Clause 22
Health Bill [Lords]
4:15 pm
Michael Penning (Shadow Minister, Health; Hemel Hempstead, Conservative)
The hon. Gentleman raises a good point. If you look at the evidence, which we are all doing, you see that when those bans were imposed there was not the technology to do it another way. I was living in some of those countries when bans came in. When I was a British soldier in Germany in the ‘70s, the vending machines were still on the streets. That had been banned in this country years before. Interestingly enough, they took them off the streets in places where the British military were only because the old 5p was the same size as the deutschmark and they were losing a fortune from British soldiers spending 15p to buy a packet of cigarettes—that is the gospel truth. Frankly, as cigarettes were 25p in the NAAFI at the time, it seemed immaterial; I think that soldiers did it for the joy of doing it.
The situation has changed, and other countries in Europe and around the world have moved to the technology that we are talking about. We have to address whether we are going to stop law-abiding businesses selling their legal product to British over-18s. If we can do that, there is no need for a total ban. If we cannot, I will be one of the signatories to the amendment on a subsequent Health Bill, but I want to give businesses the opportunity, with the technology that we have today, to keep going and sell their legal products. If they cannot do that, we may have to go down another avenue.