Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 3rd November 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

The point I am making is that it is true that the majority of smokers do not sit around and discuss whether filters have a benefit to their health. I am quite sure that, had you asked me in that survey, I would not have had a clue. You would then say that I was being conned into using a filter. However, I would be indifferent because that is not the basis on which people smoke, either with or without filters. I am particularly bemused by the idea that, as a woman, if I saw a white filter, I would immediately think “purity” and be forced to smoke a white-filtered cigarette. I mean, goodness me—have we all gone mad?

I want to talk also about the idea of health warnings on actual cigarettes, which, again, is completely disruptive to product design and so on. It is completely petty. Sometimes, I feel as though the public health people have done everything and anything they possibly can and have run out of things to do, so they are now down to the narrowest possible thing: the cigarette itself.

It is interesting that this idea is aimed especially at young people who might be given one cigarette at a party; and that people seem to be saying that, if only such people saw that written warning, it would be enough to stop them. Were we ever young? Were we ever at a party? Did we ever read anything on the side of a cigarette that stopped us? The point I am making is that, as it happens, the majority of young people know that smoking is bad for you; many young people even give adults like me lectures on how smoking is bad for you. The idea of a written warning is not, I think, very helpful.

I just wonder what the health warning would say. Would it say, “Tobacco kills you”? What is it going to say? I have had an idea. Public perceptions on the difference between smoking and vaping are at their all-time worst. Only a minority of current adult smokers—29%—are able to recognise accurately that vaping is less harmful than smoking. So I have an idea: if we are going to have a message on the side of individual cigarettes, perhaps we could say, “Vaping is cheaper and less harmful than smoking”. That is a good message. Why do we not say that? We could even say, “Vaping is good for you”. The point I am making is that that is not where we should be putting messages; we have heard confused messages in this Committee so far.

My final thought is on the success of Canada and Australia in dealing with smoking, which has been cited and thrown into the conversation. Let us look at what is actually happening and today’s front-page headlines in Australia. The only success of Canada and Australia has been the huge growth of a black market in cigarettes and vapes. It is a disaster. Many people in public health are now saying, “Maybe we went too far”. So, before we start emulating them, maybe we should take different lessons. The front page of the Australian newspaper The Age today is about the fact that people are panicking about what they have inadvertently done. This group of amendments is the kind of thing that could lead us in completely the wrong direction.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendment 34 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Russell, to which I and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, have added our names. I declare an interest as the president of the Local Government Association. I thank ASH—Action on Smoking and Health—for its briefing, in which it laid out these amendments clearly. It supports the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, though not the one in my name; however, it raises some really interesting points around what we are trying to do and how far we need to go.

It is important to raise the issue of greenwashing and to look at better solutions than the one we currently have. Although this amendment does not go as far as some want, it is a step forward. I came to this amendment, which looks at the equivalent number of plastic straws that are in each cigarette—it is two plastic straws—because I worked on the impact of the ban on plastic straws on disabled people. Disabled people were vilified for daring still to want to use plastic straws, whereas people who smoke do not seem to have that same level of pressure against them.

The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, always makes really interesting speeches and asks really interesting questions. Are we doing this from the point of view of public health, the environment or littering? I would say, “All of them”. As somebody who has never smoked—I question how interesting any of the parties I went to as a teenager were—I presumed that filters were safer. It is only when you do the research that you realise that people have been deceived into thinking that they are safer than they actually are. The number of butts that are littered worldwide—4.5 trillion—is absolutely horrendous; it is the equivalent of 1.69 billion pounds of toxic trash. Look at the impact on the UK: a minimum of 3.9 million butts are littered every day. I am also interested in the fact that cleaning up these cigarette butts costs local authorities around £40 million a year; I think that that money could be spent far better in different ways.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of the amendments in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. The point I am making is slightly different. If I had my way, I would ban cigarette sales completely, but I know we are not going to get that far in a hurry.

As the noble Earl, Lord Russell, said, the filters are made of cellulose acetate that is converted into plastic. They are promoted as a health benefit in the sense that people think they filter out harmful tar, nicotine and carcinogens, which they do not. They are of no benefit. Filters also make people more addicted, because they make the cigarette smoke temperature lower and feel smoother, so I am told. People therefore take deeper breaths and become more addicted to the substances they inhale, because there is a higher concentration of them. They are actually more harmful, despite being promoted as less harmful than just cigarettes on their own.