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It was not. It was chaos. The Minister is wrong, because she told us in Committee, and I believed her, that there was now to be a two-year period during
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It is not just a few people that we are talking about. We are in the middle of a recession and we are putting at risk 200 companies. Yes, they are small companies, SMEs, but nevertheless directly employing 650 people and indirectly, nobody knows exactly how many, but there will be a couple of thousand. What is the point of slavishly saying, the Commons voted, they did not know what they were voting about and we will put at risk all these people? The Minister has a responsibility, frankly, not to play with people's lives, at least to weigh up what her own department-and she, I had thought-was encouraging. You cannot, in this day and age, kill off people's livelihoods because an amendment is inadvertently voted on in another place. I plead with the Minister to recognise this situation.
My noble friend Lord Howe has put forward what I think is a very reasonable suggestion and one that I think the industry would understand. It is for the Commons, in the end, to make the decision. It is not for this House to make it when we know from the facts that it was not properly considered in another place.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff: My Lords, if I may just comment briefly and not delay the House too long, the reason that we had this debate on the Bill when it was with us was precisely because we did not want to play with other people's lives. We were aware of the dangers of tobacco. It is not only children; those who are trying to stop smoking find it much more difficult when they are tempted by having vending machines there. It is part of an overall tobacco control strategy. On vending machines, I find it difficult to think that there is not another solution and that these machine manufacturers will go out of business, but I do not dispute what has been said.
As for new technology being in place, I find it difficult to believe that it has emerged since we had the debate here and that it was not in existence previously and could not have been known to the other place. Many of us in this House were very keen to see this go in and many of us were very glad to see the importance recognised of the impact on people's lives in terms of life expectancy, morbidity and the chronic disease states that we see in smokers. Anything that decreases that enormous burden on the individual, undermining their quality of life, as well as the burden to the state of the cost of their care, would have been welcomed when this amendment came from the Commons.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart: My Lords, I see three issues that have come under consideration in this debate. I would not want to protract it greatly, but one has not been addressed. The argument of the noble Lord, Lord Walton, on the harm that can be caused by tobacco commends itself to most people in this House, whatever view they take about this amendment.
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My third point is that it is not for this House, although we can observe and comment on the procedures of another place, to act as a policeman. For that constitutional reason, we should be silent on this point.
Lord Monson: My Lords, I support the Motion moved by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, for three good reasons. The first is that it would restore the situation to what the Government consistently declared for month after month they wanted, and almost certainly privately still would want but are reluctant to admit for fear of irritating their Back-Benchers in the other place, so many of whom are infuriated by the Government's response to the Clegg and Kelly proposals. Let us remember that only six months ago, on 6 May, the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, said:
"We are ... looking ... to new mechanisms being trialled here in the UK to ensure that the most effective approach is taken to tackle this problem. Should it become necessary"-
those are the critical, operative words-
- "we are committed to using the power in this Bill to prohibit cigarette vending machines altogether. We intend to introduce requirements on vending machines from October 2011 and to measure their efficacy over a period of two years. Should underage sales from vending machines remain a problem after that period we will move to ban them".-[Official Report, 6/5/09; col. 600.]
That is a fair, balanced and responsible approach.
The second reason is that a blanket ban, as the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, pointed out, would cause much dislocation and hardship, with a number of long-established businesses going bankrupt and many hundreds of people losing their jobs at a time when unemployment is forecast to get progressively worse. I have to tell my noble friend Lady Finlay that unfortunately these machines cannot be converted to selling anything else.
The third reason is perhaps the most important, whether we happen to be on the libertarian or the restrictive side of the general smoking debate. Although we all, whichever side we are on, want to discourage under-18s from taking up smoking, the Commons amendment could be counterproductive and result in more underage people smoking than would have been the case if the clause had been left alone. The new machines referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours-incidentally, they stock only legal, duty-paid
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Let us revert to the sensible compromise put forward by the Government six months ago and retained until quite recently, to give the new machines a trial, see if they actually work and cut down teenage smoking, and then-but only then-move to ban them altogether if necessary.
5 pm
Lord Patel: My Lords, I am pleased that we have an opportunity to accept this government amendment, which will ban cigarette vending machines. We have plenty of evidence that cigarette vending machines are the main source of cigarettes for children. Evidence from the British Heart Foundation puts the figure at 23,000 children in England and Wales. Earlier this year, a test purchase exercise in south-west England found that 73 per cent of attempts by 15 year-olds to buy cigarettes resulted in a sale. Three-quarters of a million children under 16 take up smoking. Any attempt to reduce that is beneficial. Arguments are made about the technology that can be used; methods involving radio frequency, for example, are being promoted by the National Association of Cigarette Machine Operators. However, all technologies fail; all technologies can be got round in an attempt to get cigarettes from vending machines.
Lord Campbell-Savours: It would be an offence.
Lord Patel: It is an offence now not to use the technology that is-
Lord Campbell-Savours: But does the noble Lord accept that, in the event that members of the public took the decision to enable a machine to allow a child to make a purchase, that would be an offence and they could be prosecuted?
