Freedom fighters

The Tobacco and Vapes Bill passed its third reading in the House of Commons yesterday by 366 votes to 41.

I’ll return to that, and the current state of the Bill, in my next post because it’s worth recording who voted for and against, and what happened to the various amendments that were tabled. But before I do that I want to thank the small band of brothers (and sisters!) who joined us outside the Houses of Parliament yesterday.

We made a fairly late decision to hire a campaign van to patrol Parliament Square and Whitehall for eight hours throughout the day, and the photo op that took place at 11.00am was ‘organised’ at just 24 hours’ notice.

Attendees included representatives from the Institute of Economic Affairs, TaxPayers Alliance, Students for Liberty, and the LSE Hayek Society, and I am grateful to everyone who made the effort.

(Charles Amos, who has been running a grassroots campaign against the Bill, even took a day off work which showed impressive commitment.)

Baroness Fox came from the House of Lords to show her support, and Nigel Farage was close to joining us too, but that’s another story.

The leader of Reform UK wrote an excellent article for the Telegraph in which he rightly had a pop at Kemi Badenoch for falling ‘largely silent’ on the issue despite being quite vocal in her opposition to the original Tobacco and Vapes Bill.

Her decision not to vote yesterday disappointed me and many others but more on that, and yesterday’s vote, later.

PS. Thanks too to Dan Donovan for designing the posters on the van.

Photos: Gokhan Goksoy/VR Agency