Member

Finally, Amendments 19, 20, 122 and 132, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, would provide powers to make it an offence across the UK to sell vapes without age-verification technology. I share the intention to tackle youth vaping effectively. However, we already have a comprehensive range of measures to do this, alongside strengthened enforcement against rogue retailers who sell vapes to under-18s. Our approach across all products in the Bill is for age to be verified at the point of sale, not the point of use. It will be illegal to sell nicotine and non-nicotine vapes to under-18s, and retailers should continue to perform age-verification checks at the point of sale to ensure that they do not sell these products to anyone underage. Mandating any age-gating technology that first requires users to verify their age to activate a vaping product would create—inadvertently, I am sure—harsher restrictions for vaping than for smoking and risks making vapes less accessible to adult smokers wishing to quit, which I know is not the intention of noble Lords.