Cabinet split on Rishi’s smoking plan

RISHI Sunak faces a Cabinet split today as MPs vote on legislation to create a ‘smokefree generation’.

Several ministers are expected to vote against – and others could abstain – when the Tobacco and Vapes Bill is debated in the Commons.

The legislation will ban tobacco sales to anybody born on, or after, January 1, 2009 – meaning children aged 15 or younger today will never legally be sold a cigarette in England.

The rules in Scotland will be changed to mirror those in England, with Holyrood set to introduce the tobacco sales ban under devolved environmental powers.

MPs will be given a free vote on the plan when it is debated today but it will be a blow to the Prime Minister if several frontbenchers rebel.

Mr Sunak announced the policy at the Conservative Party conference last year.

Tory sources said they expected a number of ministers to rebel over fears the proposals are ‘unconservative’.

One rebel, Tory former cabinet minister Sir Simon Clarke, told the Mail he would vote against the Bill.

Sir Simon said: ‘It is both philosophically and practically a dreadful idea. Nobody doubts that smoking does enormous harm to your health, and I wouldn’t encourage anyone to smoke, but it is not the state’s role to try to ban people from doing so.

‘If we attempt to do so, we will almost certainly make a laughing stock of ourselves and waste enormous amounts of police and local authority time trying to enforce a ban that will not work.

‘We already struggle to contain the real danger of illegal drugs, so to seek to try and police tobacco in this way is a recipe for creating a whole new black market.’

Despite the Tory opposition, Labour is expected to whip in favour meaning the Bill will almost certainly pass.