Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Wes Streeting Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

Until the early 2000s, every pub you walked into was filled with smoke. One in every four people in this country was a smoker. The last Labour Government banned smoking in public places, which had an enormous impact on the health of our nation. The following year, there were 1,200 fewer hospital admissions for heart attacks, according to the British Medical Journal. Since 2007, the number of people who smoke has been cut by almost a third. Our understanding of second-hand smoke grew, and there was a cultural change around where it was acceptable to smoke. Even at home, people went outside to smoke, instead of smoking in front of their children.

A study in Scotland found that whereas hospital admissions for children with asthma were increasing by 5% a year before the smoking ban, admissions were down by 18% in the three years following Labour’s legislation. In short, Labour helped to build a healthier society: smoking was down, the number of patients needing treatment was down, NHS beds were freed up and lives were saved. But there is more to do. During the 13 years when Labour was last in office, life expectancy was extended by three and a half years, but in the 14 years that the Conservatives have been in office, it has grown by just four months. For men, it is beginning to decline. We are falling into ill health earlier in life today than we were a decade ago, which is a shameful indication of our country’s decline.

What more motivation could this House need for once again taking seriously the health of our nation? Today, smoking remains a scourge on our society. Some 75,000 GP appointments every month are to deal with the impacts of smoking. The cost to our economy, after taxes, is £10 billion. Around 80,000 of our friends, neighbours and colleagues lose their lives to smoking every year. It is a lethal addiction, a scourge on society, an enormous burden on our NHS and a drag on our economy, and it is time to consign it to the dustbins of history. Let us act today so that the next generation of young people can live healthier, happier and longer lives than the generations before them.

Labour will give our wholehearted support to this Bill. In fact, we needed no persuasion. In an interview with The Times in January last year, I said that it was time for a New Zealand-style smoking ban. I argued that a progressive ban would have a transformational impact on the health of individuals, the health of the nation as a whole and the public finances.

After around two and a half years in this job, I am getting used to the Government nicking Labour’s policies. In the last year alone, the magpies opposite have swooped in on Labour’s NHS workforce plan, Labour’s plan to recruit dentists in the most under-served areas, Labour’s plan for a windfall tax on oil and gas giants, and Labour’s plan to abolish the non-dom tax status. Even so, I was shocked when I saw that the Conservative party—the party of Ken Clarke—is nicking the Labour party’s plan for a progressive ban on tobacco. Of all the policies that the Conservatives have adopted from the Labour party in the past few years, nothing shows our dominance in the battle of ideas more than this latest capitulation.

Where Labour leads, the Conservatives follow. Indeed, when I first floated this proposal, Conservative MPs called it “nanny state” and

“an attack on ordinary people and their culture”,

and I was accused of “health fascism”. What irony, when Conservative MPs are overseas today in Brussels, lining up with the European far right. Anyway, it is water off a duck’s back to me. I am delighted that just a few months later the Prime Minister announced this policy at the Conservative party conference, and that a Conservative Health Secretary has brought this progressive ban before Parliament today.

However, it seems that not every Conservative Member got the memo. It has been widely reported, and we have seen indications of it today, that there are still Members on the Conservative Benches—as many as 100, if we believe rebel Tory briefings to the media, although in our experience these Tory rebellions tend to evaporate when the moment comes—who resist the new interventionist consensus, who continue to fly the flag for small-state libertarianism, and who believe that the Health Secretary and the Prime Minister have surrendered to the lobbying of big health and those tyrants in Action on Smoking and Health, the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Diabetes UK, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Mind, Asthma and Lung UK, the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the Royal College of Midwives and the British Medical Association. Well, we happily align ourselves with big health in defence of the nation and we are only too happy to defend the Health Secretary against the siren voices of big tobacco that we see gathered around our former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), in the corner of the Chamber today.

[Sir Jake Berry]

On the issue of unity, does the hon. Gentleman agree with the comment made by his colleague the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) that if we bring in a progressive ban on cigarettes, we should mirror it with a similar ban on vaping? If he becomes Health Secretary, will that become the policy that he will promote?

