A faintly sweet, sickly smell wafted through the room beneath the press gallery of the House of Commons last Wednesday in the immediate aftermath of chancellor Rachel Reeves’s budget.
This is where journalists often gather for briefings or “huddles” with government officials after Commons debates. It usually smells of must and political intrigue, but last week the waft was like someone had taken a pound cake and put a match to it.
Then I spotted the culprit – one of the Westminster press lobby’s most august members, a household name in Britain. He looked like he was sniffing his armpit beneath his jacket as he slinked past. But as he glided through the post-budget huddle gathering around the Treasury officials at the top of the room, I noticed he was actually discreetly sucking on a vape.
Westminster’s parliamentary ushers are notoriously strict when it comes to rule-breakers. They’ll probably throw him in the Tower of London if they catch him, I thought to myself.
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Almost a week later, on Tuesday, the new Labour government revived one of the former Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak’s last throws of the legislative dice: the Tobacco and Vapes Bill. It was formally reintroduced to the House of Commons this week.
Sunak had promised to create Britain’s first “smoke-free generation” by raising the legal age for purchasing tobacco products by a year each year for everyone born from 2009 until, eventually, it was outlawed for everyone.
The bill also included heavy restrictions on vapes, such as rules on flavourings and packaging that might appeal to children, and an outright ban on selling even non-nicotine vapes to the under 18s.
Sunak introduced the bill to parliament on March 30th. It sparked a debate within his own party about the perceived “nanny state” tendencies of the then prime minister, often dismissed as a tech bro fan of Californication. Then he called an election for July, and the bill never made it over the line.
Sunak’s “smoke-free generation” pledge mimicked an idea from the then-shadow health secretary, Labour’s Wes Streeting. His party committed itself to the policy after it won the election, and over the summer rumours abounded in Westminster that Labour would bring in an even stricter version.
At one stage there was a leak of cabinet discussions over whether the new government might even stretch the proposals to ban smoking outdoors in hospitality venues such as pub beer gardens. This sparked fury from some of the populist right-wing elements of British politics who were keen to portray Keir Starmer’s new administration as a leftist Big Government coming to end everyone’s fun.
The proposal was also strongly opposed by the hospitality industry, who said a ban on smoking at outdoors venues would be excessive and lead to widespread closures. Starmer, who has struggled to form an emotional bond with the electorate, also prided himself on the vestiges of an everyman image of a bloke who just likes to hang out in the pub with his mates in peace.
Soon opposition to an outdoor smoking ban emerged from inside Downing Street. The bill introduced this week did not contain any proposal to ban outdoor smoking in hospitality. But it does includes measures to ban it in playgrounds, near schools and other sensitive outdoor areas. It also included the restrictions on flavours and packaging from the earlier version of the bill.
Streeting, now out of the shadows and the health secretary for real, rejected suggestions this week that the government had caved in to lobbying from industry on the outdoor smoking elements. But he acknowledged the “battering” that hospitality had taken this year, and said he did not want to “add to the pressure” with a smoking ban.
Separately, the new Labour government’s war on vaping will open on a new front next June when a ban on disposable vapes is due to come into force on environmental grounds. The legislation for that particular measure was laid before parliament last month.
Also the Reeves budget last week included extra taxes on vaping, which is subject to 20 per cent on VAT, but did not attract extra levies as tobacco does. She announced a new flat rate duty of £2.20 per 10ml of vaping liquid.
With tobacco duties the increases are usually immediate from midnight on the same day as the budget. Yet the vaping duty is not due to come into force until 2026. The press gallery’s secret sucker on budget day should be happy about that.