Tobacco and Vapes Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Sarah Bool Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd January 2025 Public Bill Committees

However, will teams from other nations that are coming to play in the UK be allowed to display such advertisements? For example, across the channel in 2023, Paris Saint-Germain announced a partnership with Geekvape. If the team comes to play in the UK, will the players be allowed to wear their usual shirts or will they need to be amended? Likewise, if a British team travels abroad to play in the champions league, or something like that, will they be able to wear shirts with such branding while they are abroad, on the basis that it is legal in the country that they are playing in, despite the awareness that the kit will be viewed on television by people in the United Kingdom? Would that be sufficient to invoke clause 124(1) to ensure that they cannot do so? We must think carefully about the potential for clever lawyers to try to work a way out of this.

[Sarah Bool (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

That is a very interesting point, and it goes to the heart of commercial contracts. Money talks and money is very powerful, but we must be careful about that when establishing these rules, because the legal system will always find a way to argue. I can imagine some big cases being brought in relation to this if we are not careful.

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[Jack Rankin]

I will bring my remarks to a close, Mr Dowd, but I will make the point that some of these sponsors are online crypto casinos. I would argue that they are worse than vapes, so I think some inconsistency is being introduced in the law.

Let me suggest one way in which we could un-work that inconsistency, which I have seen in the Six Nations. Guinness Zero now sponsors the competition, rather than Guinness. It seems to me that we should allow low or no-alcohol beers to engage in these activities, and I see vaping as analogous. I believe that there is an analogy there, but an inconsistency is being applied by this clause.

I will also make a point about the technicality of some of the clauses—I hope that the Minister can point to some of this later. Clause 125(1)(c) mentions sponsorship of

“a herbal smoking product…cigarette papers…a vaping product…a nicotine product,”

but annex B of the explanatory notes on page 102 mentions

“any device which is intended to be used for the consumption of tobacco products or herbal smoking products”.

Will the Minister provide clarity on what other devices we are seeking to capture? For instance, will tobacco filters fall under the sponsorship ban? Will his Department propose a Government amendment to update the text of the Bill to provide clarity and remove that potential loophole?

[Sarah Bool]

I will make two points. First, I understand where my h F the shadow Minister is coming from in terms of the questions about enforceability and when these things come into effect. Clause 124(1)(a) states that for tobacco products:

“A person commits an offence if…the person is party to an agreement (entered into at any time),”

which will obviously be consistent; but clause 125(1)(a) states that a person commits an offence only if

“the person is party to an agreement entered into on or after the day on which this section comes into force”.

I can see the point that the Minister is making. Will we see a rush of sponsorship agreements on vaping coming in in the next few weeks before we get this Bill on the statute book? That is a legitimate question to raise, and we should all be aware of that possibility.

Generally, it is important that we tackle and take on seriously the role of sponsorship. I do not think that I am alone in recalling the impact of Pepsi and its sponsorship of the Spice Girls when I was young. Its campaign aimed at Generation X had 92 million cans with the Spice Girls on them, which obviously had a big impact. I will be honest and say that I loved the Spice Girls, but seeing anything like that has a massive impact when we are children, so tackling it is absolutely right. Pepsi sponsors the National Football League, Coca-Cola sponsors the Olympics and I think Carlsberg has always sponsored Liverpool FC, so we can see that brand alignment.

[Dr Johnson]

I thank my hon. Friend for making the point much more eloquently than I did that there is a difference in the clauses between the days when they come into force. As she is a lawyer who has been involved in contracts, can she confirm that there is no limit to how long someone can enter into a contract? If a contract were entered into in terms of sponsoring vaping or nicotine products before the Bill comes into force, it may last for quite some time.

[Sarah Bool]

That is a possibility. It always depends on the terms of the contract itself, but in theory they could agree a 10 or 15-year contract and sponsorship deal. It is interesting that this could be one of the overhangs that we see, so we have to be aware of it going forward.

[Andrew Gwynne]

The clauses make it an offence for a person to be involved with a sponsorship agreement where the purpose is to promote in the course of business tobacco products, herbal smoking products, cigarette papers, vaping products or nicotine products. Anyone convicted of an offence under the provisions may be subject to imprisonment, a fine, or both. Tobacco sponsorship is currently banned under the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act 2002. There is a long-standing, well-established relationship between tobacco advertising and tobacco consumption.

