Contribution
My Lords, I want to add a brief footnote to the excellent speeches from my noble friends Lord Bourne and Lord Bethell. This group of amendments is probably the most important one that confronts this Committee because it challenges a major plank underpinning the Government’s approach to this by challenging the generational ban. It is appropriate that this group contains not just the first of the marshalled amendments but the last.
A long time ago, I held the position of the Minister as a Health Minister. From 1979 to 1981, I was in charge of the negotiations with the tobacco industry—the Tobacco Advisory Council as it then was—and I adopted a fairly aggressive negotiation tactic. When I suggested that the health warnings should not be just on the packets but the cigarettes, they told me I could not do this as the ink was carcinogenic. In 1981, my tactics proved a little too much for the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who moved me to a less confrontational position on that issue.
I have listened with respect to the arguments made by my noble friends in favour of Amendment 1, which would basically substitute the generational ban with a ban for anyone under 21. As my noble friend Lord Howe said on Second Reading, these issues involve a balance between personal freedoms on one hand and health gain on the other, a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. Noble Lords may come down on different sides of the argument in free vote territory, but it seems to me the weakness of the amendment is simply its lack of ambition. It does not appear to bring to an end the harm done by the tobacco industry which is the whole point of the generational ban. As the former Prime Minister said last week, it was one of his proudest initiatives of those he introduced when he was Prime Minister.
It is worth just reminding your Lordships that the Bill passed the other place twice, once with a majority of 415 to 47. Last year, when my party was in government and had a free vote, I noted that the vast majority of Conservative MPs voted for the Bill, with just 67 voting against, and only two members of the Cabinet of about 30 voted against. So I hope that the broad policy introduced by the previous Government will continue to be carried through by this one and that a free vote will be allowed on my side for those who take a different view. I also recognise that the Bill is actually a little different from the one that was introduced last year.
This amendment would indeed reduce the harm done by smoking, but the Government’s own assessment concludes that a generational ban promises a far greater effect on smoking prevalence and broader support among young people. We should not want a smaller scale of ambition for a product that has killed a million people in this country over the last 50 years. The increase in the age of sale was a bit of policy conceived on evidence and based on long-term public health reform. It has strong public support, and it is backed by experts.
As the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, said, this does not impact current smokers. The impact on personal freedom is less under the Government’s proposal than under the amendment. The rewards from this are substantial: fewer young people taking up smoking, fewer families suffering avoidable disease and loss, and a future in which our economy and NHS are no longer burdened by the toll from tobacco.
I will say a quick word about the black market. I can do no better than to quote what Victoria Atkins said when this point was raised when she introduced nearly the same Bill last year. On the point 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”.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/4/24; col. 188.]
So I recognise the concerns of some of my noble friends on the libertarian wing of my party, but I remind them that crash helmets were made compulsory under the Heath Government in 1973; seatbelts became compulsory for drivers under the Thatcher Government in 1983 and for all passengers in 1981 under John Major. The previous Conservative Government introduced the Health and Care Act, which unblocked progress in adding fluoride to the water supply to promote dental health. So the generational ban is consistent with my party’s approach to public health over the last 50 years and I hope it will be sustained in this Parliament.