Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Report (2nd Day)

Clause 16: Prohibition of retail sales of tobacco products etc in England without a licence

Amendment 21A

21A: Clause 16, page 9, line 26, at end insert— “(7A) Regulations made under this section may not come into force earlier than the end of the period of one year beginning with the day on which they are published.”Member’s explanatory statement This amendment provides that regulations establishing the retail licensing regime for tobacco, vaping and nicotine products in England may not come into force until at least one year after they are published. This is intended to ensure that businesses and local authorities have sufficient time to understand, prepare for and implement the new licensing requirements, including administrative systems, training and enforcement arrangements.

My Lords, Amendment 21A is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Kamall. In Committee the Minister stated that the Government would design a licensing regime that would support compliant retailers while targeting rogue operators. She also spoke of minimising burdens where possible and recognised the importance of ensuring that retailers and local authorities had sufficient time for training and development. Reference was also made to a call for evidence and to the subsequent consultation that would address matters such as the process for granting licences and implementation generally.

A retail licensing system will require the creation of application systems, fee structures, compliance mechanisms and, crucially, enforcement arrangements. Local authorities will need to establish or adapt administrative systems, train their staff and ensure alignment with trading standards and environmental health functions. Small retailers, many of them independent businesses, will need to understand the new requirements. They will obviously have to submit applications, adjust their own internal processes and potentially invest in training or record-keeping systems.

In our Committee debate, I was encouraged by the Minister’s statement, which indicated that the Government were actively seeking views on how long a period implementation would require. I therefore have a number of questions for the Minister. First, can she update the House on the outcome of the call for evidence, if she has it, and the subsequent consultation to which she referred in Committee? Specifically, is she in a position to provide the feedback the Government have received from retailers and local authorities on the time they would require to implement a licensing regime?

Secondly, have the Government reached a provisional view on the likely commencement timetable for retail licensing regulations? Do they anticipate a phased introduction, and if so, over what period? Thirdly, what assessment have the Government made of the administrative readiness of local authorities? Has the department engaged directly with representative bodies to understand the systems, staffing and training that will be required, and the time needed to put those in place?

Lastly, if the Government will not commit to the precise terms of this amendment, will they commit to ensuring that there is a clearly defined and publicly communicated minimum lead-in period between the laying of regulations and their commencement? I beg to move.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend on the Front Bench for asking some very practical questions, to which I hope we will get some practical answers. The only thing I will raise—I do not want to flog a dead horse for the moment—is that there are existing regulations for off-licences, and it would be interesting to see the degree to which the Government feel that those should be reflected, just in case there is a need for the two to come together at some time in the future.

Amendment 25 is key. Tobacco retailers are concerned —I have discussed this following the last debate—because they have never been in this area in any depth. They feel quite strongly that they should have some means of checking they have registered properly, and that, if the local authority changes something, they have a means of going back and checking on that portal. That is the reason for this amendment, and I will listen carefully to what the Minister says when she responds.

My Lords, I will speak to the six amendments in this group that stand in my name and the names of the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, and my noble friend Lord Johnson of Lainston. In doing so, I declare an interest as president of the CTSI, although I emphasise that these amendments are not linked to the CTSI or my role there.

Before speaking to those amendments, I will speak in support of Amendment 21A, moved by my noble friend Lord Howe, because small businesses will need all the time they can get to prepare for yet another layer of administrative burden. By way of background, the track and trace system, for which specialist tobacconists have been preparing for over five years, requires every economic operator to have a unique identifier code that they must supply when an order is sent out to them. Even something this simple has been remarkably complex and very time consuming. It has taken one supplier in the handmade cigar sector well over two years to register all its customers, and it is not yet there. A fully fledged licensing system, with all that it entails, is likely to be much more complex, especially for businesses such as hotels, for which cigars are not a primary source of income.

