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The third point is that public opinion would probably be with a prohibition. Again, like the Minister, I am somewhat suspicious of surveys of public opinion. Nevertheless, the figures I see here show that 65 per cent of the general public would support a prohibition on the sale of tobacco in vending machines. In other words, the public are two to one in favour of such a prohibition. So there are many reasons why I would encourage the noble Baroness to be brave enough to put this prohibition in the Bill. After all, she can simply say to the public without appearing as though she is a nanny, or whatever else she may be accused of, “We are prohibiting the sale of cigarettes in vending machines because, although relatively few adults use them, they are a significant source of supply for children. Adults have other ways of obtaining cigarettes; children will find it much more difficult”. That seems to be a very straightforward argument.

Let us look at the collateral damage. I started by talking about vending machines as being about convenience, and I think that they are about convenience rather than liberty. I do not think that the Government are infringing people’s liberty by prohibiting the sale of tobacco from vending machines. It is hard to argue that buying a smaller packet of cigarettes at a higher price from a machine rather than having to go and get it from a man or a woman at a bar is a pretty fundamental liberty.

The commercial arguments, in general, do not look very strong either. Presumably adults will switch to other sources and that may benefit the small newsagents and traders, although I have seen no evidence as to what the effect will be on overall sales of tobacco. Therefore, it is difficult to judge what the effect will be on tobacco companies, although I appreciate that they will want as many outlets and opportunities as possible to put their product in front of the customer. I imagine that the real losers will be those who manufacture and maintain vending machines, but perhaps they have other products that they can put in them.

I come to where I think we are at a compromise—



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Lord Naseby: The noble Lord said that perhaps other products can be put in them, but they cannot. They are specialist machines produced by special manufacturers. I shall cover the exact numbers when I come to speak to my amendment but there are 200 private cigarette vending machine businesses employing 1,000 people. I suppose that another 1,000 on the dole does not matter but I happen to think that that is quite important.

Lord Crisp: I am not disguising the fact that vending machine manufacturers would suffer under this amendment but I do not think that small businesses would, and I do not think that the tobacco industry can say whether it would suffer under the amendment.

Lord Faulkner of Worcester: Does the noble Lord agree that there is nothing particularly unique about the shape of a tobacco packet? One can think of loads of products that could equally easily be sold from those machines. There is nothing special about them being tobacco vending machines; they are vending machines that could sell something else.

Lord Crisp: I am grateful for that intervention. Perhaps I may move on to say that this is a somewhat muddled compromise. The obvious thing would be to say, “Let’s try and make sure that only adults and not children have access to vending machines”. That would be a very sensible route, and it seems that it is being suggested in two ways. One, as the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, has already said, is to put the machines in places where children are not allowed—that is, in bars. The figures that I have suggest that something like 75 per cent of vending machines are in pubs and the others are in a range of other facilities, some of which are licensed premises. Nevertheless, we note from the figures that at the moment 17 per cent of children get their supply of cigarettes from vending machines.

Lord Naseby: I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord. In the survey to which he referred, the children were asked where they “usually” purchased and where they “often” purchased their cigarettes. They were given a choice of 14 locations. The total number of answers to those questions amounted to 227 per cent, because inevitably some people gave more than one answer to some questions. So, if my maths are correct, adjusting downwards to 100 per cent the gross figure of 17 per cent would become 7.5 per cent. Furthermore, the noble Lord keeps referring to the word “usually” but the word on the questionnaire was “often”. I think that we should be accurate in relation to these surveys.

5.30 pm

Lord Crisp: I do not think that my argument depends on 17 per cent being the precise figure. My argument is that many children are able to, and currently do, purchase cigarettes from vending machines wherever they happen to be.

The Department of Health, in association with business and commercial bodies, has issued guidance that recommends that vending machines should be located within the sight of a supervisory person at the

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bar. That does not seem to be borne out by colleagues from the British Heart Foundation who did a short pub crawl around this area last Tuesday or Wednesday and identified two pubs within walking distance of here where the vending machine was not in the line of sight of someone behind the bar. If the Minister wishes to check this out for herself, it is much nearer than Saskatoon. As things stand at the moment, the guidance does not seem to be working. In a busy pub with five doors and which is crowded at different times of the day, it is quite easy to see how children, particularly those who look 15 or 16 rather than 10 or 11, can get in and get cigarettes. Whatever the precise figure is, there is sufficient evidence that a number of children do that.