[Wes Streeting]

My hon. Friend the Member for York Central made the really good point—a point that needs to be well understood in the context of this debate—that vaping is undoubtedly, unquestionably a useful smoking cessation tool, but we should not send the message to the country that vaping is good for our health or that it is without harmful consequences. When it comes to banning things, it should be on the basis of evidence and there should not be a predisposition to ban. I have not yet seen evidence to persuade me that vaping is harmful enough to introduce a ban of the sort suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central. I hope I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman that, when the general election eventually comes, the Labour party will not go around trying to ban things left, right and centre, but I certainly want to consign to the history books the 244,000 people on NHS waiting lists in his area as a direct result of the policies of the Government whom he supports and has served.

[Sir Jake Berry]

rose—

[Wes Streeting]

I will happily give way. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would like to take the opportunity to apologise to his constituents in Rossendale and Darwen for his abysmal record in government.

[Sir Jake Berry]

I will resist the hon. Gentleman’s offer. He has just said that vaping should only ever be used to help people to stop smoking cigarettes. If this Bill passes, it will be illegal for people who are now aged 15 ever to smoke cigarettes, so there will be no requirement in his world for them ever to vape. So I repeat the question, which he has refused to answer: will the Labour party bring forward—this is supported by his own party—a ban on vapes to mirror the tobacco ban? Yes or no?

[Wes Streeting]

The record will show that I answered the right hon. Gentleman’s question. I talked about banning things and taking away people’s choice, and there are plenty of things that we do on a daily basis that might be harmful to our health in some way. Indeed, participating in most physical contact sports carries a risk of injury, but we are not going to ban football, rugby or boxing. I refer him to my previous answer, which is that I have not seen evidence to persuade me to ban vaping in the way that this Government are proposing to phase out smoking. I have answered that question already and I answer it again now, but I am sure that it will not be lost on the people of Rossendale and Darwen that he did not take the opportunity to apologise to the 244,000 people in his area who are stuck on record long waiting lists.

Once again, the Prime Minister has shown that he is too weak to stand up to his party. The psychodrama in the Conservative party is being put before the interests of the country. In the press today, the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Kemi Badenoch) is the latest to let it be known that she will be opposing this Bill. Journalists were helpfully pointed towards comments about her belief in the limits of the state made during her last leadership campaign. I say “her last leadership campaign”, but I am sure that it will not be her last leadership campaign. Indeed, I do not think it has ever stopped. Anyway, that is what she said. In fact, she bemoaned Governments who try to “solve every problem”. Well, if she has a problem with Governments solving problems, she must be delighted with the record of this Government, who can barely solve any problems. They cannot even solve the chaos in their own party.

The Business Secretary is not the only one who is desperate to tell Conservative party members that they oppose this Bill. The former Prime Minister joins us today. The right hon. Member for South West Norfolk and recently declared candidate to be the next leader of the Conservative party, has said that the Bill is “profoundly unconservative”. A stopped clock is right twice a day, and I find myself agreeing with the former Prime Minister. This is absolutely an un-Conservative Bill. It is a Labour Bill, and we are delighted to see the Government bring it forward. [Interruption.] Yes, even this stopped clock is right twice a day for the Trussites in the corner. The right hon. Lady is in fine company when it comes to former Prime Ministers. Boris Johnson has said that this proposal is

“absolutely nuts…It’s just mad”.

Well, now he knows how the rest of us felt when he was Prime Minister.

The right hon. and learned Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman) could not be with us today because she is currently in Brussels surrounded by the police who are trying to shut down the event she is attending with some far right fanatics, with whom she has much in common. A source close to the right hon. and learned Lady has said that she is “not a fan” of the Bill. Well, now she knows how the rest of us feel about her, too.

Some dark horses have also spied an opportunity to play to the gallery. It seems that even my former bête noire, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), fancies his chances in the ongoing battle for the Conservative leadership, because he too has come out against this Bill. To be fair, he has a strong case for the leadership of the Conservative party. As Health Secretary, he had to face a workforce in constant dispute with him, which is good practice for dealing with the party, and he has to deal with a steady stream of toxic sewage in his current job, so who could be more experienced in coping with the travails of the modern Conservative party than the right hon. Gentleman?

