Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendment 198. This vaping and nicotine industry forum is very important; I am also very sympathetic to exploring different kinds of self-regulation, as is suggested in Amendment 154. It is interesting that the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, was forced to put down that there would be a disregard of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control because it speaks to the problem. I have been concerned about, in our discussions in Committee, the conflation of nicotine with tobacco; the conflation of vaping with smoking cigarettes; and, sometimes, the conflation of industries. The industries are distinct. I am pleased whenever I hear that the Government are prepared to acknowledge and meet members of the independent vaping industry and so on; they often represent small SMEs and so on. I want to mention something that I genuinely do not understand. A lot of tobacco companies have now moved into anti-cigarette mode. It is a bit like how BP went beyond petroleum. If you ever go to an event with anyone from a tobacco company, you will be more likely to get a lecture on the dangers of cigarettes than on anything else. They have been forced, by being treated like pariahs, to adopt a different method and different products. I wonder whether the Government might acknowledge that this is going on; personally, I think that treating even tobacco companies as pariahs is not helpful.