Health Bill [HL]

I shall speak to my Amendment 90, which is grouped here. I view the Government’s proposals on vending machines in a very different light from those relating to point-of-sale displays. There is a real issue regarding vending machines, which is that young people frequently have access to them. It is a clear means whereby the law on sales to minors can be circumvented, and I support the proposals to regulate in this area. What I do not support, however, is preventing adult smokers from purchasing cigarettes from vending machines if they wish to do so. Vending machines are an expensive way of buying cigarettes but it should be open to an adult smoker to use this route. I do not want to detain the Committee by dwelling on the ground so ably covered by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, and my noble friend in the last group of amendments, but there are some 70,000 vending machines in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, most of them in licensed premises such as pubs and clubs, and there is a voluntary code which is supposed to ensure that machines are located in areas that are supervised and monitored to prevent them being accessed by those who are under age. That code is clearly not adequate for the purpose; we know that many young people buy from vending machines. Quite how many is a matter for debate but the impact assessment to the consultation concludes that about 7.5 per cent of schoolchildren often obtain cigarettes from machines. That is not an acceptable state of affairs and it is clear that more needs to be done. More has been done in terms of enforcement penalties in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 and the Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008, but there need to be additional measures to make it even harder for young people to access tobacco from these machines. The noble Lord, Lord Crisp, referred to the technological means by which this could be achieved, in particular ID cards. I understand there are also ID coin systems and remote control. I am not qualified to judge whether these systems are likely to work well enough to achieve the desired purpose of eliminating illegal sales, but they are certainly likely to make an impact. ID cards, for example, are in use in a number of other countries. The Government have stated, and the Minister has repeated today, that they intend to make regulations, to take effect in 2011, which would introduce age-restriction mechanisms, and these regulations would be given two years in which to prove themselves. If after that time they have not done so and underage sales from machines persist, the Government reserve the right to regulate for a complete ban on tobacco vending machines. I am unhappy about this. There are locations which, of their very nature, are accessible only by adults—for instance, members-only clubs and similar establishments. The case does not seem to have been made for banning cigarette machines from such places. Like my noble friend Lord Naseby, I should like to hear the Minister’s reasons for leaving this possibility open.