Baroness Carberry of Muswell Hill (Lab)

I am very sorry that the Committee stage of this Bill has kicked off with an attempt to remove the intergenerational ban for tobacco products, because these amendments self-evidently attempt to severely weaken the Bill and run counter to its central objective of ensuring that those born after 1 January 2009 will never be legally sold tobacco. I know that all noble Lords present know that, but I think we need to go back to basics here. The objective is also to break the cycle of addiction and disadvantage, which starts very young. This is made very clear in the Explanatory Notes to the Bill and I know that all noble Lords will have read them. I wonder whether the sponsors of these amendments in this group actually support the intention of creating a smoke-free generation. The Government’s own modelling says that the Bill would virtually eliminate smoking in under-30s by 2050. These amendments would make this desirable objective far less likely. I shall not bore the Committee with the statistics that we are all very familiar with about the extent of the harms of tobacco. They are readily available and we all know them. But it is not in doubt that the Bill’s measures, if enacted in full, would result in fewer addictions and a reduction in harms and untimely deaths. The amendments in this group would dilute these desirable benefits. I turn to the references that have been made to the possible replacement of legal sales by the black market. I am not sure that we have sufficient evidence to make the confident predictions that we heard at the beginning of this debate. Even if we had, I would suggest that the measures in the Bill, in full, do not preclude separate government actions to tackle illicit sales—if indeed such sales and such criminal activity are a consequence of the Bill. As I said, at the moment we do not have enough evidence to predict that with total confidence. I will make two further small points. If the Bill ends up, as these amendments seek, specifying a lower age of sale than 21, tobacco companies would be very likely to target their marketing at the threshold age, resulting in more addiction, more ill health and a greater mortality risk. Finally, the objective to create a smoke-free generation, which the Bill unamended would do, is publicly extremely popular. In the October 2023 UK-wide consultation, 63% of the public supported a sales ban on tobacco for those born after 2009. That public support has been fully endorsed by many other opinion polls since that government survey. I would hope that those supporting and proposing the amendments in this group will not persist.