Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I do not wish to prolong the debate, as the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, has most eloquently said most of the things that needed to be said. To emphasise his point, 82 per cent of adult smokers started as teenagers. It is during the teens that the addictive potential seems to be, physiologically, at its greatest, which is why all of the Government’s initiatives against teenage smoking are so important. The amendment, and its idea of reporting back, would give the opportunity for trading standards officers and those in the law enforcement process, such as magistrates, to feed back formally. In your Lordships’ House, we sometimes feel that we could do with feedback on how some new legislation is working. Perhaps we should formally collect the data. At the moment we put down Questions only to find that people have to scurry around trying to pull data together from lots of different sources. If this amendment were accepted, it would allow prospective collection of data that would then allow reporting back. That would be much less costly than a series of parliamentary Questions put down in a year’s time, with people scurrying around to pull data together.