Contribution
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness and to hear her bring her considerable expertise to bear on this Bill.
I am a smoker. At least, I think I am. I certainly smoked in the womb; my mother smoked when she was pregnant with me. I smoked as a teenager and I smoked through my twenties, my thirties and my forties. Like every smoker, I yearned to give up. I went cold Turkey, I used nicotine patches, I turned to vapes— I tried everything. Five or six years ago, I switched to heated tobacco, and that works for me. I am told by Philip Morris who makes the IQOS products that I smoke that I am not a smoker, because I am not ingesting tobacco smoke. In fact, I have taken such a great interest in this issue that I visited the Philip Morris labs in Switzerland and met some of the people who are doing the research on heated tobacco, as I have declared in the register of interests. I am a user of the IQOS products—but I ask myself, as I ask all noble Lords, am I a smoker?
It has made me think about the purpose of this Bill. The important question for me as a layman to ask the experts is what are we trying to ban? I think everyone agrees that, in a perfect world, we should ban cigarettes. Cigarettes are a vector for nicotine, but they are extraordinarily destructive, as we all know. Burning tobacco is a very convenient way to get nicotine, and also to kill oneself eventually. Nobody disputes that at all. But are we trying to ban cigarettes or smoking? What do we mean by smoking? Are we trying to ban all tobacco products or nicotine? These are important questions. There is an argument which says that people should be able to access nicotine if it can be done in a safe way. Maybe someone will tell me that this is absolute rubbish, that nicotine is very dangerous, and that we should do everything we can to eradicate it. Maybe one should be allowed to access nicotine via tobacco, provided that it can be accessed in a safe way, but maybe the experts will tell me that it cannot be done.
I fully accept that measures which appeared unpopular at the time have had a huge and good impact on smoking. I have a fond memory of voting against the Labour Government in 2006 when they were tightening up their legislation on banning outside smoking. The only reason why my memory is so fond is that, as I went through the No Lobby, John Reid, who was then a Cabinet Minister, walked past me and thanked me for voting for the Labour manifesto. The original proposals in the Labour manifesto were being taken further by the Government. There were huge rows about the impact on communities. I find it unimaginable now that I was able to smoke on an aeroplane, in the Tube, and so on and so forth. I fully support that ban.
There are questions to ask. Let us look at Sweden, which describes itself as smoke free. Some 5.4% of its population smoke cigarettes—the lowest in Europe—but 22% use this thing called snus. I grant that the Swedish can be odd. This is basically tobacco put into the mouth. Sweden has the lowest rate of lung cancer in Europe, but I do not know from the people who briefed me whether it has the highest rate of mouth cancer. I would love to know. Is Sweden a success story from the perspective of this Bill, or does it remain a complete basket case and a disaster?
I went to Philip Morris to find out more about their product. I met the people working on it, which included a former academic molecular biologist, a neuroscientist who has worked in public health for 25 years and a physiologist who has spent his entire life fighting addictions and coming up with drugs to combat things such as opioid addiction. I want to say something controversial: a lot of the tone of this debate looks backward at the sins of the big tobacco. It does not perhaps acknowledge—though that might be too kind a word—that big tobacco has perhaps moved forward in terms of heated tobacco.
As we debate the Second Reading, the question for the House is what are we trying to get rid of—cigarettes, tobacco, nicotine or smoking?