Lord Strathcarron (Non-Afl)

My Lords, I support the amendments in this group. If there is to be a retail licensing scheme, it needs to be more robust, fairer and more enforceable than currently envisaged. It needs to respect and reward retailers who are already complying with the law, which is the point behind Amendments 23, 30, 43, 45, 114 and 115 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, and other noble Lords, and identify and punish those who are operating illicitly and illegally, which is the point behind Amendments 31 and 34 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister. The amendment from the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, proposes that existing, compliant and currently exempted specialist tobacconists selling handmade Caribbean cigars be automatically included in the new retail licensing scheme. This tiny number of about 120 micro-businesses, many of them multigenerational, already face the prospect of the damage done to their business by the proposed packaging regulations, and, albeit in many years to come, as their customers are almost exclusively into early or late middle age, the prospect of competing with illicit sales as a consequence of the generational ban part of the Bill. As they are the very model of compliant, law-abiding specialist retailers, would it not be only fair at least to give them the certainty that they would automatically be included in the retail licensing scheme? Would it not lessen the burden and cost of the new licensing regime itself if it automatically granted licences to those 120 responsible businesses with a proven track record of being good actors in the tobacco area? The Minister has already said that she is not in the business of putting small businesses out of business, so I hope the Government look favourably on these amendments, which would give them an easy way of keeping at least some of these businesses in business. Amendments 31 and 44 recognise the reality that many tobacco products are sold from premises that not only sell alcohol but derive most of their business from it. As drafted, there would be two separate licensing regimes—one for alcohol and the other for tobacco products. Would alcohol retailers not be far more circumspect about selling illicit tobacco products if, by doing so, they risked losing their alcohol licence and therefore their main source of income? Would trading standards officers and local authorities not find it much easier to enforce one combined licence than two separate ones? Would illicit products’ supply chains not be more easily disrupted if they lost their sales outlets through an unrelated alcohol penalty? Finally on these amendments—here I cross over to the previous amendments—would it not be fairer for existing specialist tobacconists if the bad actors were discouraged from unfairly competing with the good actors by having their alcohol licence removed and thus their businesses seriously affected?