Lord Patel: It is an offence now not to use available technology such as tokens and infrared signals, but it is proven that children are able to get cigarettes from vending machines.
The other argument used is about the jobs that will be lost and the damage that this will do to the economy. They are the same arguments that we have heard in other debates. We were told that thousands of jobs would be lost and that all Patels would close down their corner shops because tobacco would not be displayed at the point of sale. I do not think that that has happened, so I do not buy the argument that loss of jobs will ensue. The only argument that I buy is that vending machines promote the taking-up of cigarette smoking among children. I find it very persuasive.
Lord Crisp: My Lords, as one of those who proposed the original amendment with the noble Lord, Lord Walton, I am delighted to support the Government's amendment. Most Members of the House seem to agree that the unsupervised use of vending machines
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Lord Naseby: What was the sample size-200 out of the whole pub trade of 120,000 pubs?
Lord Crisp: I am sure that there could be more than one sample; I believe that the noble Lord has referred to another survey, which may have produced a different result. Nevertheless, there is some evidence of pub landlords believing it to be impractical. Moreover, it feels very impractical on a common-sense level, as other noble Lords have said. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, described something like five steps. It did not seem to me that the steps that he was describing were any shorter than those that it would have taken for somebody to sell somebody a packet of cigarettes without having to operate machinery across the room. On the basis of the impracticality of that solution for what is a significant problem for children, we should support the Government's amendment.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I wish that the Government and other people would make up their mind. We have heard this afternoon that tobacco is an addictive and dangerous drug, not only to children but to everybody else. Of course, many people accept that; I accept it myself. But the Home Secretary does not. When Professor Nutt suggested that tobacco was more dangerous than cannabis, the Home Secretary sacked him. So it is quite obvious that the Home Secretary takes a different point of view from that taken by the right honourable Mr McCartney and the Secretary of State for Health.
So where are we on tobacco? Is it so dangerous that, as Professor Nutt says, it should be made a class B or class A drug? Or is it not as dangerous as those drugs and therefore should it remain a completely unregulated substance? It is about time that we had clarity on this, although obviously we are not going to get clarity on it this afternoon. I was regularly in Grand Committee when we discussed this matter, where one decision was made virtually by unanimity, with no change in the situation made at Report. Now, however, the Government have decided to accept an amendment to their own Bill. Let us also not forget that this is a House of Lords Bill; it is not a House of Commons Bill. The House of Lords is quite entitled to insist that the Bill should be as it was when it left here. Indeed, the Government should be insisting that the Bill should be as it was then.
If we were discussing something that involved losing 650 jobs, the closure of 200 factories, making some people bankrupt and making it difficult for 70,000 public houses at a time of rising unemployment, we would all be outraged. Yet we are proposing to do this with impunity. Of course we are being told, "That's rubbish". In every debate that we have had about tobacco-and by God I have taken part in some of those debates during my period in this House and, indeed, in the other House-we have been told, "It won't
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We have heard about an alternative this afternoon-the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, first raised it-which could possibly solve the problem for everyone. Indeed, he quite rightly said that perhaps the House of Commons was not aware of this new system that has been produced at some cost to the vending machine industry. Why would we not do this?
I go back to the ban on smoking in public places. We spent a lot of time on it in Grand Committee, with a lot of expertise from various people. We could have prevented a complete ban by providing instead for the separation of smokers from non-smokers. The Government would not listen. They would not even consult the people who could provide the air-conditioning equipment that would have allowed the separation of smokers from non-smokers and helped the pubs industry through a difficult time.
I go back to where I started. For heaven's sake let the Government make up their mind about where they are going on smoking. I fear that the reason why they do not want to have a complete ban on smoking-that is really what they are advocating; that is what they are after, to make it completely illegal for anybody to smoke-is that they are afraid of the electoral consequences and do not want to lose the £10 billion of revenue that they get from people still daring to smoke. Please let us have some honesty about this matter and not have the Government say on the one hand that smoking is bad for you but on the other hand that it is not as bad for you as cocaine or cannabis.
Baroness Barker: My Lords, throughout the deliberations on this Bill, as noble Lords who took part in all of them may recall, I have at times been equally uncompelled by the campaign run by ASH as by the one run by the manufacturers. At times I have found both to be somewhat overstated. I have therefore spent all the time we have deliberated on this Bill coming at every issue and briefing with considerable care and an open mind. I have been helped in that by the fact that now, as all the way through this Bill, our Benches have free votes on this matter.
With some considerable relief I heard the noble Earl, Lord Howe, clarify precisely what the issue is today. The one of most concern is what happened in the Commons and the matter of Commons procedure. I do not wish to be flip at all, but if this House set itself the task of addressing every piece of legislation that had a defective passage through another place we would never go into recess. But I take the point that there was not a vote, because it is important. That is why I made it my business to talk to colleagues in another place to see whether Members there had been frustrated over it. My understanding is that they were
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I have listened with great care this afternoon to arguments on vending machines, some of which have been new and many of which have been rehearsed before. Throughout this debate we have missed one important point. Vending machines predate a whole load of other changes in society; they were there in "Brief Encounter", on station platforms, when everything else for miles around was closed. These days it is extremely hard to live anywhere where there is not a shop open 24 hours a day within a manageable distance, although I accept that in some country areas that may be an overstatement. Vending machines are an anachronism-a point that has been missed-so why have they continued to exist? They continue to exist for the convenience of people who smoke and because the vendors of tobacco find them an effective way in which to find the new markets that they need among young people.
