Earl Howe (Con)

That is helpful. These amendments once again bring us back to the issue of proportionality. The first thing to say, and I hope that no Member of the Committee will disagree with me, is that we have to be very careful when legislating on vapes and nicotine products, lest we inadvertently discourage their use by those who need them for smoking cessation purposes. That leads to me to make a point similar to that made by my noble friend Lord Moylan. Sending the message that there are harsh criminal penalties associated with advertising these products or having anything to do with the advertising process plays right into the false narrative, which a lot of people now believe, that vapes and nicotine products—but especially vapes—are as harmful to human health as tobacco smoking. Used irresponsibly, vapes can cause addiction to nicotine and, in that sense, are bad for you. However, when responsibly used as a means of quitting smoking, they are not bad for you. We should tread carefully when purporting to put them on a par with tobacco products and herbal smoking products, as the Bill does in Clauses 113 to 118. There are 6 million tobacco smokers in this country whom the Government rightly want to help to quit. But those who go through that process know that it is not as easy as simply putting down the cigarette and walking away. Having a safer, accessible and—dare I say—pleasant alternative to turn to is often what makes it bearable for those suffering from cold turkey. Vaping and nicotine products are those safer alternatives to smoking. They do not possess the same chemicals and tar found in tobacco, and the poisonous chemicals in tobacco smoke are absent. Despite this consensus, 53% of the public believe that vapes are just as bad, while 40% believe that nicotine causes most smoking-related cancer. What do the Government say to those people when they place equal bans on the advertising of tobacco, nicotine and vapes alike? I do not think that they convince them that one of those options is better. Amendment 173A, in the name of my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising, and Amendment 174 in my own name, would require the Secretary of State, before imposing a ban on the advertising of vapes and nicotine products or a ban on vape and nicotine companies acting as sponsors, to assess the impact of those bans on likely rates of smoking cessation and the impact on producers, retailers and, indeed, consumers. The free market has played a large part in the threefold reduction in smoking over the past 20 years through the natural growth of tobacco alternatives. The result is that we now have a vaping industry worth over £3 billion, a large part of it with standards and codes of practice, and a rapidly growing nicotine products industry. I believe that we should welcome that, because it has facilitated the decline in smoking rates and, at the same time, contributed to the economy. I am the first to concede that there are bad-faith actors out there. No one on these Benches would argue against a ban on products or advertising targeted at children, but that is a very different thing from a ban on all advertisements of vaping and nicotine products in any circumstances.