Generational ban: opportunity knocks for public health says top Tory

You can tell when the passage of a bill through Parliament is a foregone conclusion because the print and broadcast media invariably lose interest.

I’ve seen it happen many times and although the Tobacco and Vapes Bill only entered the report stage in the House of Lords on Tuesday, with two more sessions next week, the flagship part of the Bill – the generational tobacco sales ban – is effectively done and dusted and the only national newspaper that bothered to report it was the Independent.

Interestingly, the headline highlighted Conservative opposition to the gen ban (Government edges closer to landmark generational smoking ban despite Tory challenge) but ‘Tory challenge’ is a bit misleading. It’s true that opposition to the ban – in the form of a series of amendments that would have replaced the ban in England, Scotland and Wales by banning the sale of tobacco to anyone under 21 instead – was tabled by Lord Murray of Blidworth, a Conservative peer, and his arguments were supported by several other Tory peers, but the party gave their members a free vote and there was absolutely no doubt which side of the fence Earl Howe, shadow deputy leader of the House of Lords and the party’s spokesman for health and social care, was on. From Hansard:

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Murray for his amendments in this group and all noble Lords for their contributions to this important and lively debate …

I must, however, declare my hand. This Bill, as I have said, is an opportunity—an opportunity to make a transformational change in an area of public health that successive Governments have agreed is one of the two or three most important and far-reaching in our midst. Indeed, I would say that it is the most important. I do not think that the civil liberties arguments stand up to scrutiny for very long when we are talking about the chance of preventing serious ill health across millions of our population. Smoking needs to be made deeply unfashionable. My noble friend’s amendments, although entirely well meant, are unlikely to achieve that scale of health benefits nor that kind of attitudinal change.

There is uncertainty in whatever we decide to do. I am content for my noble friends on these Benches to make up their own minds on these matters. My noble friend, whom I greatly respect, will urge colleagues to join him in the Lobbies if he chooses to divide the House. At the same time, I hope he will understand that it ill behoves me, as my party’s spokesman for health and social care and as a former Health Minister, to pass up what I see as a golden opportunity to do something imaginative and radical, which is why I support the Government in their excellent ambitions.

Inevitably, therefore, when it came to a vote Lord Murray’s amendment was defeated by 246 votes to 78, a majority of 168.

Photo: iStock/Rafal Wojtaszek

To be fair, both sides of the argument were well represented in the debate, with notable contributions from Lord Clarke, the former Conservative chancellor and deputy chairman of British American Tobacco from 1998–2007, Lord Blencathra, and our old friend, the non-affiliated Baroness Fox, who posted a clip on X, adding the comment:

We are on the final days of debates in the Lords on the Tobacco and Vapes Bill. We had lots of fairly polarised arguments about the generational tobacco ban. Regardless of details, it was hard to listen to the sanctimony of public-health zealots. So I spoke, mainly to make a plea that m'luds stop treating Freedom and Choice as dirty words.

Vocal opponents of Lord Murray’s amendments included Lord Young and Lord Bethell (both Tory peers), and Lord Stevens of Birmingham (Independent). Given the latter is chairman of Cancer Research UK that wasn’t a surprise, but I wasn’t expecting him to mention Forest:

The noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth, referred to the Republic of Ireland as an example we should perhaps be following, when it proposed to adopt the age of 21. However, the director of the tobacco industry-funded front organisation Forest said of the effect of adopting the age of 21 as a tobacco sales restriction:

“If you’re not careful, you’re actually going to make smoking … fashionable again. You’re going to actually encourage young people to smoke”,

on the back of this proposed sales restriction to over 21 year-olds.

What Lord Stevens was trying to do, I think, was undermine Lord Murray’s amendments by pointing out that even Forest was opposed to raising the age of sale to 21, but in typical tobacco control fashion he took my quote out of context. When I made that comment a generational ban wasn’t being considered in Ireland (it still isn’t), so of course we were opposed to raising the legal age of sale to 21.

We were also opposed to the idea when it was suggested that Sajid Javid, a former Conservative health secretary, might raise the age of sale to 21 in the UK but, faced with a generational ban, raising the age of sale from 18 to 21 became a (slightly) better option, hence our recent letter to peers urging them to vote for Lord Murray’s amendments.

Let’s be honest, we still didn’t think it was a good idea. Indeed, our letter made it clear that Forest is ‘opposed in principle to raising the age of sale of tobacco above 18’ but, I added, ‘we recognise the political reality of the current situation’. And that reality meant that raising the age of sale to 21 was better than a generational ban.

Ah well, at least we got a mention in Hansard.

There’s still more to do though before the Bill returns to the House of Commons. In particular, we are urging peers to vote against an amendment that would introduce a national ban on smoking in new licensed pavement areas. That amendment will come up next week so watch this space.