Scottish Liberal Democrats have voted to oppose moves to gradually increase the age at which people can buy tobacco, describing UK Government plans as “patently ridiculous” and a “slippery slope to state intervention”.
While Sir Keir Starmer’s Government has confirmed it will push ahead with the plans, which have the backing of health campaigners and charities, the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ conference backed a motion opposing the introduction of an escalating age limit. It comes as the Tobacco and Vapes Bill sets out to progressively increase the age at which people can buy tobacco so that future generations will never legally be able to do so.
The legislation will therefore prevent anyone born after January 1 2009 from legally smoking by gradually raising the age at which tobacco can be bought. Afterwards, Scottish Liberal Democrats’ leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said the rolling age ban is “crackers”.
He added: “You could end up in a few decades time with a 75 year-old and 74 year-old couple, the wife’s allowed to go and buy fags but the husband isn’t. You shouldn’t have two tiers of rights.”
Mr Cole-Hamilton said: “I believe in bodily autonomy. If you want to harm your body that’s on you.”
His comments came after a debate in which Liberal Democrat Adam Harley, who stood as a candidate in the 2024 general election, said the plans would eventually lead to the “ludicrous situation where a 61-year-old would be refused tobacco, while a 62-year-old could smoke quite freely”.
Calling that “patently ridiculous”, he added: “By taking away the right of an adult to chose whether or not to smoke, we move away from public health consideration and enter into the realm of individual liberty and bodily autonomy. That would be a mistake.”
Activist Jenny Marr told the conference that she had not smoked since November 2019 and it had been “her choice” to have her last cigarette then. She said Liberal Democrats “believe people should be able to make those choices”, adding: “To legislate, to dictate to people in this way, feels like a slippery slope to state intervention, which I just cannot condone.”
Drummond Begg, a GP and party member from the Liberal Democrats’ Midlothian and Scottish Borders branch, said the right to choose “even if it’s a bad choice, is at the heart of a liberal society”.
He said: “I do not criticise those who get helicoptered off the hill in Glencoe through their bad choice in the winter. I do not discriminate between worthy health issues and the unworthy, there’s something I don’t like about that, tobacco shaming, fat shaming.”
But Tim Brett, a former chief executive of Tayside health board, raised concerns that the party “will be portrayed as being in support of smoking”. He told fellow members: “We as a party helped introduce a ban on smoking in public places and my concern here is this goes against what we have stood for in the past.”
Thirteen-year-old Noah McGarry, however, said the Government was right to seek to legislate. He said: “In the 13 years I have been on this planet I have learned that rules are rubbish. I sometimes have to go to bed when I’m told, sometimes I don’t get my dessert unless I have finished my dinner, forget about having a chocolate bar before dinner, that’s an absolute no.”
But he added: “Sometimes in life we need rules to help us. Should the Government ban smoking? I think they should. The reality is smoking is a problem. When things are harmful to others we should act.”
While party members voted in favour of proposals from the UK Government to further restrict smoking outdoors, the conference voted to oppose the introduction of an escalating age limit.
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