Speeches by Johnson.

“Amendments 65 and 66 apply to clause 11. In line with other Opposition amendments tabled to various clauses of this Bill, they seek to provoke debate on the coherency of the penalties. They encourage the Minister to look in detail at those penalties before Report—specifically, to consider the differences between the sh…”

“Amendments 65, 66, 82 and 83 were specifically there to provoke debate on the coherency of the penalty portfolio across the Bill. The Minister has clarified his position on that. It is very important that we see those who are selling vapes to children or, in the case of clause 11, buying vapes for children, appropriate…”

“Amendment 96 and clause 12 relate to vaping and nicotine product vending machines. I support the clause; indeed, if one looks at proceedings on the previous, Conservative iteration of the Bill from earlier this year, one will see that new clause 4, which was signed by just under 40 Members proposed a ban on vaping prod…”

“I know my hon. Friend’s heart is in a good place when she thinks about how we can protect individual mental health patients who also have an addiction to nicotine. She said that having no vapes on the hospital site could lead to patients taking up smoking, but there are of course no cigarettes on the hospital site eith…”

“May I clarify the point that my hon. Friend is making? When he says that he does not think nicotine products are attractive to children, does he mean the medical nicotine replacement therapy products, as opposed to other nicotine products such as nicotine pouches or vapes?”

“My hon. Friend is talking about the availability and visibility of products, and my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon talked about the availability of vaping products as medical products. However, the Committee heard evidence from the MHRA that there are no medically approved vaping devices currently regist…”

“I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, which goes to the principle of advertising, and whether there needs to be an exemption for medical advertising of vaping as a stop smoking tool by health professionals, for example in doctors’ surgeries, where it may also be visible to child patients. That is not really the …”

“If my hon. Friend has a suggestion, I shall let him back in.”

“I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Part of me wants to say, “Well, what do you do when the child goes into the newsagent? Put a blindfold on them?” If the displays are visible to adults, they will be visible to the children who are walking beside them. It would be helpful if my hon. Friend has any ideas on ho…”

“Thank you, Sir Roger. I am grateful for your guidance as Chair on the order of doing things. It has been, at times, quite confusing. Clauses 13, 14, 61 and 79 regulate the display of products in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It does not take much to realise why that is necessary. Simply take a drive do…”

“In the provisional grouping provided by the Clerk, you have clauses 13, 14, 61 and 79 together. Would you like to—”

“Does my hon. Friend see it as an added stress or an added opportunity to add in-patient support to quit smoking to further benefit the individual’s mental and physical health?”

“I understand that my hon. Friend thinks that the amendment is sensible, but Dame Andrea Leadsom, the public health Minister in the previous Government, asked Mark Rowland, the chief executive of the Mental Health Foundation, the “chicken-and-egg question”, as she put it: “Does smoking make you depressed, does depressio…”

“That is different from vaping, which seems to be a swap, rather than a swap to stop. A stop is less likely to occur with a vape that has cherry flavours and such like than it is with proper medical nicotine replacement therapy, which does not contain those added enticements. Nicotine replacements are available for chil…”

“In essence, in relation to clause 12, yes. I do not think that vending machines including tobacco and nicotine products or vapes are a good idea, and I moved a new clause for inclusion in the previous Bill because a ban on nicotine and vaping products in vending machines had not been included at the outset. Without suc…”

“It is catching—it is the time of day, I think. Paragraph 787 of the impact assessment says: “We know that one of the main reasons children take up vaping is due to peer pressure…It is therefore worth considering that instances of vape vending machines in easily accessible areas might be an enabler for those who would n…”

“I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I will come to amendment 96 and the mental health aspect shortly, but I will deal with the clause first, which makes sure that these vending machines are not available. At the moment, one can buy nicotine products in a vending machine where those exist. As I said, the ASH s…”

“I am grateful to the Minister for providing the extra information. Amendments 63, 64, 81 and 80 were designed once again to provoke debate on the coherency of the penalties across the different clauses of the Bill. Sometimes the penalties are different for the same offence and, inexplicably, sometimes they are the same…”

“I thank the Minister for clearly explaining that children should never vape. In fact, if children are smoking and wish to quit, they can get support from their GP and others, but they should not use vaping, because vaping is bad for children. To take the Minister back to my question about new clause 10, before he took …”

“The Minister knows me well enough to understand that I would never seek more lenient penalties for those selling vapes to children; there is no excuse for selling vapes to children. However, I am concerned that there may be sales in the online marketplace that are not adequately covered by the regulations as they are c…”