Businesses will suffer and possibly cease trading if the licence application process is excessively burdensome in terms of cost, time or hassle. Traditionally, the handmade cigar sector, which comprises mostly family-owned businesses, has been permitted extra time to prepare for new legislation, such as on packaging, display restrictions and so forth, in recognition of how much harder it is for small and micro-businesses with fewer resources to adapt.

I move on to Amendments 23, 30, 43, 45, 114 and 115 in this group. I hope that these amendments will be seen as being a constructive, good-faith effort to identify an evidence-based, proportionate and workable solution for specialist tobacconists. Their principal business, comprising some 70% of their turnover, is in handmade cigars. As I explained on the first day of Report, handmade cigars, which are artisanal, individually crafted, high-value and relatively expensive premium products, are fundamentally distinct from mass-produced, lower-priced, machine-made, small-format cigars and cigarillos. In other words, they occupy a completely different segment of the market. That distinction matters in terms of price, consumer characteristics and, most importantly, the evidence base relating to youth uptake and public health.

My Lords, I will speak to a number of the amendments laid in my name, starting with Amendments 24 and 25. Noble Lords will note that Amendment 24 seeks to establish a national register of tobacco and vape retailers. The reason I am pushing this so strongly is that the national register would strengthen traceability and support our trading standards officers and, importantly, could become a mechanism to strengthen consumer confidence and public reporting of rogue traders, by providing the general public with the means to distinguish legitimate retailers from rogue operators.

As for Amendment 25, noble Lords will hopefully understand the significant challenges that small businesses in this country are facing at this time. Yet here we are, through the Bill, finding yet more ways to strangle our small, legitimate traders with more red tape and more bureaucracy. I, like several people, I am sure, have heard directly from small retailers that many of them do not even bother to report people who carry out smash and grab thefts to the police, due to the time it takes out of their working day.

With these themes in mind, we should be mindful of passing legislation that places new and undue burdens on these small businesses. If we get this wrong, I fear that this legislation unamended would push many small and currently legally trading businesses into the hands of criminal enterprises that are fuelling illicit tobacco and vape trading across the UK. That is why, through Amendment 25, I am asking for the creation of a single digital portal for licence applications and renewals. This digital portal would lessen the burden on businesses, while also enabling greater oversight from enforcement agencies, all the while reducing the risk of administrative errors.

Amendment 31 would enable licensing authorities to suspend or revoke alcohol licences in cases where tobacco or vape licence conditions are persistently breached. Beyond the fact that, in breaching tobacco and vape licensing requirements, the person would fail to meet the definition of a “fit and proper person”, if the Bill is to succeed, it must be based on meaningful economic consequences that hurt and impact illicit trading. Alcohol represents a very significant proportion of convenience store turnover. Linking the two regimes creates a deterrent and uses existing powers under the Licensing Act 2003. If everybody is serious and genuine in their endeavours to protect children through this legislation, we must close this enforcement gap and send a message to those who breach tobacco and vape conditions by deeming them unfit to sell alcohol.

My Lords, we have had a very valuable debate so far on the practicalities of a generational ban on smoking. I have been particularly intrigued by the journey we have taken. In that journey, a number of people have come to me, and I thank them for the enormous amount of information and support we have received from the specialist cigar industry. I was particularly delighted, noble Lords may be interested to hear, that my noble friend Lord Parkinson alerted me to a brand of cigars that sadly no longer exists called the House of Lords Cigar Range. I am sure we could sell that in the gift shop if things changed.

I also thank the Minister for her assurances over sampling rooms. I know this was debated, but I would be grateful for further clarification relating to her correct assertion that plain packaging will be difficult for specialist tobacconists to comply with, and thus extra care will be taken to ensure that they can carry on their business within the law, and that their specific needs will be met, as they are already in relation to the display of tobacco products.

