Earl Howe (Con)

My Lords, the Committee will be grateful to my noble friend, with his considerable experience in health policy, for the clear and cogent way in which he introduced his amendment. I am very supportive of the principles behind the amendment, as it seeks to ensure that decisions taken after the passage of the Bill are informed by robust, independent evidence and that Parliament is equipped with the relevant and authoritative information it needs to provide proper oversight of the regime for vaping and nicotine products, information that is constantly updated as the body of evidence evolves. Critically, this principle applies equally to the Government. Proposed new subsection (5) in the amendment would require Ministers, when making regulations under the Act, to have regard to the proposed panel’s reports and recommendations. That is a sensible idea. My noble friend Lord Young of Cookham was right to remind us that there has for some time been a gap in the public health mechanisms regarding the production of such reports. If we were to recreate a mechanism of the kind suggested, the regulatory frame- work would evolve in response to the realities of science and the market rather than outdated information. It is also important to recognise, as the amendment implicitly does, that although our primary concern here is health, regulation in this space cannot be viewed in isolation from the wider economy. When sales of currently legal products are restricted or prohibited, this inevitably impacts businesses, consumers and, sometimes, wider society, and those economic effects can themselves have unintended consequences for public health and people’s lives. There is also plenty of evidence of unintended consequences and the effectiveness of previous episodes of prohibition. The risk of a rise in consumption of illicit products is an obvious example, as is misinformation propounded on social media. The Government should make and review decisions with as clear a view as possible about those sorts of trade-offs. For those reasons, I hope the Government will take on board the very sensible suggestion contained in this amendment.