I did not agree with the display ban that was agreed in the Health Bill. I share the deep concerns of noble Lords that such a ban will lead to an increase in smuggling. I did not agree with some of the other measures that your Lordships' House agreed to. But banning vending machines, given all the arguments put before us, is the right thing to do. It is in the interests of young people and it should happen as quickly as possible. That would be my view; whether my colleagues choose to support me is a matter for them.
5.15 pm
Lord Hughes of Woodside: My Lords, I did not intend to speak in this debate, but I am afraid that I am torn between two opposites. I speak as a self-confessed one-time tobacco addict. I hope that after 10 years of abstention, I have now kicked the habit, but I am not guaranteeing it. I accept that tobacco is addictive. I accept, in some respects, Professor Nutt, who says that it is more dangerous than cannabis or cocaine. The dilemma is, however, what we should do about it. I regret to say that some of the arguments in this House this afternoon have been, "We know tobacco's bad. We know we can't stop it, but we have to be seen to do something". The instant reaction nowadays is ban it or stop it. "Whether it works or not, who cares? Our conscience is clear. We have made our position quite clear that we want to stop it".
If tobacco is so serious, why do the Government not have the courage of their own convictions and ban it entirely? I would accept that. I cannot accept the argument that we should not take a course of action because of the loss of jobs. Nobody says that we should allow heroin to be continually sold on our streets or for cocaine constantly to be trafficked. There would be a loss of jobs. They may be illegal jobs, but they are still jobs. To lay all that aside, in the absence of a total ban, it is not necessary simply to do a little here or there and say that it will work.
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The difficulty in this is entirely to do what is right. What is not right is for the Government to change their mind within six months and suddenly, almost by diktat, to apply a whip. If a free vote were to be allowed in the Commons, it ought to be allowed here. It is not often that I vote against the Government, but I certainly shall do this evening.
Lord Rea: My Lords, my noble friend says that tobacco should be banned, but he is mistaken if he thinks that that will reduce consumption of tobacco because it would produce a whole new class of criminal as well as probably not making any difference to the consumption of tobacco.
Lord Hughes of Woodside: Precisely the same argument can be applied to the banning of vending machines-it will produce a new class of criminal.
Lord Rea: That is a point that other people will probably not agree with, as I do not.
One thing that we have not emphasised in this debate is that although this tobacco legislation is aimed at discouraging children from smoking, the people who will benefit most from children not smoking are the adults that they will become. It takes a generation or so for the pathological effects of smoking to appear. When a child starts early, he or she will not suffer very much at the time, but the addictive effects of smoking will last. As my noble friend Lord Walton said, 80 per cent of adult smokers start before the age of 19. That is the real point of this legislation. I confess an interest in that I voted for the full banning of vending machines in Committee. I feel that my right honourable friend Ian McCartney is absolutely right. The feeling of the House of Commons was very much on his side even though there was no vote.
Baroness Thornton: My Lords, it is clear from today's debate that protecting young people from harm caused by tobacco is a serious issue which needs to be addressed. It is one that many feel passionately about. As the noble Earl said, we do not disagree about the importance of this issue. Amendment 11 will be a major step towards tackling the serious problem of young people accessing tobacco from vending machines. I will respond to a number of the points raised during this debate.
First, the Government's position on tobacco vending machines has indeed changed in light of the debate at Report stage of the Health Bill in another place. We admit that we have changed our minds, notwithstanding the quotes raised by the noble Lord, Lord Monson, when we considered the Bill earlier this year. It was an impassioned debate in another place, and it resulted in a key amendment being accepted. The intention of the amendment made in the other place was to remove the power to impose requirements on tobacco vending machines, thus allowing the Government only to prohibit cigarette sales from such machines or not. As the Secretary of State for Health said in another place, the will of the House will be respected when the Government consider how best to put it into effect. That is why the Government do not seek to overturn the amendment now.
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I will discuss the will of the Commons not being clear, and there not having been a Division. The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, checked with her colleagues in another place; this was indeed helpful and exactly accords with my view. The noble Lords, Lord Monson and Lord Naseby, raised this issue. As noble Lords well know, the other place determines its own rules. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, for his comments on this. The Speaker presides over the Chamber to ensure that those rules are followed. It is not normally the Government's job to put tellers in on a free vote. The Speaker ruled on that day and Hansard records that decision. Yes, a Division was called off and the amendment was accepted on a shout. I can recall times when this House has had such procedures. Under similar circumstances, noble Lords have accepted that decision; it is considered a proper and valid decision of this House. I suspect that honourable Members in another place may take exception to their procedure being questioned in the way that it has been by noble Lords-as, indeed, we would.
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