I want to praise the one member of this Government who has consistently made the case for the Government’s Bill. No, of course I am not talking about the Prime Minister. Since his party conference speech in October he has shrunk away from the debate, once again too weak to stand up to his own party, and instead left it to others to make the case for him. To her credit, the Health Secretary has cast aside any leadership ambition she may have once held and come out in full-throated defence of Labour’s policy. So let me assure my comrade opposite that we will stand with her today in the voting Lobby, even as the forces of conservatism stand against her.

[Sara Britcliffe (Hyndburn) (Con)]

Going back to the subject of what we are trying to debate rather than playing a political game, I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not going to pick up a sheet and throw some figures at me, because this is a serious question. When my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) asked a question about a consultation on vaping, those on the Opposition Front Bench shook their heads at the idea. Can I ask why? As a former smoker myself, I have moved to vaping in order to quit smoking, and I genuinely think that this issue needs to be considered. I ask the hon. Gentleman a simple question: why does the Labour party think a consultation should not go ahead?

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention. It falls to me to defend the Government against their own Members, but to be fair to this Government, they have consulted on measures to clamp down on inappropriate vaping. They have consulted, and we have been urging them to go faster in cracking down on the sale of vapes to under-age people in this country—a generation of young people who have become addicted to nicotine. I will talk about that further on in my speech.

The Government have consulted and the Bill will go through the legislative process. We will no doubt have a rigorous debate today and in the Bill Committee. It will then report to this House and then go to the House of Lords, where it will be continue to be scrutinised, and it is unacceptable that there are still people who would tie the Health Secretary’s hands behind her back and slow her down when urgent action is needed to clamp down on the people who are selling nicotine to children. Those people are addicting children to nicotine. I do not understand why on earth the Trussites in the corner are trying to tie the hands of their own Health Secretary when she is trying to do the right thing by young people.

[Sara Britcliffe]

rose—

[Wes Streeting]

Perhaps the hon. Member will tell us.

[Sara Britcliffe]

The hon. Member is putting me on the wrong side of this argument as a former smoker, so I would appreciate it if he had a little bit more respect. What I am trying to ask is this: why does he not agree that people who are using vaping as a substitute for smoking should be consulted on what they believe should happen through this Bill?

[Wes Streeting]

I do not know whether there is a problem with the speaker system in here, because this is the second time I have had an intervention after answering the question. I have already said that the Government have consulted on measures to clamp down, and I am absolutely not against the Government talking to people who, like the hon. Lady, have used vaping as a smoking cessation tool. In fact, I fully support the point she is making, which is that vaping can be a really effective tool to help smokers to quit smoking. I am in favour of that; that is good for health. If the Government want to talk to and engage with people who vape as part of the passage of this Bill, that is absolutely fine. What I am not in favour of is tying the Secretary of State’s hands when she wants to do more, and more quickly, to prevent children becoming addicted to nicotine.

[Victoria Atkins]

Just to be clear, we will consult on this. It is a simple question that requires a simple answer: will Labour consult further?

[Wes Streeting]

Mr Deputy Speaker, we are now in this parallel universe where the Secretary of State is asking me, the shadow Secretary of State, whether I am going to consult on her Bill. Now, I am willing to help her out, but if she wants me to sit on that side of the Chamber and run the Department of Health and Social Care, I am ready and willing, but we need a general election to do that. I do not understand—this is just extraordinary. I feel like I am living in a parallel universe this afternoon. It was bad enough when the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk, walked in with her book and her fan club, and now we have the absurd spectacle of the Secretary of State asking me whether I will run the consultation on her Bill. This is extraordinary. I will allow her to correct the record and save her blushes.

[Victoria Atkins]

The hon. Gentleman is not listening. He has been asked repeatedly whether he supports the concept of a consultation on vaping in order to ensure that these regulations are drawn up properly. He is not listening. He refuses to answer the question. We on this side of the House are clear: we want to get this right and we will consult. I am simply asking whether he will answer the questions that he has been asked.

