Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Lord Forbes of Newcastle Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 202 in my name and that of the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Northover, would require the Secretary of State to publish a road map to a smoke-free country every five years, and sets out some specific obligations that should be included within that road map. The Bill is world-leading, and I welcome that, but it does very little for current smokers, of whom there are still about 5.3 million left in the UK. Without a comprehensive strategy to ensure that current smokers are supported to quit, we risk certain groups being excluded from the smoke-free future, and, of course, we will have to wait several decades for the smoke-free generation to take over.

The previous Conservative Government published the 2017 tobacco control plan, which set out key areas of focus and the ambition to create a smoke-free generation by tackling youth smoking. This was accompanied by the tobacco control delivery plan, which enabled relevant partners and services to implement the plan. These have both expired, and there is no current strategy on tobacco in place. The Labour Party pledged to publish such a strategy in the health mission document, Build an NHS Fit for the Future, saying that it was important that no one should be left behind. It said:

“We will build on the success of the last Labour government with a roadmap to a smoke-free Britain”.


My amendment asks the Government to make good on that promise now that they are in power.

When I raised this in Committee, it was disappointing that the Minister said:

“There are no plans to develop a report on specific targets or to publish a road map at this time”.


That seems a very clear rejection of the commitment that I have just read out. The reason the Minister gave lacked substance. She justified it by saying that it was

“because we are focusing our attention and total ambition on making sure that we can deliver the Bill and work on the regulations that will follow”.—[Official Report, 27/10/25; col. GC 191.]

However, the amendment asks simply for a report every five years; indeed, there would be no requirement to produce one until 2031. It is not going to take that long to deliver the Bill—hopefully by the end of this Session—and to introduce the regulations shortly after. I therefore hope that the Minister will come to the House today with a more robust defence of the abandonment of the commitment that I have referred to.

A road map would include a clear target to end smoking. In 2023, the Khan review found that

“England will miss the smokefree 2030 target by at least 7 years, with the poorest areas not meeting it until 2044”.

When I asked the Minister about this in Committee, she said:

“We are going even further than the Smokefree 2030 target. As I have mentioned throughout, our ambition is for a smoke-free UK and creating the first smoke-free generation”.—[Official Report, 27/10/25; col. GC 191.]


That is excellent—I entirely applaud it—but without a road map we will not know whether, or indeed how, that ambition is going to be delivered.

I appreciate that the Government have tabled Amendment 205, which requires them to carry out a review no earlier than four years and no later than seven. My noble friend Lord Lansley has tabled Amendment 206, which I am sure he will speak to in a moment. But the government amendment is actually very little different to what should happen anyway. All government departments are expected to review new legislation three to five years after Royal Assent. Known as post-legislative scrutiny, this typically assesses how the Act has worked in practice and whether it has met its policy objectives. Under that obligation, departments are expected to produce a memorandum on the Act three to five years after it is passed, which is then presented to Parliament and departmental Select Committees, which can decide if they want to take it further. So in practice, the government amendment adds very little to what ought to happen anyway.

The timescale in the government amendment is less onerous than current practice, and such a review would be much less specific than the process that I have set out in Amendment 202, which has some very specific targets. Any government review would be retrospective in nature and limited to assessing the specific measures contained within the legislation, whereas subsections (1) and (2) of the new clause proposed in Amendment 202 go much wider. Indeed, Amendment 206, in the name of my noble friend, is also more granular than the government amendment. A road map would require the Government to explain how they intend to use the powers in the Bill and how these will sit alongside broader policy action and service provision required beyond legislation. A road map would provide a shared direction and common goals to work towards, helping to maximise the impact and success of the legislation from the outset, rather than simply looking back at how it has performed years later. For those reasons, I hope that the Minister will feel able to accept the amendment.

[Lord Forbes of Newcastle (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to the amendments in this group. For the record, I declare my interest as a trustee of Action on Smoking and Health.

First of all, I follow on from the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Young, around a road map. Surely a road map is less strong in terms of action than the very substance of this Bill in the first place, which is about action. Each successive year of the implementation of this Bill will take another year of smokers out of the reach of the tobacco industry. Therefore, the actions as proposed in this Bill are stronger than a road map would suggest, as that implies a level of choice further down the line. That is clearly what this Bill is intended to avoid—the further consideration of actions to reduce smoking instead of decisive measures to reduce smoking now.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, referred to the legal opinions, which I believe was a piece of work commissioned by the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association, whose members include BAT, JTI and Imperial. Given the industry’s long and litigious history, both here and internationally, it would be remarkable if they did not try to use this process to threaten legal action; that has been their playbook for decades. Some noble Lords will have heard directly from advocates in Kenya, Zambia and Pakistan at a recent ASH briefing. They described years of aggressive industry interference, including a six-year battle in Kenya over measures as basic as health warnings, measures that the industry had already failed to overturn elsewhere. The purpose of these cases is rarely to win on the law; it is to depress political will, delay implementation and exhaust public authorities. That effect is especially corrosive in countries with fewer resources or resilience than the UK. So when we are presented with yet another industry-funded legal opinion, it is reasonable to treat it with caution. The smoke-free generation policy is indeed novel, but novelty as a concept is not a legal defect; it is simply untested. That is not in itself a reason to abandon a policy designed to protect children from addiction and future generations from avoidable disease.

