The Tobacco and Vapes Bill is back in the Lords. I, like many sensible-minded people in Westminster, had hoped the Labour Government had finally realised that it was an unworkable mess which runs roughshod over personal liberty, places ridiculous burdens on small independent shops and risks an explosion in criminality. That it would rightly be consigned to the dustbin of an unending committee stage and thus dropped.
Only recently, in a moment unfortunately overlooked, the Government essentially admitted that its Bill will not work as originally claimed. I remember when Labour ministers and MPs were adamant that their proposed generational smoking ban – which outlaws tobacco sales to anyone born since January 1, 2009 – would apply to the entire UK, no ifs and no butts, so to speak. We all knew this could not be the case because Northern Ireland remains in the EU single market, unlike the rest of the UK, and is bound by European law which forbids smoking bans.
How things change. Now, according to ministers, this firm and uncompromising belief has become nothing more than an ‘intention’ to apply it to the entire country.
If it has failed to make its Bill work as planned on this issue, how can you trust the Government’s continued belief that it will work in the rest of the country or that it won’t lead to a rush of criminality, as smokers are pushed into a violent black market? After all, it’s not as if there is a great body of evidence around black-market tobacco or another Anglophone country completely u-turning on its own so-called generational ban.
Oh, but of course there is. First, let me talk about Australia where the price of a packet of cigarettes has been hiked to nearly £30 a pack – twice the already high level in the UK – resulting in vicious gang warfare over its supermarkets and independent stores. Those selling and consuming illicit tobacco are in a bloody, and sometimes murderous turf war. Smoking bans and sky-high prices only play into the hands of smuggling gangs which Keir Starmer has so roundly failed to smash.
Perhaps we could consider New Zealand’s crackdown. At the time, its ban was feted, celebrated as a world-leading effort to promote health and the welfare of its citizens. Yet it was quickly abandoned as its problems became all too obvious to Kiwi lawmakers and the public.
And think about the damage this Bill will do the Caribbean cigar making industry, just when the region needs all the support it can get.
This is all without mentioning the absurdity of the premise of this ban. An arbitrary ratcheting age restriction that could mean two identical twins could have different purchasing rights as one was born before midnight and the other was born after. Before long, the day will come when a 25-year-old can legally buy cigarettes – and a 24-year-old is prohibited. Does the Government really expect shop assistants to ask punters in their 30s or 40s to prove their age? The idea is absurd.
The Labour Party of yesteryear must be turning in its grave: a Labour Government deciding that some people will permanently have fewer rights simply based on their date of birth.
Of course, no one wants to see teenagers smoking or vaping, but the Tobacco and Vapes Bill is nothing more than moral grandstanding masquerading as policy. It is a direct attack on personal choice, it empowers criminals and divides citizens by birthdate. If Labour truly cared about public health, they would focus on education and enforcement, not in prohibition. This Bill isn’t bold or progressive, it’s an illiberal overreach that will fail on its own terms.
The Government should scrap it now before it becomes yet another costly lesson in the dangers of prioritising virtue signalling over common sense.
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