Lord Kamall (Con)

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate; I welcome their thoughtful discussion and the important points that a number of them made. As I said earlier, this was a difficult group for me to put into words, in moving this amendment, because, as many noble Lords will know, I tend to take a classical, liberal perspective on many things and I do not like banning things. The intention of the amendments in this group was to probe the Government on whether they believe that action to address these products, which have such high levels of nicotine that they lead to consumers vomiting, is required sooner rather than later; dentists also warn that these products physically burn gums, cause lesions and expose the roots of teeth. In probing the Government, the intention was to set clear, enforceable limits rather than pursuing an outright ban. These probing amendments were aimed at achieving a balance between taking dangerous products off the market when they are easily obtained by young people and allowing properly regulated, lower-strength products to continue to help people come off smoking. However, one of the advantages of probing amendments is that you are able to test your argument and to hear other arguments—either those in favour, which reinforce your view, or those that challenge your view. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Watkins and Lady Finlay, for raising their concerns about pouches. That is an important point. We should understand whether the Government believe that nicotine pouches can play a role and that they are an effective pathway off smoking. Given that vaping is probably seen as the thing that the Government would promote most as a pathway off tobacco, that would be a very interesting conversation to have. I am also grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, because she made some interesting points in sharing the evidence from, I believe, Cancer UK. She also posed some questions. What are we trying to achieve here? Are we trying to address the harms of tobacco or are we trying to tackle addiction? Should we be tackling addiction or harm? These are important points. What is more harmful? That seems to be the debate in this Room: we agree that tobacco is harmful, but how harmful is nicotine? That needs to come out a bit more, perhaps, as we debate the Bill more. I am grateful to the Minister for answering directly some of the questions that I put to the Government. That was really important. Having listened to the Minister, and to the many noble Lords who challenged the intentions behind these probing amendments, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.