occasion, but none of that came to pass. Instead, we emerged with a healthier, safer and more innovative society.

Let me explain how this amendment—the “extinction 2040” amendment—might operate in practice. Proposed new subsection (1) would provide for the prohibition of the sale of tobacco products to any person in the United Kingdom from 1 January 2040, thereby establishing a complete stop date for smoking. Proposed new subsection (2) specifies that all licences to sell tobacco and tobacco retail registrations would be invalid as of midnight on 1 January 2040. In other words, the licences currently administered by local authorities under powers anticipated in Clause 58, which establishes a national tobacco licensing regime, would be ended. Local councils in Scotland already operate such schemes under the Tobacco and Primary Medical Services (Scotland) Act 2010, and similar powers will be extended to England and Wales on Royal Assent.

Proposed new subsection (3) would impose a mandatory duty on the Secretary of State. It states that, within 12 months of the Act passing, the Secretary of State would

“lay before Parliament a strategy for … implementing the complete prohibition”.

This strategy must address four elements. Proposed new subsection (4) would require

“provision for a phased reduction in tobacco product availability beginning not later than 1 January 2030”.

This would be delivered through progressive amendments to licensing regulations issued under Clause 58, reducing the number of retail authorisations by geographic area, imposing proximity restrictions near schools and health facilities and ultimately restricting sales to larger retailers with compliance infrastructure. This task would fall jointly to the Department of Health and Social Care, His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities and the National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training.

In practice, phased reduction means progressive tightening of retailer licensing, initially capping licensing numbers per local authority, then applying proximity restrictions and ultimately withdrawing licences from smaller retailers, while allowing supermarkets to transition shelf space to vaping devices and alternatives—products that the Government already support as harm-reduction tools. This plan aligns with changing consumer behaviour. Smoking prevalence is falling and retailers are diversifying, as we have discussed.

On enforcement, proposed new subsection (3)(c) would require

“strengthening enforcement mechanisms to prevent illicit trade”.

This responsibility falls to HMRC under the existing powers of the Tobacco Products (Traceability and Security Features) Regulations 2019 and Schedule 23 to the Finance Act 2020, which authorises civil penalties and empowers HMRC to deactivate economic operator identification numbers. Trading standards officers provide complementary enforcement. Critically, this system already exists and is cost neutral, as penalties, duty recovery fund operations and phased withdrawal of the legal market actually reduce illicit activity by cutting demand.

Finally, proposed new subsection (3)(d) would mandate

“enhancing smoking cessation services to support individuals ahead of the 2040 prohibition”.

The Government have already committed £70 million annually to local stop smoking services, distributed to upper-tier local authorities based on smoking prevalence. This funds the National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training and NHS community pharmacy services, which offer nicotine replacement therapy and behavioural counselling. Scaling this architecture over 15 years would ensure that, by 2040, the vast majority of current smokers would have been supported to quit, minimising enforcement costs and public backlash.

This amendment would work with the grain of existing systems, emerging technologies and declining smoking rates. It would assign clear responsibilities to established agencies: local authorities for licensing; HMRC and trading standards for enforcement; the DHSC and OHID for cessation. It would grant a 15-year transition period, ensuring fairness to industry and retailers. A complete prohibition by 2040, with phased reductions and cessation support, would generate measurable productivity gains for our economy, savings for the NHS and reduced economic inactivity, likely reducing the costs of our national debt within a decade. Crucially, this amendment could be scored by the Office for Budget Responsibility.

We stand at a crossroads. This Bill could be remembered in two ways: as a high point for incrementalism, a policy that is cautious and takes a century to work, that is not registered economically and is complex; or it could be the beginning of a more emphatic approach to regulation where Britain stops tinkering and starts deciding. I believe that we should choose the second path—the evidence supports it and so do the public. It is not my intention to push this amendment, but I urge the Minister to consider it seriously. If she cannot find a place for it in today’s Bill, could she comment on how the department might study such a measure for a future Bill?

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 193 in my name and those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Northover and Lady Grey-Thompson, covers much of the same territory as Amendment 199. It would require the Secretary of State to publish a road map to a smoke-free country every five years. It lacks the ambition of my noble friend Lord Bethell, who provides not just a road map but a destination and a date. If we were to agree with my noble friend, that would be worthwhile progress.

This group of amendments is important because, although the Bill is a step forward in promoting public health and reducing the numbers who start to smoke, as it stands it does very little to help the 6 million smokers who are already endangering their health. The amendment reflects the latest APPG on Smoking and Health report, which calls on the Government to publish a road map to a smoke-free country. The Labour Party promised to publish such a strategy in its health mission document, Build an NHS Fit for the Future, saying it was important that no one should be left behind. It said:

“We will build on the success of the last Labour government with a roadmap to a smoke-free Britain”.


I hope this amendment will find favour with the Minister. Can the Government confirm that they have the same target as the last one, to achieve a virtually smoke-free England by 2030?

As I said, the rising age of sale will not affect current smokers but, as the legislation is progressed with, we should not forget them. Smoking is not evenly distributed across our society. There are higher rates of smoking in nearly all groups experiencing disadvantage and high rates among people with mental health conditions, those on low incomes and those living in social housing—the people most at risk of being left behind, whom the Government have rightly said they will look after. In turn, these differences fuel the gaps in healthy life expectancy between different groups in our society and undermine progress on addressing inequality.

To end this inequality, the Government need a clear plan or road map on how we can achieve a smoke-free future for all parts of society. That road map should include clear targets. For example, the APPG on Smoking and Health has called for a national target of 2 million fewer smokers by the end of this Parliament. Is that something that the Minister could sign up to? If such a reduction were achieved, the country would be on track to have less than 5% smoking two years later and could continue progress to make smoking obsolete within 20 years, within shooting range of my noble friend Lord Bethell’s target.

There should also be specific targets for vulnerable groups with high rates of smoking. Under the last Conservative Government, the target to reduce smoking among 15 year-olds was achieved. The previous Government also set a target to reduce the prevalence of smoking in pregnancy to 6% or less by the end of 2022. That target was not met, but it helped mobilise significant support for pregnant women, which has led to a reduction—it fell at the fastest ever rate last year.

The last Government also committed to other targets—for example, using the pioneering Swap to Stop scheme. It is welcome that the Government have maintained their commitment to some of these initiatives, but they should be part of an overall strategy so that we have a clear vision of where we want to go and how the various components help us reach that target. There is also a risk that, once this legislation has passed, the Government, both locally and nationally, are lulled into believing the job has been done, so we need a clear plan now and every five years until we have created a smoke-free country.

I understand the pressure on the NHS, but the astonishing decline in smoking among pregnant women was achieved by embedding support in hospitals alongside financial incentives. However, these services are now threatened with cost pressures in the NHS, seeing some ICBs reduce or decommission those vital services. Within a road map to a smoke-free country, the role of ICBs could be clearly laid out and the importance of these services in helping to reduce the incidence of smoking could be clarified.

So the Bill is ambitious. It is world leading when it comes to stopping the start, but we need the Government to have a similar ambition for supporting the current 6 million smokers in the UK to quit for good.