KEMI Badenoch will vote AGAINST Rishi Sunak’s smoking ban, as the controversial Bill is put to its first test tonight.
The Cabinet Minister is the most high profile Tory to announce she’ll go against the PM and pile into the “no” lobby as MPs participate in a “free vote” on the legislation.
APMPs will vote on Rishi Sunak’s landmark smoking ban Bill for the first time tonight[/caption]
In what will be seen as an effort to court the Conservative right while the PM plummets in the polls, Ms Badenoch posted on X: “I’m not a smoker and think it is an unpleasant habit, costly for both the individual and society.
“The PM’s intentions with this Bill are honest and mark him out as a leader who doesn’t duck the thorny issues. I agree with his policy intentions BUT I have significant concerns and appreciate the PM making this a free vote.
“We should not treat legally competent adults differently in this way, where people born a day apart will have permanently different rights.
“Among other reasons it will create difficulties with enforcement.
“Smoking rates are already declining significantly in the UK and I think there is more we can do to stop children taking up the habit.
“However, I do not support the approach this bill is taking and so will be voting against it.”
While the PM is spearheading the legacy project, up to 70 Conservatives are expected to vote against it.
They include Foreign Office Minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan and possibly more members of the Cabinet.
But with the backing of Labour the Bill is expected to pass first reading with a strong majority.
It will end smoking by increasing the legal age to buy tobacco each year and crackdown on the ability of kids to access vapes.
So, anyone turning 15 this year will never legally be able to buy a pack of fags.
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In a fiery Commons debate, ex-PM Liz Truss blasted the Bill as a “virtue-signalling piece of legislation”.
Turning her ire at Labour MPs supporting it, she said politicians should instead focus on barring kids from “social transitioning” and being given puberty blockers.
Britain’s shortest ever serving PM said: “These are the same people who are saying that we should in the future be banning cigarettes for 30-year-olds and yet they won’t vote to ban puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for the under 18s.
“I am very concerned that this policy being put forward is emblematic of a technocratic establishment in this country that wants to limit people’s freedom, and I think that is a problem.”
She added: “It is very important that until people have decision-making capability while they are growing up, that we protect them.
“But I think the whole idea that we can protect adults from themselves is hugely problematic and it effectively infantilises people, and that is what has been going on.
Former Tory chairman Sir Jake Berry compared the ban to something out of China and warned that the government is “addicted” to telling people what to do.
He said: “I’m an ex-smoker, I don’t want children to smoke, I just want to pass decent laws in this House.
“If you believe in freedom, you have to accept that people have to be free to make bad decisions, as well as good decisions.
“Cause if we live in a society where the only decisions we are free to make are ones that the Government tells us we’re free to make, you may as well live in a socialist society, you may as well live in Russia, you may as well live in China.”
Ex-Cabinet Minister Sir Simon Clarke warned of further “rights-creep” as the years go by as Ministers bring in the smoking ban.
Defending the Bill, Health Secretary Victoria Atkins insisted there is “no liberty in addiction”.
Ms Atkins told the Commons: “I totally understand the concerns of fellow Conservatives.
“We are not in the habit of banning things, we do not like that, and so we will only bring these powers in when we are convinced, following a no doubt robust debate with the intellectual self-confidence that we have to have such debates on this side of the House… we come to the conclusion that there is no liberty in addiction.
“Nicotine robs people of their freedom to choose. The vast majority of smokers start when they are young, and three-quarters say that if they could turn back the clock they would not have started.”
She added: “That is why, through this Bill, we are creating a smoke-free generation that will guarantee that no-one who is turning 15 or younger this year will ever be legally sold tobacco, saving them from the misery of repeated attempts to give up, making our economy more productive and building an NHS that delivers faster, simpler and fairer care.
“I would argue it is our responsibility, indeed our duty, to protect the next generation and this is what this Bill will do.”
Simon Clark, boss of the smokers’ lobby group Forest, said: “We urge MPs to reject a policy that will fuel the black market and treat future generations of adults like kids.”
Ex-Minister and anti-woke campaigner Sir John Hayes said: “The idea of a rolling age of consent, for the consequence that someone of 35 will be able to buy tobacco, someone of 34 not, and so on and so forth, is at best a curiosity and at worse an absurdity.”
But England’s chief medical officer, Sir Chris Whitty, rejected the “pro-choice” arguments against the legislation saying cigarettes were a product “designed to take your choice away”.
He said: “The thing I want people to think about really is the fact that people are trapped in smoking at a very young age.
“Once they become addicted, their choice is taken away. So, if you’re in favour of choice, you should be against something which takes away people’s choices.
“A great majority of smokers wish they had never started, but now they’re in trouble.”
He hit out at the arguments from the tobacco industry saying they are “flimsy”.
He added: “They’re doing it for commercial reasons. The tobacco industry has a long history of trying to interfere with legislation, trying to water it down, trying to slow it down.
A Number 10 spokesman backed Mr Whitty, saying : “The Prime Minister is in agreement with the Chief Medical Officer that the majority of smokers wish that they had never started and believe that their choices as a result have been taken away by addiction.
“It’s important to take action against the single biggest preventable cause of ill health and the Chief Medical Officer has the Prime Minister’s full support in doing that important work.
“There is debate in the House. It’s a free vote just as previous interventions on smoking were.”
Deborah Arnott, Chief Executive of Action on Smoking and Health, said: “The Tobacco and Vapes Bill voted on today is radical but, hard as it is now to believe, so were the smoke free laws when they were put before parliament. Parliamentarians can be reassured that the public they represent back the Bill.
“New research just published by ASH shows that the majority of tobacco retailers and the public, including smokers, support the legislation and the smoke free generation ambition it is designed to deliver.
“This historic legislation will consign smoking to the “ash heap of history.”