Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Vicky Ford Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I am going to make a little progress, if I may, because I want to come to the age of sale.

On the point raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Sir Jake Berry) 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. Consumption of illegal tobacco plummeted from 17 billion cigarettes in 2000-01 to 3 billion cigarettes in 2022-23. That is despite the further controls that this House has put in place in the meantime. Our modelling suggests that the measures in this Bill will reduce smoking rates among 14 to 30-year-olds in England to close to zero as soon as 2040. I hope that many of us in the Chamber today will still be here in 2040. This is our opportunity to play that part in history.

Thanks to constructive engagement with colleagues across the devolved Administrations, the measures will apply not just in England but across our entire United Kingdom, saving lives and building a brighter future. Having listened carefully to colleagues’ concerns about enforcement, we are making sure that local authorities will be able to keep every penny of the fixed penalties they bring in to reinvest in rigorous enforcement. In other words, we are looking not just at national enforcement, but at helping our very important and valuable local trading enforcement officers to keep the proceeds from the fixed penalties they hand out.

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, largely, the Bill will not affect people in this House but younger people, and that it is therefore incredibly important to listen to their voices on this issue? With that in mind, I wrote to every secondary school in my constituency to ask young people their views. The majority of young people in Chelmsford, when asked for their views, said they would support the measures in the Bill. It was not unanimous, but we work by majority. Given that it affects them and not me, I will be respecting their views when I vote today.

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my right hon. Friend. Yet again, she reminds us what a brilliant local constituency MP she is. She has drawn out the voice of young people. When I pose questions about our NHS and the future I want to build for it—reforming it to make it faster, simpler and fairer—one thing I think about is the voice of younger people. If they are in work paying their taxes, they are paying for our NHS at this moment and they will be the users of it in the future. Part of my role as Health Secretary is to ensure that it has a sustainable funding model, that we are doing everything we can to increase productivity, and that we move the demand curve so that it celebrates its next 75 years.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wes Streeting]

Honestly, Mr Deputy Speaker, you just can’t help some people. I am trying to help the Secretary of State out and defend her against her own side, and now, to curry favour with them, she has turned on me. Now I know what it is like being in the Conservative party. This is like a 1922 committee meeting—absolutely absurd.

For the final time, let me just explain the situation we find ourselves in today. The Secretary of State is currently in government. This is her Bill. She is taking it through Parliament. She is perfectly able to run a consultation. I will support her in running a consultation, if that is the support she needs. [Interruption.] I am so pleased. If only I had known it was that easy. If all she needed was a bit of moral support from me to run the consultation, then you go, comrade—don’t you worry; I have got your back, and it is absolutely fine.

I am trying to be helpful to the Secretary of State this afternoon, but I just have to say to her that I am not sure that the best way to persuade her colleagues was to invoke the great cigar chomper, Winston Churchill. Some have estimated that Churchill went through 160,000 cigars in his time. Indeed, on one occasion, at a lunch with the then King of Saudi Arabia, Churchill was told that no smoking or drinking would be permitted in the royal presence. He responded:

“If it was the religion of His Majesty to deprive himself of smoking and alcohol, I must point out that my rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and, if need be, during all meals and in the intervals between them.”

I appreciate the Health Secretary’s efforts, but I fear that Lord Soames was probably on to something when he said that his grandfather certainly would not have approved of this Bill.

Just before any Conservative Members decide to wage yet another culture war and accuse me of talking down one of Britain’s greatest Prime Ministers, I would just add to the historical record that it was thanks to the Labour party that it was Winston Churchill, not Lord Halifax, who became the leader of our country at a crucial time, and thank goodness that he did. Nevertheless, I do commend the Secretary of State on a good effort—she was close, but no cigar. Anyway, let us go back to the economic arguments of the Bill.

[Vicky Ford]

I want to go back to the point about consultation. I think that the hon. Gentleman has agreed that, for people who smoke cigarettes, moving on to vapes can be helpful. What he may not know is that people who have moved on to those vapes tell us that, if they are unflavoured and just taste of nicotine, they taste revolting. That is why many vapes are flavoured. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Sara Britcliffe) may be so concerned about making sure that people’s views are listened to before flavours are removed from the market.

It appears to me that the hon. Gentleman did not get that point, because he was refusing to believe that any such consultation was important. Therefore, out of respect to the people who use these products to stop smoking, can he confirm again that if he is in government at the time, soon after this Bill is passed, he will consult people and listen to their views before banning the products they use?