[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.

[Alexander Stafford]

I am trying to follow the hon. Gentleman’s argument to its logical conclusion. He talks about substances that are bad—addictive and harmful to people’s health—and have a huge impact on the NHS through those costs, but there are so many more things that are in fact worse for health. Sugar and salt are highly addictive. Does this mean that Labour’s plan is to ban foods with high levels of salt or sugar? Logically, that is the next step, and therefore, if we need to protect the NHS and cut costs, we should be banning anything that is slightly bad for us, rather than actually taking a better enjoyment of life and saying, “A little bit of what you fancy every now and again is okay, and good for your mental health.”

[Wes Streeting]

I think that is extraordinary. I do not think that smoking is slightly harmful; I think it is the single biggest cause of cancer, and I think that the costs to people’s health, to our national health service and to our economy are enormous. This sort of argument—that if we ban smoking for young people, we have to ban everything else—is absurd. I think that the Secretary of State just pointed out the absurdity of it when she pointed to a whole range of harmful things in our country that are already banned.

Let me put the question back to the libertarian wing in the corner of the Chamber. Will the new modern Conservative party not ban anything? Will we have a libertarian dystopia in which people are free to do whatever they want in the name of liberty? [Interruption.] I am just trying to help the Secretary of State by taking on the libertarians in the corner. I would be very sad if she wants me to give in to them but, with 187,000 people on the waiting list in the local area of the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford), I think we should do something about it.

[Sir Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

I proudly call myself a libertarian, because I believe in the fundamental value of freedom of decision making. On what we should and should not ban, I would argue there is a very substantial difference between banning class A and class B drugs, which do immense harm in all our communities, and banning tobacco. We already struggle to stop the former, so why on earth would we try to create and police a huge black market in the latter?

[Wes Streeting]

I admire the right hon. Gentleman for sticking to his convictions as a libertarian in making that case, even though I strongly disagree with him, but how far does his commitment to libertarianism go? He is defending the right of our country’s children to become addicted to nicotine for the rest of their life, which is an extraordinary argument. There are 356,000 people in his local area on NHS waiting lists. Does he want a future where that gets worse and the disease burden and cost pressures rise? When he was in government, the low-tax Conservatives crashed our economy and sent people’s mortgages through the roof, and rents, bills and the tax burden rose. That is their record. I wish he would do more to stand up for his low-tax convictions than his libertarian desire that children growing up in our country today should become addicted to nicotine. I have to respectfully disagree with him.

Compared with three years ago, half a million more people are out of work due to long-term sickness. People’s careers are being ruined by illnesses that prevent them from contributing to Britain’s economic success. We cannot build a healthy economy without a healthy society. Not only is there a moral argument for backing this progressive ban, based on the countless lives ruined by smoking and our shared determination to make sure that children growing up in Britain today will not die as a result of smoking, but there is an economic argument, too.

It is certainly true that vaping is less harmful than smoking and is a useful smoking cessation tool, but vapes are harmful products none the less. In the past few years, entirely on the Conservatives’ watch, a new generation of children have become hooked on nicotine. An estimated quarter of a million children vape today, and there is no doubt that this is the result of vaping companies’ decision to target children. On any high street in the country today, people can buy brightly coloured vapes and e-liquids with names such as “Vimto Breeze” and “Mango Ice”. They are designed, packaged, marketed and deliberately sold to children. The effect of this new nicotine addiction on our country’s young people should trouble us all.

[Ms Lyn Brown]

A couple of years back, Newham did a survey and discovered that 4% of year 6 children—that is 10 and 11-year-olds—had already vaped. I met Community Links in Canning Town in January, and it has been working on projects to tackle misinformation. Its students explained to me that they and their friends have been encouraged to believe that vaping is somehow safe and will not cause them the same problems with nicotine. Surely we can all agree that the voices of young people need to be heard and that they need to be encouraged and assisted to tackle the misinformation about vaping that is clearly out there.

[Wes Streeting]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend, and I am very familiar with Community Links, which does brilliant work. We should take the voices of children and young people seriously—the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) made that point earlier.

