Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to address a couple of these amendments in a broad sense. Amendments 182 and 187 would ensure that all schools and colleges were vape-free and would require them to proactively implement policies as such. I draw here on my own experience from the Learn with the Lords scheme. I had a shadow from that scheme here in Parliament—a young woman of about 16 or so. She had been with me for about an hour when she said to me, in tones of total desperation, “I need a vape”. I confess that that is not something within my personal experience, and I am not entirely sure about where I took her, although it seemed an appropriate place and I did my best. But I think that we have to acknowledge that schools, colleges and other similar institutions will encounter people who have started vaping and are experiencing great difficulties with addiction to that vaping. I would want to keep it so that the school can make its own decisions on what is best for its own situation and its community, rather than trying to apply a blanket ban. We know what the ideal would be, but we have to think about the reality for head teachers and others who have to deal with that practical situation.

I also want to speak against Amendment 182A, which would allow vaping products in places where it is reasonable to expect that everyone present is over 18. I should declare another interest here. I must admit that I really do not enjoy walking down the street and getting a face-full of vaping fumes through no choice of my own. Many of the pubs, clubs and bars that are likely to be in this situation are already voluntarily vape-free. We do not want to force them to change the circumstances of what works for their patrons.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I shall start with Amendment 182A tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising, which replaces his withdrawn Amendment 180A. It seeks to specify that vaping should be allowed in locations where it is “reasonable to expect” that only people over 18 congregate. I believe this would limit the Government’s response under their powers in the Bill if future evidence emerged that action would be desirable. Given that parts of the Bill seek to limit any action that opens the way to under-18 vaping and to discourage those aged 18 to 24 from vaping, except as a smoking cessation tool, this amendment would appear to be in opposition to that objective, which I share.

I have commented before that many young people slip undetected into over-18 places—the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, has just accepted that that does happen now and then—so the amendment could undermine the Bill’s objective, which could be why the noble Lord has reworded it. However, many indoor settings already voluntarily designate their premises vape-free, and they may do so because many non-smokers find vaping as well as cigarette smoke offensive because of the smell. I am sure they would not have done that if it were bad for business. Any change in this situation would require further consultation, so perhaps that is what the Minister might say.

Going back to the beginning of the group, Amendments 181 and 184, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, seek to restrict the Government’s ability to act in future to three specific locations. I am glad that the noble Lord did not specify that hospitals should be designated vape-free, because vaping may be a valuable quit-smoking aid to patients. However, it does not seem to me that these places need to be specified in the Bill. There is going to be a lot more consultation, and I hope that evidence will come from the call for evidence.

Amendments 182 and 187, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, are unnecessary as schools already have the power to ban students bringing vapes on to their premises as they cannot have been obtained legally if the students are under 18. However, it is sad that many of them either do not do so or find it hard to enforce their ban, if they have one, for the reasons the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, has just mentioned. One has to have sympathy with young people who have managed to be hooked on nicotine so badly that they have to say, “I need a vape”, as she put it. I hope that schools in particular, where the pupils are under 18, will see it as their duty to discourage vaping among their pupils. In support of that, I would be sorry to see staff vaping on the premises because it is a very bad example.

There is a major problem with young people buying unlicensed vapes, some of which have been adulterated with THC or the drug spice, which is a dangerous development. The latter is particularly addictive and harmful, so I hope that schools would be active and vigilant on this matter. However, I think the Minister may tell us that more consultation is taking place on this issue, so I am content to wait for that.

I support the principle of Amendment 183, from the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, which would prohibit the Government designating mental health trusts as vape-free. We must recognise the use of vaping in mental health and smoking cessation, alongside treatment, so the trusts should be able to make their own decisions about vaping on their premises. I very much hope that the Minister will reassure us that the Government do not have any intention of designating mental health trusts as vape-free areas. For all those reasons, and those given in previous debates, I would not support removing Clause 138 from the Bill. The public strongly support their opportunity to go into vape-free places, and many businesses have understood that already.

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[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

My amendment seeks to allow ministerial discretion for heated tobacco products. As I have said previously, we know that vapes and heated tobacco products are much safer than smoked tobacco products. We need a regime of regulation that promotes switching where smokers are unable to stop. This small change may shift the dial in favour of switching. I hope that Ministers will consider this amendment in the constructive way in which it is meant.

