Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Debate between Wes Streeting and Jake Berry

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.