Health Bill [HL]

My Lords, I can bring your Lordships a little closer to home than the noble Lord, Lord Walton. Yesterday, I hosted a meeting in a Committee Room upstairs on behalf of the British Heart Foundation, which showed a film that had been shot in three pubs very close to your Lordships’ House. The identities of the pubs were carefully concealed and, in them, there were two 14 year-olds, a boy and girl from a school in Luton, who were commissioned to see if it was possible to buy cigarettes from the vending machines in each of those pubs. The answer, of course, was that it was very easy indeed. The children succeeded in each pub. The bar staff on the premises had no interest whatever in the fact that the children were in there and buying cigarettes; indeed, they may not have even seen them doing it because the vending machines were not directly in their line of sight. When the boy found it a little difficult to put money into the machine, a customer helpfully said, "I shouldn’t do that, it thinks you’re underage". Indeed he was, but he had no difficulty in getting the cigarettes out. I am a little disappointed by the Government’s timidity on this issue. The Bill gives us an opportunity finally to remove vending machines from Britain. If we did so, we would be complying with the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and following the example of 22 other countries in Europe. It is a great pity that this opportunity has not been taken, and I am afraid that I must tell my noble friend the Minister that, if the noble Baroness pushes this to a vote, I shall be voting with her.