The other route to curb this is to have a system of an age ID card. I do not have any hard figures but we probably underestimate the skill of our children if we think they will not be able to get around it. This has been introduced in a number of countries, including Germany—there is also an article on it in the Irish Times—but some surveys suggest that these kinds of mechanisms generally do not work. However, I do not want to put too much weight on those surveys because they are not yet complete.

In order to preserve vending machines we are trying to set up systems which will not work very effectively and will have loopholes that will allow children still to be able to purchase cigarettes. We are making life much more complicated than we need to when a simple solution is available to the Minister: that is, to prohibit the sale of tobacco in cigarette machines. Adults who are disadvantaged can easily go somewhere else, and that may well benefit the small corner shop. She does not need to be brave to go down this route because the amendment is in line with all other government legislation on this kind of issue, in line with much of what our European neighbours do and, so far as we can tell, in line with public opinion. I beg to move.

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff: I strongly support the amendment for several reasons. It is slightly worrying that the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, is supporting as a good thing the findings of a survey which found that children under the age of 18 are smoking. I do not think anyone is arguing that we should deregulate smoking to include under-18s. The problem is that when under-18s start smoking, the addictive potential is extremely high. That is precisely why the tobacco companies have a great interest in very young people smoking.

The Minister referred earlier to the report from the Royal College of Physicians that compared the addiction factor of nicotine to that of other drugs. Nicotine came top when compared with heroin, cocaine, alcohol and caffeine in terms of dependence among users; equal top in terms of difficulty in obtaining abstinence; equal top in terms of tolerance, that is, the need for a higher and higher dose to get the same effect; and top in terms of its serious effects on society through deaths from cigarette-related diseases.

The point made by my noble friend Lord Crisp is that although vending machines account for only 1 per cent of all sales, they account for 17 per cent of all sales to the under-18s.



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Lord Naseby: There is no point in having a debate in Committee when we both refer to the same survey and one refers to returns of 227 per cent which must be apportioned—the noble Baroness is a scientist—down to 100 per cent. Therefore it is 7.5 per cent. Furthermore, is she not encouraged that that is one-third down on the previous survey in 2004? It is too high, I agree, but let us have the right figure.

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff: I am delighted to hear the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, say that it is too high. On that, we certainly agree. I do not think that we should start hurling data at each other across the Committee any more than has already happened.

We would never contemplate alcohol or fireworks being sold in vending machines. Vending machines are easily accessed by youngsters. In an exercise carried out in Solihull in September 2008 where a 16 year-old was commissioned, if you like, by the council to see what could happen, the 16 year-old was able to buy 100 cigarettes from five different cigarette vending machines in Knowle and Solihull town centre without being challenged. In Bournemouth, trading standards officers carried out a similar undercover operation and found that a 15 year-old could buy cigarettes from seven out of eight vending machines without being challenged. In one case, the owner even helped the boy to find some change.

Our main concern must be for the long-term health of young people, the under-18s. This move would cut off a ready source, an easy source for them to access tobacco, which has a high addictive potential and will therefore hook them for the rest of their lives. It will not harm the small shop keeper, as has already been said. In fact, I would have expected small shop keepers to be flooding the Committee with welcome for the amendment. As has been said, those machines can take boxes of a certain size into which anything could be put. We should not have this debate, but, for the record, contraception being more readily available to youngsters to avoid unplanned pregnancy would certainly have my support; but having tobacco in those machines does not.

Lord Monson: The noble Lord who moved the amendment asserted that adults who wanted to buy cigarettes could easily get them from somewhere other than vending machines. That is by no means always the case. Many cheaper hotels, chain hotels of a type such as travel lodges—not merely those but other, larger hotels in city centres that cannot afford the heavy overtime costs associated with keeping the reception desk or the bar manned all through the night—have vending machines because they often effectively close down completely between 9 pm and 7 am. Children do not normally go into hotels to look for vending machines. Noble Lords supporting the amendment should reflect on that fact and consider compromising by accepting the excellent Amendment 90 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Howe.

Lord Campbell-Savours: I want to argue a very different case, which has little to do with children and a lot more to do with adults and vending machines.

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I had my last cigarette 24 hours before I went into Saint Bartholomew's Hospital in London with a tumour on the lung in 1996. I lost half my lung capacity, which meant that three nodes were lost during the course of the operation.

I mention that because I spent four years desperately trying to stop, lying to friends, ever denying that I was smoking, desperate to buy cigarettes in small quantities, which I could not. An amendment may turn up on Report that deals with the ability to buy cigarettes in small quantities, to which I would be sympathetic because of my problem: whenever I wanted to buy any cigarettes, I had to buy 10. I think that we should make it as difficult as possible for people to buy cigarettes, especially those people who are trying to stop. I remember going out at midnight or one o’clock in the morning, getting in my car and driving around the town looking for any source of cigarettes that I could purchase to deal with my problem—the problem of desperately trying to stop.

