Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Lord Teverson Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, we have had a number of quotations and reminiscences about family. My father was a general practitioner in a very deprived part of the East End of London: Old Ford. He became as aware of the huge dangers of smoking as the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, did at roughly the same time in the late 1950s and early 1960s and of the terrible effects that smoking can have on individuals’ health, communities and families. I followed that very much. I have always supported the legislation so far on restricting the consumption of tobacco. I feel that one of the positive things about the Bill is that we should bring the vaping legislation pretty well up to where tobacco legislation is now. However, I have severe concerns that the first part of the Bill about the rolling age ban is not going to work. In fact, it is not just not going to work but could have certain other ills more broadly for society in the form of unintended consequences.

I was pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Brady of Altrincham, mentioned cannabis because when it comes to the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, and evidence, we should look at the cannabis market because the one difference the Bill makes is that it proposes that, in effect, tobacco will become an illegal substance for the first time, and over time it will be like cannabis and other banned drugs. It will be of a similar status. What has happened in the cannabis market? We have heard some of that. The statistics are difficult because it is a dark market, obviously, but it is thought that the annual turnover for cannabis, excluding medical cannabis, is about £2.5 billion to £3 billion per annum, and there are some 3 million regular users of this particular drug. That £3 billion is a proportion of the £10 billion illicit drugs market in this country, so it is very substantial.

The issue about this piece of tobacco legislation is that, as other noble Lords have said, cannabis legislation is hardly enforced at all, and where it is, it is very patchy—and I believe quite rightly. Where I live down in the West Country, rural crime is an issue; cannabis is not a social problem, although it is used, and many of us would prefer that the police spend their time more on issues other than drugs. The forces have obviously made that decision, and different forces make different decisions throughout the country. It varies very greatly. We all know that cannabis is hugely and easily available—it just is—but when it comes to tobacco, that will be even easier for the newly banned generations to obtain because they can just take it from their family or from those people who were born before 2009.

So, what we have is a problem in society where we encourage people to break the law regularly, and I seriously believe that that is an ill that we should not encourage. It is too easy to circumvent. Certainly, enforcement is incredibly difficult because of the transfer between friends, families and communities when for some of them it is not illegal. I find the area of age identity very difficult in terms of how that will be solved practically. In terms of cost to society, I believe that broad area of people breaking the law and not feeling it is a problem because that is what they do is something that eats away at respect for the law and for legislation. I have always strongly believed, as a legislator here and in the European Parliament, that we should not legislate unless we are able to enforce. Otherwise, it makes a mockery of us, the law and the rule of law, which is an important part of our democracy.

I also agree that this will be a market opportunity for organised crime. It is just obvious. That is what happens. We know that in this industry—and we have heard examples here of illegal or under-the-counter sales—there is a history of the tobacco industry exporting cigarettes to third-world countries which come back into this country. Those channels already exist and will continue to exist.

Another issue with drugs that are prohibited—I am not saying that they should not be prohibited—is quality control, as we see with cannabis again. What we risk when we ban tobacco to certain sectors of society is that the quality control and administration of those substances disappears completely, which becomes a risk to individuals, societies and communities.

I support bringing vaping legislation back up to where tobacco is at the moment, but I am highly sceptical that you can make a rolling age ban work in this country, given the resources, history and evidence that we have.

GPs: Anti-depressants and Alcohol

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I believe that the House is very aware of our plan for patients. It is very much the focus of my activity. I was just talking to the NHS and the CFO this morning on where we are on the recovery of the elective treatments and the plan for that, so it is very much in the front of our minds.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I very much welcome the Government’s initiative on environmental prescribing, particularly for depression and mental illness. Will the Minister say what assessments they have made of the success of that programme so far, and whether they will promote it further?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

On this occasion, that is probably a question about which I need to write back to the noble Lord to give him the detail on it.

General Food Law (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness on her appointment as the Minister in the Lords for health and social care. I would like to pick up on a point mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and to reiterate the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. I am also a member of the EU Sub-Committee on Energy and the Environment, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. We heard evidence this morning from the Minister for Public Health and Primary Care and from Heather Hancock, the chair of the FSA. The point that I want to pin down here is the one concerning risk management because we have heard contradictory statements over the past six to nine months about who is going to be in charge of risk management after Brexit day. What we learned is that at the moment, the arrangement is that EFSA produces the risk assessment, the risk management decisions are taken by the standing committee, on which the UK is represented by the Food Standards Agency—and on only rare occasions are decisions on risk management escalated to the Council of Ministers.

Heather Hancock has proposed, and indeed has set up an equivalent arrangement for post Brexit, so there will be an equivalent of the standing committee in which the FSA on behalf of England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and Food Standards Scotland will make the risk management decisions. That is her proposal. On the other hand, we have been told on numerous occasions that Ministers intend to take risk management decisions in relation to food safety and standards, which of course would take us right back to the old days before the FSA was set up when Ministers got themselves in a tangle when confronted with having to make difficult decisions about risk management and they sometimes got them wrong. I will not go into detail, but we are all aware of the mistakes that were made in the 1990s. I would like to get confirmation from the Minister of what Steve Brine told us this morning; namely, that it is his intention—I do not believe I am putting words into his mouth—that risk management decisions on most issues will be delegated to the Food Standards Agency. I would like confirmation that that is indeed the Government’s position because we have heard contradictory points of view.

That was my main point. My only other point is that I picked up this morning some difficulty over who is in charge in ministerial terms between Defra and the Department of Health and Social Care. I would like confirmation that it is indeed health Ministers who are accountable to Parliament, even if they are not making decisions. The current situation is that the FSA through the standing committee makes the decisions, but health Ministers account for them in Parliament if necessary. They are a kind of conduit from the Food Standards Agency to Parliament. I would like to hear confirmation that that will remain the case after Brexit and that responsibility will not somehow be split between Defra and the Department for Health and Social Care.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I will make some brief comments. I too welcome the Minister to her position. I also particularly welcome the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, coming back to the Opposition Front Bench. I remember great times when he was a Defra Minister and the work he did when the climate change Bill went through.

I will raise two points that relate in many ways to what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. Although these SIs make technical replacements to make sure that the regulations work, which I accept and understand, subject to my noble friend Lady Walmsley’s question about what has been left out, the whole crux of this comes back to how the structures that enforce and flow from these SIs will work. Is the Minister satisfied that the Food Standards Agency will be sufficiently independent of political influence when it comes to important decisions about consumer safety, food safety and agriculture? At a time of major incidents, decisions taken by Ministers can be very difficult in their effect, in particular on the food processing industry and indeed the agriculture industry.

The other area concerns our meeting with the Minister this morning at the sub-committee. I was very impressed by the chair of the FSA, Heather Hancock, and what she has achieved over time to put all the systems and people in place, but I was not convinced by the liaison between Defra and the Department for health over these negotiations. It seemed that on the question of systems the Minister was not entirely in touch—I do not mean this over-critically—with the negotiations in this area that Defra has undertaken. It is that liaison on which I would like some assurance.