However, these amendments, to which I have added my name, go further in protecting this important if niche industry of specialist tobacconists. The purveyors of these handmade, hand-rolled cigars, as my noble friend Lord Lindsay said, employ hundreds of people. They are largely family-owned or small businesses. They have been trading in some cases for hundreds of years and, importantly, provide delight to thousands of tourists and enthusiasts every day.

Regarding compliance with local licensing regulations, I do not believe that these shops have ever had any form of enforcement or issue around their compliance. I believe their behaviour to be exemplary. If we do not acknowledge the difference of these specialist tobacco shops but simply lump them in with the hordes of vape shops that are a blight on our high streets, we will end up in the worse situation that is causing the sorts of problems that we see today and that have just been mentioned by my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister.

These new regulations may be misused, as regulations normally are. I am sure we all remember the extraordinary application of anti-terror legislation by local councils to people who left their bins out on the wrong day. If these regulations are misapplied, they will destroy the cluster of these specialist tobacconists, especially around St James’s. We are told that there are already laws in place allowing councils the power to revoke and limit licences, which is true. What we are asking for is confirmation that a properly behaving store in the St James’s Street cluster will be exempt from the new rules around the concentration of tobacco purveyors.

We must be specific. I am sure that the Minister will reassure us that well-behaving shops will be treated appropriately. That may be the case today, under sensible councillors, but imagine if one of the councils were to be run by the Green Party, for example. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, who is not in her place, has made clear her opposition to cigars, citing unsubstantiated data that 35% of 11 to 17 year-olds had tried a cigarillo in the last year alone. By the way, machine-made cigarillos are a totally different product which we do not defend and which are not relevant to this debate. She and the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, of the Liberal Democrats, slightly bizarrely suggested that cigars were somehow the preserve of the masculine right, led by Andrew Tate. Are they suggesting that I am some sort of red-pill masculine chauvinist? Such stereotypes do not do credit to the industry and the people who are trying to make a living within it. Also, I should point out that I have never circuit trained, in case anyone was concerned, and every cigar smoker I know is marked out by their mild manner and sensible politics.

I should also add that the Green Party wants to legalise drugs: I think it made that announcement on the same day that it came down so heavily on cigars. I am not against that at all as a libertarian, but it seems inconsistent, to say the least, that under the Greens’ benign rule you will be able legally to take cocaine but not smoke a Cohiba. The future would not be in trusted hands at all, which is why we are looking for these reassurances. Can the Minister make a clear statement about this situation and put our minds at rest that Davidoff of London is not to be turned into a drugs den?

My Lords, I am very glad to follow my noble friend, although I fear that, after his poetry, I will be much more prosaic. I will speak to Amendment 21A, moved by my noble friend Lord Lindsay. I want to talk in particular about the implementation of the enforcement and licensing scheme in relation to vaping and nicotine products.

In Committee, we discussed how the Government might implement the registration and licensing scheme, and the regulation of vaping and nicotine products, in co-operation with industry. I am grateful to the Minister for our subsequent discussion and for her letter. However, while the letter followed up the analogy we used in the debate with the role of the Portman Group on the regulation of alcohol products, it referred to the wrong bit of what the Portman Group does. She referred to the voluntary aspects in relation to advertising and sponsorship, whereas the correct analogy is with what it does in relation to the naming, packaging and protection code.

In essence, what that does is ensure that where products which are intended, as determined by the adjudication panel, to appeal to children are put on the market, it is able to notify retailers, who ensure that the product is not stocked. In the Bill, in relation to vaping and nicotine products, as the Minister will be aware, there is intended to be a tighter regime than is the case in relation to alcohol products. That still lends itself to the co-regulatory solution, not because the industry is looking for a voluntary solution but because it is looking for a more proportionate and effective solution.

In particular, I want to make it clear that if there is a register of products, and Clause 94 says there will be, there will then have to be somebody who makes a judgment on whether a product that is registered is compliant with the requirement of not being intended to be attractive to children. The essence of what we are setting out to do is to avoid children accessing or being attracted to vapes.