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for her intervention. I think she makes a perfectly sensible point, actually, and I am perfectly open to lobbying from Conservative Members on how a Labour Government will behave after the general election—she seems to think it is a foregone conclusion, but I certainly do not; we will be working hard for every vote. I can reassure her that our concern has been about children becoming addicted to nicotine. In relation to adult use of vapes as a tool for stopping smoking, I think she makes an absolutely reasonable point about flavourless vaping, and of course she is right that we need to ensure that we get the regulation right on that so that we do not unwittingly deter people from stopping smoking. However, as I will come on to talk about when I come to the vaping section of the Bill, there is no excuse whatsoever for the kinds of flavourings and marketing of vapes that we have seen, which I believe have been deliberately and wilfully designed to addict young people to what is, let us not forget, a harmful substance. I make that very clear.

Anyway, back to the Bill—someone has to defend it, and I get the sense that there are not going to be too many on the Government side, so I will have a go at doing what the Prime Minister is too weak to do and take on the arguments of his own party. They say that the progressive ban on smoking is unconservative. Let me tell them what is unconservative: the heaviest tax burden in 70 years, and it will get heavier if we do not act to prevent ill health.

If we continue down the road that the Conservatives have put us on, with more and more people suffering, falling sick and falling out of the workforce, we will not just be letting those people down; we will all be paying a heavy price for it too. The costs of sickness and disability benefits are due to rise on the Government’s watch, from £65 billion this year to over £90 billion by the end of the next Parliament.

The budget for the NHS is £165 billion this year, and the health service is not coping with existing demands. If society continues to get less healthy, those demands will only rise. If the health service and our welfare service are to be made sustainable for the future, then we must act to prevent ill health in the first place. What better way to do that than by wiping out the leading cause of cancer? It is not just our public finances that are held back by ill health; so too is our economy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

The Bill sets two important principles crashing against each other: on the one hand, the principle of personal freedom, and on the other, the responsibility of a Government to act on public health. We are really lucky to live in a country that treasures personal freedom, and we should be careful of bans that take freedoms away.

However, smoking is the biggest preventable killer and costs the NHS and the economy billions every year. Most people who smoke wish that they had never started in the first place—that they had never had that choice—and I agree with them. I have lost weight, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I took a decision six months ago to give up alcohol, but that was far easier than giving up nicotine. People value the choice to make silly decisions. When they were told that they should not eat an easter egg all in one go, there was a public backlash. Given that this is about personal choice, I think it right that this be a free vote.

However, when I thought about the free vote, I realised that this does not really affect me; it affects young people, who have a right to be heard. That is why I wrote to secondary schools in my constituency to ask young people for their views. I am really grateful for the detailed feedback from three of those schools. I will not mention which schools, because they gave me their confidence and I do not want them to get in trouble with their peers.

One group reported back that the general consensus was that a ban was a good thing, and another said that they had mixed views. A third group sent me detailed comments from every single year 12 and 13 student of politics. In that group, the number of students supporting the Bill’s measures was more than double those who did not. The majority is even greater for the part of the Bill about vapes than for the part about tobacco. The children commented that the brightly coloured flavoured vapes are targeted at young people. They also worry about the environmental impact, especially of disposable vapes, and would like to have stronger limitations on disposable products than on reusable ones. They recognised that vaping can help adults to quit smoking and raised the concern that stronger restrictions on vapes may cause some adults to return to smoking, but they are also concerned about the lack of knowledge of the long-term impacts of vaping, especially for young people. Other students pointed out that fixing a set date of birth for those who are able to buy tobacco seems somewhat arbitrary, feels unfair and could be difficult to enforce, especially as those people get older. Some raised concerns that younger people will still obtain products—both vapes and cigarettes—from older people or from illegal sources.

All the groups commented on the need for enforcement measures, wisely pointing out that just passing a law in this House does not necessarily change behaviour. I was pleased that the Health Secretary said that local authorities will be able to keep the proceeds of fines in order to enforce this law. Some students were also concerned about the challenges that enforcement will pose to retail workers—the Government’s new proposal to introduce a specific offence of assaulting a retail worker may go some way to addressing those concerns. The final point, which I thought was really important to mention, was that some young people were concerned that if these products are banned, other items that are potentially even more dangerous will take over.

All those points have been mentioned individually by many colleagues in today’s debate, and every single one of them was considered by the young people in my constituency. I was deeply impressed by the thought they gave to the matter: they value freedom and choice, but when asked for their views, the majority of the young people of Chelmsford who responded said that they would support the measures in the Bill. It was not a unanimous opinion, and I respect those who did not agree, but in a democracy, the majority views are those that prevail. Therefore, out of respect for the majority view of the young people in my constituency—who will be affected by this Bill much more than any of us—I am going to vote for the Bill today, because it is their views on the Bill that will matter.