I am not alone. I have talked to many people over the years who have tried to stop. We all know people who are trying to stop. We buy patches; we buy all kinds of things. The availability of cigarettes in machines makes it very difficult for those who want to stop, because invariably they find out where they are. I would firmly support any amendment to restrict availability to people who are in the position I was in at that time.

Baroness Howarth of Breckland: I, too, support the amendment. I always find it slightly illogical that we have reached a point where there is no smoking in public places, yet still there are vending machines in hotels, restaurants and pubs where you cannot smoke what you have bought from those vending machines. That means that you will have to go out anyway, and there is usually a corner shop not that far away whose business could be enhanced.

Lord Monson: I correct the noble Baroness. It is perfectly permissible to smoke in hotel rooms if the hotel designates certain rooms as smoking rooms.

Baroness Howarth of Breckland: I used the phrase “public places”. I am also concerned about age-verification systems, because those who say that we can deal with the matter by providing ID cards should know that ID checks are still not being carried out stringently enough on alcohol sales. According to Home Office figures, in 2004, 22 per cent of 10 to 17 year-olds who had drunk alcohol had obtained it from bars and pubs; 34 per cent of on-trade venues failed to check ID cards for young people. If a significant number of under-18s are still able to obtain alcohol from pubs and bars, it is highly questionable that an ID-based age verification system will be sufficiently foolproof to stop underage tobacco sales from vending machines.

I also support the noble Lord in relation to adults. Although I tend to concentrate on children, many people have talked to me about their wish to give up smoking to enhance their health, but they are perpetually faced by temptation through displays and the ease of

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access of vending machines. We all know what it is like when you are trying to give up chocolate and it is there on the station. That is true of cigarettes, too.

Baroness O'Cathain: The noble Lord, Lord Crisp, said that he had seen the report in the Irish Times. The issue was that vending machines were being changed to operate with tokens. The study noted that in 79 per cent of premises where the vending machines were token operated, thereby requiring the purchaser to buy tokens first from a staff member, minors—that is under-18s—were prevented from buying cigarettes, while in only 24 per cent of premises where machines were coin-operated were minors stopped from buying tobacco. Although this is not in the amendment, perhaps at Report we should bring in an amendment to make sure that vending machines can be token operated. That would stop it.

Baroness Tonge: I support the amendment, but I confess that as a child I was in love with vending machines. I do not know whether any noble Lords can remember those rusting and out-of-use Cadbury vending machines on railway stations. My mother used to say that before the war you could get a bar of chocolate out of those machines for a penny. I do not know whether that gave me a lifelong aversion to war, but I certainly remember vending machines very fondly. The love affair continued into my medical student days when often the only cigarettes available late at night, when one had finished work, were from a vending machine. They were usually Embassy, and they were awful, but they were from a vending machine somewhere in a dark back street. So I support what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours said. If you want to give up, you can always find a cigarette somewhere, and a vending machine is usually the source.

I support the amendment because children, as we have heard, find it very easy to get cigarettes from vending machines. I should add another point; I knew a teenager who used to brag about how he could get two packets for the price of one, because he was good at operating the drawer of the vending machine. He never taught me how to do it, as I had given up smoking long before then. Young teenagers find vending machines a challenge, and they brag about how they can get stuff out of them. There is no need. If an adult wants to get his cigarettes and it is late at night, our shops do not close at 5.30 any more. There are even shops that operate for 24 hours. You can always get whatever you want at any time of day. There is therefore no excuse to have something that is so dangerous to people’s health available from a vending machine.

I support the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, in her remarks about condoms. I well remember, as a local councillor, trying to introduce a condom vending machine in our local college. The opposition to that was tremendous: it would pollute our youth, it would make them ill; I do not know what else a condom vending machine would do to them. But, of course, cigarette machines were easily available all over the borough. I rest my case.



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5.45 pm

Lord Walton of Detchant: Whenever I am able to escape from your Lordships’ House, I thoroughly enjoy playing a game of golf. I know four golf clubs in north Northumberland where there are vending machines in the clubhouse, freely accessible to the children who come and play golf. There is no way any control could be exercised on the purchase of cigarettes from those machines because there is no way that the steward of the club could possibly be able to see all the time what was happening at the machines. The clubs sell cigarettes even though it is no longer possible to smoke within the clubhouse because of the recent legislation, and I have seen many children purchasing cigarettes from those machines.

