UK on path to prohibition, with the Tories' acquiescence

Some thoughts on the report stage and third reading of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill that took place in the House of Commons yesterday.

One, 366 MPs voted for the Bill, with 41 voting against. Forty-one out of 650 MPs is 6.3%, which doesn’t seem very representative of the population to me.

Consider the evidence.

According to polls conducted for Forest, 60 per cent of adults have repeatedly said that if you can vote, have sex, drive a car, buy alcohol etc at 18 (when you are legally an adult) you should also be allowed to purchase tobacco.

A poll commissioned by Forest only last week found that public opinion was split between a generational ban (39% gave it as their preferred option), raising the age of sale to 21 (31%), and keeping it at 18 (24%).

In other words, 55% of respondents favoured a more liberal option than denying future generations of adults the right to legally buy tobacco.

Among 18-24 year-olds, the age group that will be the first to feel the impact of the generational ban, almost a third (30%) of 18-24 year-olds would keep the legal age of sale at 18, while 36% would raise it from 18 to 21.

Given a choice of options, only 28% of 18-24 year-olds would support a ban on the sale of tobacco to future generations of adults.

YouGov polls conducted by ASH claim that support for a generational ban is approximately 70%, and even if that was true (polls don't lie but they can distort public opinion depending on the question asked) it still leaves a significant number who don't support a generational ban.

Parliament however doesn't always represent the will of the people. Instead it represents the will of the political parties or MPs who, ironically, prioritise their own personal choices ahead of their constituents.

Hence the views of 55% of adults, including 66% of 18-24 year-olds, who told pollsters they preferred options other than a generational ban on the sale of tobacco, were represented yesterday by only 6% of the country's MPs.

For the record, 24 Conservative MPs (out of 121) voted for the Bill, together with 38 Lib Dems (out of 72) and 285 Labour MPs (out of 411).

As expected, not a single Labour MP voted against the Bill. Those that did vote against included 31 Conservatives, six Lib Dems, and three of the four Reform MPs.

(Deputy leader Richard Tice didn't vote so I assume he was absent. Former Reform MP Rupert Lowe also voted against.)

Interestingly, a great many MPs (308) didn't vote at all. OK, that includes the speaker, the three deputy speakers, and the seven Sinn Fein MPs who don't take their seats in parliament, but that still leaves 297 MPs who didn't bother to vote for or against a Bill that we are told represents a major step forward for public health (and, no doubt, mankind).

Of the 297 who didn't vote, 116 were Labour, 63 were Tories, and 28 Lib Dems.

Perhaps many didn't vote because they thought it was a foregone conclusion. Nigel Farage used this excuse after the second reading which I thought was a bit of a cop out, but he voted this time and also made a short speech during the report stage.

Curiously several Tory MPs who voted for the Bill in November didn't vote yesterday, David Davis being one of them.

It's not clear if they consciously abstained or weren't in the House. I'm trying to find out because there is a rumour that the Tories were whipped to abstain, but it's only that – a rumour – and I find it a little hard to believe they would have done that.

Nevertheless it was interesting to note that former Tory leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick was among those who didn't vote yesterday, despite having voted against the Bill at second reading.

Furthermore, I know he was in the House because a number of us shook his hand when he walked past our campaign van in the morning!

For whatever reason, however, Jenrick did not vote against the Bill and we must therefore assume that he, and the majority of his colleagues, now support the generational ban.

I should add that Jenrick's vote was not the only one that changed from the second reading in November. On that occasion the ayes were 415 (compared to 366 yesterday), with the noes on 47. This time the noes fell to 41.

Another Tory MP who voted against the Bill at the second reading but didn't vote yesterday was Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, which was a huge disappointment.

Writing for the Telegraph ahead of the report stage and third reading, Nigel Farage made the point that she had been quite vocal when opposing Rishi Sunak's Tobacco and Vapes Bill last year, but has said virtually nothing on the issue since Labour took power and introduced their own bill.

Instead it was Farage and his Reform colleagues who tabled an amendment to remove the generational ban from the Bill, while Badenoch remained silent.

As I've written before, I'm guessing it was because she didn't want to split the parliamentary party on the issue, given that several of her colleagues (including Bob Blackman, chair of the APPG on Smoking and Health and chair of the influential 1922 Committee) are among the most diehard anti-smoking campaigners in parliament.

Nevertheless it is hugely disappointing that the new Tory leadership has refused to defend what I naively thought were two important Conservative principles.

As I also wrote in a letter to Conservative MPs, including Badendoch, ahead of the third reading:

Opposing the generational ban is also an opportunity to put clear blue water between the Conservative Party and Labour and the Lib Dems on an issue that represents a significant attack on two important principles – freedom of choice and personal responsibility.

Anyway, we are where we are. The House did support one or two amendments, but none of any significance to the more liberal minded.

Farage's amendment to remove the generational ban failed. Likewise the amendment tabled by Sammy Wilson (DUP) that would have replaced the gen ban with a new clause raising the legal age of sale to 21.

The Bill now moves on to the House of Lords. The second reading of the Bill in the upper house is on April 23, after the Easter recess, and it will then move on the committee stage in May followed by the report stage and third reading in the Lords.

The final stages are consideration of amendments (by peers) in the House of Commons, which has to approve the final Bill, followed by Royal Assent.

There is, I think, a danger that anti-smoking peers may propose amendments that make the Bill even more illiberal, but I'll write about that another time.

We know some peers would go further if they could, but the Government may conclude - as it has with banning smoking outside hospitality venues - that now is not the time.

What is clear is that the UK is on the path to prohibition and few people seem to care or are aware of what’s happening.

Comments

[Pat Nurse]

The general public will start to care when crime rises, tobacco wars start, and they are forced to pay more tax to replace the lost revenue handed over to criminal gangs as a gift from a stupid government and it's virtue signalling supporters.

Why the Tories want to keep throwing votes to Reform is beyond me but they clearly do not want to win another election.

At least now the tax screws are off, smokers will be able to buy cheaper tobacco from the black market and who can blame them for doing so?

Meanwhile no revenue will come in from smokers in future but the cost to the NHS will be greater as an unregulated, contaminated product hits the market, targets children again like the bad old days of the early 19th and 20th centuries, and the cost of policing organised crime will be huge.

Oh well, at least ASH and their buddies in the anti smoker industry can be assured their fat salaries will continue to rise and plenty of funding will be thrown their way to produce more manipulated studies and tortured data to blame smokers for everything that goes wrong.

The stupidity of these people is truly astounding. They are beneath contempt. It's not about health or no government would go down such a dangerous path led by the nose by ideological lobby groups who do not care about consequences but ticking off another box in their futile war against smokers.