Clause 124 restates the current position for a person involved in the sponsorship of a tobacco product. We are consolidating existing tobacco legislation in the Bill to provide a coherent narrative for readers, rather than have it spread over lots of different pieces of legislation. A large part of the Bill brings the legislation into one place, so that from Royal Assent onwards, the go-to place for anybody with any questions about tobacco control will be this piece of legislation, rather than it being dispersed across different Acts of Parliament.

Tobacco sponsorship is already banned, but importantly, the Bill expands the offence to include herbal smoking products, cigarette papers, vaping and nicotine products. The restriction will mean that vaping and other nicotine product companies will, for example, not be permitted to sponsor sports teams, which is something that we have seen in recent years. It might upset the hon. Member for Windsor, but I have to say that not a single child should ever be able to look up at their favourite sports stars—people who should be role models—and see them covered in branding for products that are harmful and addictive. That is the point here.

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[Andrew Gwynne]

The hon. Lady raises an interesting point; I will take that away and look at it. Perhaps with the exception of the hon. Member for Windsor, everyone on the Committee agrees that we do not want our footballers, rugby stars or athletes to be emblazoned with adverts for vaping products, so the more we can do to tighten up the legislation further, the better.

I will just politely correct the hon. Member for Windsor that the term for someone from the historic County Palatine—including yourself, Mr Dowd—is a Lancastrian. My late father was the Lancashire cricket correspondent, first for Cricket Call, which was a BT paid-for service, and then for BBC North West. He was there in 1990 when Lancashire won both the NatWest and Benson & Hedges cup finals—the double at Lord’s. I still have copies of my late father’s book, “Double Delight”. I would say that they are available at all good booksellers, but they are available from me if the hon. Gentleman wants one.

The hon. Member for Windsor made an important point. I had just come out of secondary school in 1990, which shows how long ago it was, but it was pretty commonplace for tobacco companies to advertise at major sporting events like Lancashire cricket matches and others. The fact is that that was a long time ago, and things have changed for the better. The Benson & Hedges cup final, in cricket of all games, is a thing of the past. Hopefully, at some stage in the near future, we will look back at vape sponsorship of football clubs as a thing of the past, because that is where it deserves to be.

[Sarah Bool]

This is just off the top of my head, but on a technical point about clause 125(1), in terms of vape sponsorship, a person will be guilty of an offence only after the provision comes into force. I appreciate that there is the two months, but they also have the window of time while the Bill goes through Parliament, so they potentially have a couple more months for that.

I do wonder about how this is going to work in practice, because, in theory, a company that is offering sponsorship—if they enter into that agreement now—will not be in trouble for the next couple of years for doing that, yet under preceding clauses anyone who designed or printed material for any of those sponsorship deals would be guilty of an offence. We suddenly have a position where, potentially, the sponsors themselves are not guilty of an offence while the actual designers, and those who are publishing the sponsorship material, are. That is an interesting nuance.

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[Andrew Gwynne]

The shadow Minister is right. There will be a narrow window in which that will be possible—[Interruption.] She asks why, and it is because once the Bill receives Royal Assent, it will bring in a two-month window. That is how the law is shaped, to give us the scope to get these measures right and ensure that we make the framework as watertight as my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West wants. We believe that that is the proportionate way forward. We cannot make retrospective decisions; if contractual arrangements are under way at Royal Assent, an immediate cut-off could leave the Government open to challenge.

[Sarah Bool]

I understand that two-month period, but does it also apply to the earlier provisions on the creation of offences relating to publication? If we had some alignment there, neither party could potentially be in breach. That is merely a technical point, however.

The other point—perhaps for when the Minister goes back to the Department—is about force majeure, which the hon. Member for Cardiff West mentioned and which I would like more investigation into. Force majeure concerns acts of God, or something unexpected. I think lawyers would argue that a Government Bill was expected and foreseen, so there would have to be some other form of break clause or right. This debate is getting far too technical for this forum, but it is perhaps something that the Minister can take away.

[Andrew Gwynne]

As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West, we will take all this away and look at it in detail, and we will come back to Members. I am just about legally savvy enough to understand the point that the hon. Lady is making that a break clause or something like it would probably be required, because the coming into law of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill on Royal Assent is expected—it is not an act of God, and it will not come as a complete shock and surprise.

Finally, clause 133 allows us to extend all of part 6 to cover devices that enable a

“tobacco product to be consumed”

or

“an item which is intended to form part of such a device”,

but that are not in the Bill.