I am trying to make a consistent point across all my amendments to improve the number of smokers switching to safer alternatives. We all know our doctors are often harsh in their advice; they will tell us that drinking alcohol is always unhealthy, even though many of us drink socially and are not unhealthy. The fact is that we need a system that encourages people to make healthier choices without riding roughshod over their personal liberties. That is what I am trying to propose. By allowing discretionary powers on spaces where everyone is reasonably expected to be over 18 in respect of heated tobacco, Ministers will be able to nudge people to make healthier choices, when they have found it impossible to quit smoking. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly against all the amendments in this group. I respectfully disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising, about our understanding of heated tobacco products. I am drawing here, as I have been throughout Committee, on the excellent briefings from Action on Smoking and Health. I note its conclusion, that there is not currently good-quality evidence on the health harms of heated tobacco devices or their efficacy as a smoking cessation tool. Therefore, in that context, we need to be very cautious of the potential health impacts. The Bill as it stands is in the right place.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness. In Amendment 184A, the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising, seeks to exclude heated tobacco from the smoke-free generation objective of the Bill, to allow it in places where everyone is over 18. For this reason, and because of my lack of confidence that any location can be sure it is really only used by over 18s, I cannot support this amendment.

In Amendment 185, the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, seeks to exempt heated tobacco from being banned in uncovered hospitality areas, which parallels an earlier amendment about vaping. As smoking gradually declines, the Government may very well seek to make further restrictions, as the public will almost certainly become used to the lack of nicotine products in their environments, and they may rather like that situation. Therefore, the Government must be free to use their powers in the Bill to respond to the public’s changing attitudes on these issues.

Removing Clause 139 would prevent the Government from designating heated tobacco-free places at all. Many businesses have done this already, and any evidence that these products are being used as smoking cessation tools is likely to decrease over the years as the number of smokers decreases. That would therefore not be a good reason to prevent the Government from acting if they saw fit.

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With that context, I hope the Minister will not want to be associated with the unintended consequences of bankruptcies, retail job losses, more violence in retail outlets and even more decimation of local high streets. As we reach the end of Committee, I put in a sensible plea that, in order to mitigate against that, the Government really pay attention to this section of the retail industry that has up until now been more or less ignored and sidelined.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Howe, for introducing this group. I will speak in specific terms against Amendment 188 and very strongly against Amendment 200A.

Starting with Amendment 188, I declare my position as a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Customer Service. I note the terrible figures from the Institute of Customer Service earlier this year—these are from people who work in all areas of public-facing customer service—which showed that 43% of those surveyed had faced some incident of customer hostility in the previous year. That figure was up nearly 20%. Some 21% of the people surveyed had also faced physical threats while they were doing customer-facing roles.

As the noble Earl said, we have a real problem with shoplifting, but we also have a problem across the board. I do not think the best way to approach this is to look specifically at retailers of tobacco, vaping and nicotine products. There is a need for government action, and I have been working with the Institute for Customer Service more broadly, as I have in the past on other legislation, to tackle this. It does not make a lot of sense to regard this as a discrete problem; it needs a much broader angle of attack.

I am very strongly against Amendment 200A, which would establish a government grant scheme to subsidise the cost of age-verification technology to reduce the financial burden on smaller retailers. I absolutely agree that the burden should not fall on smaller retailers. However, I point out that—this is based on work earlier this year by the Social Market Foundation—the big four tobacco companies make £900 million in profits annually and that their average profit margin, looking at the cost of producing and distributing tobacco products versus the price they charge to whole- salers, is 50%. There is no other product that has anything like that kind of return.

Due to being involved here, I have not had a chance to look closely at what happened in the Budget today but, so far as I have been able to discover, a fairly standard increase in tobacco duty is coming in at 6 pm today. However, the Chancellor has not, it seems, followed the recommendation of the Social Market Foundation to put a levy on tobacco products on some of those windfall profits. At the time, that was suggested for health measures, but it could indeed go into such a measure as this. It is very clear that the merchants of death should be paying for the costs associated with their products much more broadly than this. But, certainly in the context of this amendment, they should meet any burden of compliance so that it does not fall on the smaller retailers.

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

My Lords, I hesitate to interject at this late stage of Committee, but I just respond to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, who had concerns that many of the organisations giving evidence previously on the retail question were from health-related charities, and I declare my own non-pecuniary interest as chairman of Cancer Research UK.

