Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Earl Russell Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th November 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

Briefly, my noble friend Lord Lindsay spoke to his group of amendments far more eloquently than I can, and other noble Lords spoke about the evidential and ethical case behind them. But I want to make one point and give one example, at this time of remembrance and with society’s understanding of mental health developing—and, indeed, given the Minister’s role for mental health. A great number of veterans and serving personnel come together to talk about their mental health and their experiences through the medium of cigar clubs. It would be a great tragedy if those communities were lost due to the unintended consequences of the Bill, and I hope that the Government and the Department of Health and Social Care are listening to the arguments that have been made this afternoon.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I will briefly respond to these amendments on cigars. It is clear that the parliamentary cigar club is out in force today, and the noble Lords have made their case very well. I will speak on snuff, because every argument made for cigars is undermined by including snuff within the amendments. The arguments around snuff are extremely different. Snuff use among our 16 to 24 year-olds has seen a fourfold increase over recent years. Snuff is easily available; it is flavoured and easy to hide for young people. Frankly, including snuff undermines the group of amendments.

[Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendments, which I have signed, and I will speak on the separation of cigarettes and vapes from other tobacco products, making the case, I hope, for a much stronger impact assessment. Certainly, the previous contribution made a strong case for trying to review these things in a proper impact assessment, which I think would be welcomed by everybody.

The noble Lord, Lord Strathcarron, made an incredibly forensic case about the separation, and his was an excellent contribution. Of course, I enjoyed the poetry, prose and passion expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Johnson of Lainston, but the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, made a brilliant case for this. He reminded me of one thing in particular: the issue that we have in making sure that regulation is effective. I remember sitting on the other side of this Room on many occasions, making the case for better regulation, making the case that this had to be based on proportionality and evidence, and usually making the case that an impact assessment was wanting in a particular area. Very often, we were supported by the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, in that case. The present Ministers will be dealing with many of the consequences of things that did not have proper impact assessments and were not assessed correctly, because these things frequently lead to very poor legislation that has terrible consequences and requires a huge amount of government action beyond them.

In this case, there are some issues around justice, whether the actions are proportionate and whether they do away with people’s livelihoods, which is probably unjust on the basis of the evidence. The Minister’s reported comments on the current market conditions for cigars bear no relation to commercially available market assessments, so there is a case for ensuring that we have the right evidence. The current impact assessments are not even a tick-box exercise—there is almost nothing in them apart from the tick in the box. I cannot think of anything we have done that has put on the table any cost-benefit analysis.

The case for the separation is strong. It does not obviate or undermine the core public policy objective or any movements around the central issues of health benefits, protecting children and the like in the other parts of the Bill. There is, of course, a vast difference, as has been said, between the mortality of handmade cigar smokers and cigarette smokers, not least given that cigars are not inhaled and are made from natural tobacco, as opposed to habitually inhaled cigarettes made with many additives and chemicals, as was expressed. I would love to say that I could remember or recite even one example cited—it was a magnificent piece of research—but a considerable number have terrible health consequences.

The impact assessment and Explanatory Notes make clear that the whole Bill is intended to target products that are deliberately branded for, promoted to and advertised to children. It is unclear that OTPs, especially cigars, fall into this category. They are not promoted with cartoons and are not part of an illicit trade on which trading standards are focused; they are specialist, niche and not present on convenience stores’ footprints. Again, all the Bill’s impacts are based on multiple chains and businesses for which these are marginal products.

The point was made that we lack the evidence to make this piece of legislation because DHSC, HMRC and the other relevant public bodies stopped collecting data on OTPs around 2012 because of their low usage, the age profile of the users and the fact that there is no evidence that they are a gateway product for the young. No assessment was required because the significance to public health was negligible. That is important as we balance things here because these products have a distinctive consumption pattern in the volume of people using them; in the mechanisms and types of usage, daily or occasional; and in their negligible youth appeal.

There is already market regulation. The price marketing and regulation are very different for those sorts of products. There is a cultural and economic consequence to this measure in skilled jobs, specialist retailers, hospitality and other areas. I am not so august to know the practices of the investment community when deciding issues with Governments—and whether a Romeo y Julieta seals the deal—but it is certainly clear that important luxury-end hotels, which are a big area for our economy and for the growth of our tourist economy, will be significantly affected by the availability of these sorts of products.

This is not to say that everyone uses them, but it is certainly true that the breadth of appeal in what Britain represents is very much that it caters for that sort of stuff. We need a proper assessment of the impact. There are many precedents for treating cigars differently, including in EU countries that are trying to do the same sort of thing in tourism under the tobacco products directive. It would be foolish of us not to have proper evidence before we put ourselves at a disadvantage.

This all speaks to making sure that enforcement is proportionate, practical and effective. I hope that, in responding to the debate we have had, the Minister will take away the fact not just that there is a very strong case, for those of us who have spent some time looking at this matter, but that the Government’s case probably has more costs than benefits currently. A proper impact assessment should be done in order to make sure that, as they move forward with this legislation, the Government can make proper provision for how we deal with OTPs.