Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Faulkner for his amendment and to all noble Lords who have spoken to it. I pay tribute to my noble friend for his constant work on this subject over many years. He talked about today being No Smoking Day. It is also Budget Day and measures have been taken on this that should also please him. He made a good point about retailers—quite rightly, we have had important debates on them. However, every time a retailer sells tobacco to under-18s, it is an offence to law-abiding retailers who do not. Therefore, it is for their benefit as well. We recognise that noble Lords are legitimately concerned that this proposal should be delivered in an effective and fair manner. I remind the Committee that we take the problem of under-age smoking very seriously. Noble Lords should have no doubt that we are working hard to make this policy a success. Before addressing the amendment itself, I should like to say a few words about positive licensing. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, made some interesting points in that regard as did my noble friend in moving his amendment. Two years ago we consulted widely on this issue, and the majority of respondents supported a negative licensing system. While we agree that there would be some specific benefits in having a positive licensing system, as outlined by the noble Baroness, there would be additional bureaucratic burdens on local authorities and retailers that would outweigh those benefits. A positive licensing system would require prospective tobacco retailers to apply for a local authority licence before they could sell tobacco products, and retailers found to be persistently breaking the law on underage sales would have their licences removed either on a temporary or on a permanent basis. Under the negative licensing system that we are adopting, retailers are free to sell tobacco but can lose their right to do so under a court-imposed order. This is not a closed subject, of course, but for the moment we think that we are right to go down this path. A negative licensing scheme creates a powerful incentive for retailers to comply with the law on the age of sale without requiring a new and extensive bureaucracy to support it. However, I have no doubt that this debate will continue. This amendment would require the Government to report to Parliament within a year of commencement about the effectiveness of arrangements preventing the illegal sale of tobacco to persons under the age of 18. No doubt noble Lords would bring their customary thoroughness to scrutinising the effectiveness of this policy, but we are not sure that the amendment is an effective means of achieving it. As the noble Lord, Lord Monson, said, one year is not a realistic period in which to judge the effectiveness of the new system. Noble Lords will recall that the threshold for applications for the new orders will be high: at least three proven instances of non-compliance with the law, at least one of which must be a conviction; and even if a retailer has flouted the law, it will take some time to reach the threshold, particularly if fair and adequate notice is to be given to that business. An order can be made only where three episodes of non-compliance are demonstrated over a two-year period. As I have already told the Committee, the law is not expected to come into force until April 2009 so the result of a review in 2010 would suggest that the new orders were not being used a great deal for the obvious reason that compliance with the law is judged over a two-year period. I do not think that that would be of great assistance to the House in scrutinising this crucial area of policy. However, we understand very well the concern that lies behind the amendment. While we do not think that an inflexible statutory requirement to report to Parliament in a set period would be the best way forward, we believe that noble Lords should have access to full information about the success of this policy. I can therefore assure the Committee that the Department of Health intends to monitor these new measures carefully and report back to Parliament once their effects have become clear. Given that the period over which compliance is judged is two years, it is unlikely to report before 2011, but of course that does not stop noble Lords and Members of another place bringing up this subject in the mean time, which no doubt they will do. The types of information to be covered by the report might include the number of restricted premises and sales orders imposed, the number of prosecutions under the 1933 Act and the number of fixed penalty notices for the sale of tobacco to people under the minimum age. It might include the prevalence of smoking among young people, the number of those under the minimum age who attempt to buy tobacco from retailers, and the difficulty they encounter in making a purchase. That is reported annually in smoking, drinking and drug use surveys, as well as the number of failed test purchases. So I hope that the information that my noble friend is concerned that we should discuss will be before Parliament, but a year from April 2009 is too soon for the data to be as useful as they might be. For these reasons, and thanking him for the amendment, I would ask that he withdraw it.