Teachers monitor school toilets where children congregate to vape. Kids are making up excuses to leave their classroom in order to satisfy their nicotine cravings, and children in primary school, aged 9 or younger, have ended up in hospital because of the impact of vaping. Paediatric chest physicians report that children are being put in intensive care units for conditions such as lung bleeding, lung collapse and lungs filling up with fat. One girl who started vaping at school told the BBC that she has

“no control over it…I start to get shaky and it’s almost all I can think of.”

The question that must be asked of Conservative Members should not be whether they will take action today, but what has taken them so long. In 2021, Labour supported an amendment to the Health and Care Act 2022 to ban the branding and marketing of vapes to appeal to children—Conservative MPs voted it down. In 2023, my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) led a debate on an Opposition day motion on the same proposed ban—once again, Conservative MPs failed to support it. Thanks to their delay in acting against this, and thanks to their awful, shocking complacency, thousands more children have taken up vaping and become addicted to nicotine. Can the Health Secretary tell the House whether the Government’s delay in acting against youth vaping had anything to do with the £350,000 donation her party received from the boss of a major vaping company that sells vapes with flavours such as “Blue Razz Lemonade” and “Strawberry Mousse”?

We are an ageing society facing rising chronic disease. We are approaching these challenges with an NHS already in the worst crisis in its history, with the longest waiting lists and lowest patient satisfaction on record, 121,000 staff vacancies across the health service and 14,000 fewer hospital beds than in 2010. If we do not act today to ease the pressures coming down the track, they threaten to overwhelm and even bankrupt the health service.

Prevention is better than cure. This progressive ban must be the beginning of a decade in which we shift the focus of healthcare in this country from sickness to prevention, which is mission critical to making sure the NHS can be there for us in the next 75 years, just as it has been there for us in the past 75 years.

If the Government are serious about taking on this challenge, Labour has many more plans that they can adopt before they finally call the general election. They could adopt our children’s health plan to give every child a healthy start to life. They could ban junk food ads aimed at kids so that children are not targeted by unhealthy food. They could tackle the mental health crisis facing young people, with support in every school, hubs in every community, and 8,500 more mental health professionals to cut the disgracefully long waiting times for treatment.

They could treat the 152,000 children who have been on NHS waiting lists for more than 18 weeks, ending long waits for children for good. We will do it by providing 2 million more operations, and by providing evening and weekend appointments to beat the Tory backlog. We will have supervised toothbrushing in schools to tackle the moral emergency of children needing to have their rotting teeth pulled out, which is the No. 1 reason why children aged six to 10 end up in hospital. We will have breakfast clubs in every primary school so that kids start the day with hungry minds, not hungry bellies. We will digitise the red book, making sure that all kids are up to date on their checks and vaccines. And we will once again put an end to measles in this country, after it has been allowed to return on the Government’s watch.

We want the next generation to be chasing their dreams, not a dentist appointment. They should aspire to reach their potential, not to reach a doctor. Labour’s plan is to make sure that today’s children are part of the healthiest generation that has ever lived, and this ban is just the start.

The Prime Minister may be too weak to whip his MPs to vote for this important Bill, but Labour will put country first and party second. We will resist the temptation to play games on votes. Instead, we will go through the Lobby to make sure this legislation is passed so that today’s young people are even less likely to smoke than they are to vote Conservative.

I commend this Bill to the House.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Elizabeth Truss]

I will not give way to the hon. Lady—[Hon. Members: “Oh.”] I will not give way. I will give exactly as much opportunity as the Opposition gave me to talk about my private Member’s Bill, which I shall come on to later.

The problem is that the instinct of this establishment, which is reflected in cross-party consensus in the Chamber, is to believe that it—that the Government—is better at making decisions for people than people themselves. I absolutely agree that that is true for the under-18s. It is very important that we protect people while they are growing up until they have decision-making capability. However, I think the whole idea that we can protect adults from themselves is hugely problematic and effectively infantilises people. That is what has been going on. We are seeing, not just on tobacco but on sugar, alcohol and meat, a group of people who want to push an agenda which is about limiting personal freedom. I think that that is fundamentally wrong.

