Health Bill [HL]

I am grateful for that intervention. Perhaps I may move on to say that this is a somewhat muddled compromise. The obvious thing would be to say, "Let’s try and make sure that only adults and not children have access to vending machines". That would be a very sensible route, and it seems that it is being suggested in two ways. One, as the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, has already said, is to put the machines in places where children are not allowed—that is, in bars. The figures that I have suggest that something like 75 per cent of vending machines are in pubs and the others are in a range of other facilities, some of which are licensed premises. Nevertheless, we note from the figures that at the moment 17 per cent of children get their supply of cigarettes from vending machines.