I just inject a note of caution about relying too heavily on some of the trade associations for the small retailers that she describes, given that they have some financial vested interests. The organisation that she cited, I noticed on their website, has received a sponsorship support from Japan Tobacco International. Another major retail association declares on its website that it has received funding from Philip Morris, Japan Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco and British American Tobacco. Therefore, notwithstanding the need to consult retailers directly, I think that some of these trade associations may have a conflict of interest.

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[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have not always historically been an enthusiast for experts dictating policy, but I am enthusiastic about this amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley.

Particularly in relation to policy or legislation related to public health, there is an awful lot of evidence swapping, people citing data, and so on and so forth, then accusations of not being able to trust that data. It would be very helpful to have a genuine independent academic body looking at some of these things, that we could maybe all trust a little—or even look sceptically at—but which actually digs into the evidence. Many of my friends are academics; any research can be advocacy research. None the less, it has to be there in the public arena for us to examine it. It is not just data and numbers.

This is important because earlier today, the Minister rightly said that we are going to follow the evidence, yet we had a serious conversation about whether there should be regulation to ban second-hand vaping fumes. The explanation for the fact there is no evidence of that being harmful was that it is evolving evidence, evolving evidence being the unknown, unknown approach, as far as I can see. I want to Cancer Research here because this is what you do when you are not quite sure how to counter somebody saying this is evidence. It said:

“Further research is needed to understand the health effects of vaping”,


which I accept,

“however”,

there is currently no good

“evidence”,

that

“second hand vapour is harmful”.

However, we have managed to have a conversation as though, even though there is no evidence, it probably is, or it could be. I think that discredits the notion of evidence-based policy. There are also different kinds of academic studies. I was pleased to hear the idea of behavioural studies. At Queen Mary University, for example, they have done a lot of work on vaping, and all their studies suggest that vaping is not a gateway to smoking. I think that the Government need to consider such things. There are a large number of qualified specialist academics who are researching not just the health impacts of vaping but a whole range of how vaping is used. I would like that somehow to be acknowledged in the Bill and for that group of people not to be ignored.

As we are at the end of Committee, sometimes in this Bill I have argued in defence of vaping as a smoking cessation tool, because that is how I have used it. However, I have felt a little uncomfortable about the way that it is assumed that, unless it is a smoking cessation tool, there is something wrong with it. I wanted to query whether that is true. Have the Government got a view of a recreational habit? Why would the Government choose to try to overregulate something that is just a recreational choice? Some people might start vaping who have not smoked. It might be that, by vaping, they will not start smoking.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thank the noble Baroness for giving way. I just think we must not lose sight of the fact that we are talking about a highly addictive product and there is a role for the Government in ensuring protection from giant multinational companies trying to hook people on highly addictive products that we know do them harm.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I want to say that I understand some of the addiction points in relation to young people in particular. I asked in an earlier group in Committee if this Bill was tackling addiction per se as a problem. There are things that we know are addictive—for example, nicotine. I am simply asking the question about what it is we are trying to tackle. I am asking this because, when we are talking about adult freedoms and choices, it is not just enough to cite medical evidence. That is why I want the expert panel to really assess the medical evidence and behavioural points. That is where I was going. I am cautioning against seeing everything through the prism of expertise as medical expertise.

As it is the last time I will speak in this stage, I thought I would end on some behavioural insights. Since we last met, the BBC has rewritten its Christmas adaptation of Julia Donaldson’s book over its fears that it would encourage children to smoke. It is The Scarecrows’ Wedding, which as noble Lords will know, features a villain scarecrow called Reginald Rake who, lighting a cigar, accidentally starts a fire. There has been something of a kerfuffle, and the BBC decided that this had to be rewritten. It sounds like some Daily Mail story—how ridiculous, PC gone mad and all the rest of it.

For the purposes of this amendment, a colleague of mine who works in media literacy made the point that the irony is that The Scarecrows’ Wedding is a perfect example of a book for young people that puts people off smoking. Betty O’Barley, who is another scarecrow by the way, is so horrified at the villain, Reginald Rake, smoking that she keeps saying to him “smoking is bad for you”. The whole point about Reginald Rake is that he is the villain of the story. The irony of this is that a media literacy expert makes the point that the BBC’s rewriting of this is completely counterproductive in relation to messaging. I say that because I think it is a bit more complicated than just swapping numbers around. An expert panel, looking at the unintended consequences of well-meaning policy, would not do any harm as we finish Committee on this legislation.