Health Bill [HL]

I am delighted to hear the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, say that it is too high. On that, we certainly agree. I do not think that we should start hurling data at each other across the Committee any more than has already happened. We would never contemplate alcohol or fireworks being sold in vending machines. Vending machines are easily accessed by youngsters. In an exercise carried out in Solihull in September 2008 where a 16 year-old was commissioned, if you like, by the council to see what could happen, the 16 year-old was able to buy 100 cigarettes from five different cigarette vending machines in Knowle and Solihull town centre without being challenged. In Bournemouth, trading standards officers carried out a similar undercover operation and found that a 15 year-old could buy cigarettes from seven out of eight vending machines without being challenged. In one case, the owner even helped the boy to find some change. Our main concern must be for the long-term health of young people, the under-18s. This move would cut off a ready source, an easy source for them to access tobacco, which has a high addictive potential and will therefore hook them for the rest of their lives. It will not harm the small shop keeper, as has already been said. In fact, I would have expected small shop keepers to be flooding the Committee with welcome for the amendment. As has been said, those machines can take boxes of a certain size into which anything could be put. We should not have this debate, but, for the record, contraception being more readily available to youngsters to avoid unplanned pregnancy would certainly have my support; but having tobacco in those machines does not.