Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, and I have crossed swords over tobacco on many occasions in the past two or three years, so he may be surprised to hear that I have no quarrel, in principle, with his amendment—in principle, that is—although I wonder whether one year is sufficiently long to evaluate the success of the new legislation. Two years might be better. However, I am puzzled by the wording at the end of the noble Lord’s amendment. It refers to, "““tobacco offences being committed against persons under the age of 18””." Supposing that one were to substitute ““alcohol”” for ““tobacco””; if you heard somebody talk about an alcohol offence being committed against someone under 18, you would assume that that referred to drunken yobs launching unprovoked assaults on innocent teenagers. Such wording would not, however, be used to describe somebody selling a can of lager to those teenagers. Would it not be simpler if the noble Lord’s amendment referred simply to preventing tobacco or tobacco products being sold to persons aged under 18?