Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

It is perhaps not surprising that the Committee shows great interest in this important social problem. I am delighted that so many noble Lords have taken part in the debate on these amendments, or, if they have not taken part, are present to listen to it. Before I deal with the amendment, I shall come back to the alcohol point that the noble Lord, Lord Henley, mentioned in our debate on the previous amendment. Alcohol test purchases are much more frequent than tobacco test purchases, so three months is reasonable for alcohol, whereas it would not be reasonable for the much less frequent test purchases of tobacco. Amendment No. 177AG would make it a criminal offence for someone under 18 to buy or attempt to buy tobacco, or for an adult to buy or attempt to buy tobacco on behalf of someone under 18. We believe that criminalising young people who attempt to buy tobacco is not the best way to go about reducing the number of children who smoke, and is not in the best interests of young people themselves. It is far better to discourage children from smoking in the first place and to help young smokers to quit than to criminalise them. Our aim is to do everything possible to discourage young people from wanting to smoke by promoting, as the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, has just told the Committee, the health benefits of not taking up the habit when young. It is also important to try to help children who have taken up smoking—there are many of them—to quit. To achieve this, we are encouraging young people to get help from the NHS Stop Smoking Service. We are also making available nicotine replacement therapy to teenagers on prescription. Nor do we think that making an offence of purchasing tobacco by someone under 18 would be likely to be effective. I was delighted to see those who have quite rightly complained many times during this long Committee at the Government for introducing new offences, or for not doing enough to decriminalise young people’s behaviour, get to their feet. I would have been disappointed if the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, and many others in the Committee had not got to their feet to make the points that they have made. We have heard time and again in Committee that the welfare of the child must be at the heart of the youth justice system. The Government have received support where they have sought to divert young people from the formal court system through measures such as the youth conditional caution. The message has been loud and clear from all sides of the Chamber that, where possible, we should aim to ensure that young people are kept out of the youth justice system and that minor offending does not escalate. Frankly, creating an additional relatively minor offence which would criminalise large numbers of young people would hinder these aims and would not necessarily be very effective. In practice, prosecuting authorities properly do not favour prosecuting children for minor offences unless absolutely necessary because criminalising young people often does further damage to their prospects. The noble Earl was right when he said that on this issue the Government were solidly against the amendment. Public consultation supports our position on this amendment. In the summer of 2006 there was virtually unanimous support for raising the age for the sale of tobacco to 18. Most respondents felt that it was fair for the onus to be on the retailer for ensuring that children and young people under 18 do not purchase tobacco. As everyone knows, the law changed on 1 October 2007. Research carried out by the Department of Health since the introduction of the age change shows that most retailers and teenagers, including 16 to 17 year-olds, support the change. We recognise that the problem of under-age smoking is a complex issue involving various factors, not just the supply of tobacco to children and young teenagers. That is why the education programme that we have talked about is so important. I turn to what the noble Lord himself identified as the more interesting part of his amendment—the issue of whether to criminalise the proxy purchasing of tobacco by adults for children. Buying tobacco for a young person is plain wrong but there may be difficulties with enforcing such an offence were it to come into being. The noble Lord, Lord Monson, raised a most interesting point about something which would happen in practice a great deal. It would cause many problems for the prosecuting authorities and for families. New laws should generally be grounded on a solid evidence base. We are not aware of any hard evidence that the proxy purchasing of tobacco is a common practice. We know it takes place but surveys tend to show that the most regular smokers under the minimum age usually obtain the tobacco themselves by buying it from shops. I hope I give some comfort to the noble Lord by saying that we will keep the last part of what he has suggested under review—no more than that—and return to it if, as the years pass by, there is evidence of a real problem of adults buying tobacco on a young person’s behalf. So we do not reject out of hand that part of his amendment but, as for the first part of the amendment, I am afraid—in the now no doubt famous words of the noble Earl— ““No, please not””.