ASH has commissioned its own legal opinion from academics at the University of Liverpool with expertise in both public health and EU law. Their analysis directly addresses the issues raised in the group of amendments that we are debating now. They conclude that there are strong grounds to believe any legal challenge would fail and that the Bill is compatible with EU law. I will explain why.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Forbes of Newcastle (Lab)]

I will come to that point in a moment and explain further. The TRIS process concluded on 18 February. The UK Government have provided a clear and satisfactory response to the concerns raised by member states, which I hope offers some reassurance to the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey.

Far from being alarmed by the UK’s approach, several EU countries are watching it carefully. In France, a similar Private Member’s Bill is gathering cross-party support. In the Republic of Ireland, Ministers opted to raise the age of sale to 21 at this stage but have been explicit that future Governments may “keep going” and consider a rising age of sale. Countries across the EU are following developments here with great interest. We cannot say that positions taken by EU Governments in the past will determine their future positions on this issue. We are clearly leading a global conversation about how best to respond to the harms caused by tobacco. There is not just EU-wide but global interest in what the UK is doing here.

Finally, two successive UK Governments, of different political persuasions, have brought forward the Bill with the smoke-free generation policy at its heart. Both will have taken detailed legal advice and agreed to proceed on the basis of its content. The fact that alternative legal advice commissioned and funded by the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association offers an opinion to the contrary does not, for me, outweigh the judgment of two successive Administrations firmly committed to protecting public health. I therefore cannot agree with the arguments put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey. I hope that the House will consider the strength of legal arguments in favour of the Government’s position as assurance that this is the right and moral thing to do.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad to follow the noble Lord and to speak to my Amendment 206. I might say to him that, to me, it seems clear that what my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham and other noble Lords intend in Amendment 202 is to complement what is in the Bill rather than to in any sense contradict it. The intention was entirely to look at how, in addition to the measures in the Bill, we can move to a smoke-free country, rather than simply relying upon the assumption that in the fullness of time—as my noble friend said, in a matter of decades—the smoke-free generation will take over and give us a smoke-free country. It is a very long way ahead that we will arrive at that point.

The noble Lords on both Front Benches—my noble friend and the Minister—and I have all been involved in many of the measures that have got us, over the years, to a reputation of having among the strongest tobacco control policies anywhere in the world. I hope that is something we can collectively work to sustain.

On the point about reviews, and at the risk of lauding the Minister again, I welcome that she has brought forward her amendment. I know my noble friend says it is only a little more than is required in any case, but it is not necessarily required in statute, which is rather important. I note the presence of my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth, who was kind enough to sign Amendment 206, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, did likewise. In part, we were setting out to establish exactly in each statute that there should be the necessary review process. As my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham said, Amendment 206 has some granularity about what this review actually requires.

I draw attention to what is in Amendment 206. In a sense, I am asking the Minister to say that, in addition to the fact of a review, there will be substance that contributes to the review and is reflected into it in due course. First, there should be independent and substantial research into the harms associated with vape, in particular, and nicotine products. In Committee, we discussed this a number of times and were all less than convinced that we knew what the long-term health impacts would be of substantial vape use. We have some evidence over up to 10 years, but that will certainly not be sufficient for the longer term. We need to have much more and better evidence. I hope the review will not just be about the process of the operation of the Act but will look to where the underlying issues at the heart of the Bill are moving over time.

Likewise, that is why we have included in proposed new subsection (5), to be inserted by Amendment 206, that we should look specifically at the extent to which the operation of the Act reduces

“rates of smoking”

and

“reduced use of vaping products amongst children”,

and whether the operations of the Act lead

“to a reduction in the use of vaping products for the purposes of smoking cessation”.

From the point of view of Action on Smoking and Health, one of the central issues that we need to examine is whether we can be certain we are continuing to secure the benefits of vaping products but not leading more young people, or others, into using vaping products rather than using no smoking products at all—which would be the better solution. We also want to look at what the economic impacts of the Bill might be and have, on a number of occasions, discussed small and micro-businesses.

While it is not my intention to press Amendment 206 to a vote, I hope that some of the granularity within it will be reflected in the review the Minister has vouchsafed to us under Amendment 205, and that she might at the Dispatch Box make it clear that, in due course, they will all form part of the review.