I go out canvassing a lot in my Norfolk constituency. People raise all kinds of issues with me on the doorstep. They are concerned about immigration. They are concerned about the cost of energy. They are concerned about the rise of China. They want to support Ukraine. Not a single voter has ever said to me, “My big concern is adults smoking.” This proposal has not come from people—our constituents—talking to us. It has come from a group of people who, by and large, work in a professional capacity pushing these policies. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) was Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, this proposal was sitting on her desk, so it is not new. I am pleased to say that she put it in the bin, but unfortunately since then it seems to have been pulled out of the bin and resuscitated. My real fear is that this is not the final stage that the health police want to push.

[Wes Streeting]

Health police!

[Elizabeth Truss]

They are the health police, and people are concerned about this. They want to be able to make their own decisions about what they eat, what they drink and how they enjoy themselves. If the hon. Gentleman does not understand that, I suggest that he starts listening to the public.

What I also find extraordinary is the fact that almost four weeks ago I put a private Member’s Bill to Parliament to ban under-18s from being able to access puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in the private sector and on the national health service. Children have been taking those drugs, and that has had life-changing effects on them. They have prevented them from having their own children, created problems with their physique and their bodies, and damaged their health.

Not only did the Labour party not support my private Member’s Bill but its Members talked and filibustered—they talked about ferrets—so much that I was not even able to speak. These are the same people who are saying that in future we should ban cigarettes for 30-year-olds, yet they will not vote to ban puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for the under-18s. Thank goodness that Hilary Cass has come forward with her report. I welcome the support of the Health and Social Care Secretary for that report, but that is what we should be legislating on. We should be legislating on implementing the recommendations in the Hilary Cass report to prevent real danger to our children, rather than a virtue-signalling piece of legislation about protecting adults from themselves in future.

I am afraid that too many Members of Parliament have gone along with this orthodoxy. I am not surprised that that is the case for Labour and Liberal Democrat Members, who generally do not support freedom. They believe that the Government know best—the state knows best—and we understand that. I am disappointed, however, that a Conservative Government has introduced the Bill. The only other country in the world where such a Bill was brought forward was New Zealand, under a very left-wing Prime Minister. That Bill has now been reversed under the new conservative Government in New Zealand. I have a message for my colleagues on this side of the House. If people want to vote for finger-wagging, nannying control freaks, there are plenty of them to choose from in the Opposition, and that is the way they will vote. If people want to have control over their lives, if they want to have freedom, that is why they vote Conservative. We have to stand by our principles and ideals even if—

[Wes Streeting]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Elizabeth Truss]

No, I am not giving way to the party that filibustered on my Bill and stopped us taking action to protect children. That was a disgrace.

--- Later in debate ---

[Elizabeth Truss]

I certainly do not support the liberalisation of those drugs. We know that people who become addicted to heroin and cocaine are a huge danger to other people and to their families; it destroys society. That is not the level of danger that tobacco poses, so those are very different scenarios.

I will come to my conclusion, because I know that a lot of people want to speak in the debate. What I ask is that Members do not just follow the instructions of the health lobby. We have heard about what the chief medical officer says. I know from being a Government Minister that there are often schemes pushed by officials and civil servants because, fundamentally, there is a belief that government knows best. I want Members of Parliament to think not just about what happens if we ban smoking for people who are over the age of 18, but about the implications for shopkeepers who have to identify whether people are the right age. Will it mean that people have to carry ID into shops with them into their 40s? What are the practical implications? It is a very dangerous precedent to start saying that some adults can have the freedom to smoke and some cannot. That is a fundamental problem. It is fundamentally unconservative, it is unliberal and I will not be supporting the Bill.

[Wes Streeting]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for Members of this House to attack individual officers, such as the chief medical officer, or the civil service more generally, when they cannot answer back? Ultimately, advisers advise and Ministers decide. If people do not like Government policy or its consequences, they should take responsibility as Ministers and not attack officials who cannot answer back.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I will allow that to rest on the record.