Although I put my name to Amendment 92, I believe that the only solution to this problem is the total ban of the sale of tobacco products from vending machines. That is something to which I would give my warmest possible support.

Lord Faulkner of Worcester: I have also added my name to nearly all the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, and I commend him for the way in which he introduced the amendment earlier. This is one of those cases where the Committee wishes to go a little further than the Government seem ready to, and I rather hope that when my noble friend reports back to her colleagues on how this debate has gone today—and how I suspect it will go again on Report—the Government will be willing to look at the possibility of a complete ban, rather than this halfway house of a system of tokens, age restrictions for the issuing of them and so on.

As other speakers have told the Committee, children are extraordinarily ingenious in getting around technical obstacles that to most of us would be insuperable. I have no doubt that the copying of tokens and the begging and borrowing of them would be a great sport for young people who wanted to get their cigarettes from vending machines in future. It would be so much easier if we followed the practice of 22 other countries—which is about to include Scotland as well—and say that cigarette vending machines have had their day and we do not want them any more.

Baroness Thornton: Amendments 87, 89, 91 and 96, ably moved by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, would make a number of changes to the provisions in Clause 20 relating to the regulation of tobacco vending machines in England and Wales. With one exception, Amendments 97 to 103 would make equivalent changes to mirror them in Clause 21, relating to the regulation of tobacco vending machines in Northern Ireland. Since those groups have the same effect on Clauses 20 and 21, I will speak to them all.

The main effect would be to compel the Government to prohibit tobacco vending machines, as outlined by my noble friend in his last contribution. In this instance, and at the moment, we believe that we need to take a proportionate approach, giving vending machine operators and owners an opportunity to prevent underage sales before prohibiting tobacco sales altogether—

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notwithstanding the invitation from the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, to go on a pub crawl to see how these work.

The groups of amendments would make a number of changes and I shall take each in turn. First, a number of them would create an absolute duty on the appropriate Ministers, compelling them to ban tobacco vending machines outright. We have amendments, which will be discussed shortly, to remove the power to ban vending machines, and amendments that would simply ban them. We believe that at the moment we should take a middle road. It may help if I explain how we intend to use the powers in England.

We agree with the principle of the amendments—that we must prevent underage sales from tobacco machines. I was struck by the contribution of my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, who said that there was also a need to support adults who try to give up smoking, notwithstanding the love affair of the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, with vending machines. We intend to bring in regulations to restrict access to vending machines by children and young people under 18, while maintaining this source of cigarettes for adults. We intend these restrictions to apply from 2011. However, we will review the effectiveness of the new requirements over a period of two years following implementation. If it appears that restrictions are not successful in preventing underage purchases, we will reconsider moving to ban the sale of tobacco products from vending machines altogether.

The approach that I have outlined to the Committee clearly requires both options to be available—for regulations either to impose requirements or to prohibit tobacco vending machines. In this respect, therefore, it is vital that the powers remain discretionary, but I assure noble Lords that, as a minimum, powers to regulate vending machines will certainly be used.

The noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, referred to token-operated machines. In determining how to take forward regulations to require age-check mechanisms for tobacco vending machines, we will explore international evidence to compare the effectiveness and practices of different methods of age restriction. As the noble Baroness mentioned, a number of European member states have introduced age-restriction mechanisms on vending machines, and we shall seek to learn from their experience to ensure that our age restrictions are applied effectively in preventing underage sales.

Amendments 92 and 100 would add explicit powers for regulations to make exemptions from the prohibition of vending machines. If the aim is to exempt certain types of vending machine, or certain types of premises where they are located, then the amendments are not needed. New Section 3A(7) in Clause 20 already allows us to make exemptions in regulations for particular cases, should we decide that that is appropriate.

Currently we do not see the case for any exemptions but we do not rule them out. In determining how to take forward the detailed requirements for age-check mechanisms, we will seek the opinions of stakeholders, such as the National Association of Cigarette Machine Operators, and we will listen and give serious consideration

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to any case that is made for exemptions—for example, premises that are open only to those over the age of 18.

I note that Amendment 90 is due to be discussed next and that that touches on this issue. We see practical difficulties here but perhaps we should defer discussion until the noble Earl, Lord Howe, moves his amendment.

Next come Amendments 95 and 103. These create duties on appropriate Ministers to consult persons likely to be affected by the regulations before making them. I am happy to agree that open consultation is an important principle and I am pleased to be able to give reassurance on this. However, I wonder why it is felt necessary to consult when the other amendments would do away with tobacco vending machines altogether. In that case, what would we consult about?


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