TORY leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch staked her claim as the future of the right tonight by voting against Rishi Sunak’s sweeping smoking ban.
The smoking ban easily cleared the Commons by 383 votes to 67.
But Mr Sunak faced a hefty rebellion as Business Secretary Mrs Badenoch led 57 Tories in opposing the plan, declaring adults should be free to choose what to do with their own bodies.
A further 106 Conservatives abstained altogether, including likely leadership hopeful Penny Mordaunt, as a rebellion grew against the government’s aim to create the first smoke-free generation.
Mrs Badenoch outlined how the principle of “equality under the law” is a fundamental one as the Prime Minister embarked on a smoke ban.
She said: “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. This burden will fall not on the state but on private businesses.
“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.”
The smoking ban, should it pass, would stop anyone under 15 ever legally lighting up.
Foreign Office Minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan revealed she couldn’t back the plan saying changes are needed to deter young smokers without removing their freedom of choice.
Ex-Minister Dehenna Davison, whose nan got lung cancer from smoking, said Ministers can’t legislate based on “good intentions and wishful thinking” saying the plan wasn’t effective or practical.
But it came as a poll showed 59 per cent of the public support the phased ban with some 64 per cent of 2019 Tory voters also backing the government plans.
The changes will make it illegal to sell tobacco to anyone who is currently 15 or younger. It would not ban smoking outright as anyone who can legally buy tobacco currently will be able to continue to do so if it becomes law.
‘VIRTUE SIGNALLING’
The vote came after a fiery Commons debate, ex-PM Liz Truss blasted the Bill as a “virtue-signalling piece of legislation”.
Turning her fire at Labour MPs supporting it, she said politicians should instead focus on barring kids from “social transitioning” and being given puberty blockers.
The ex-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: “If you believe in freedom, you have to accept that people have to be free to make bad decisions, as well as good decisions.
“Because 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.”
But Health Secretary Victoria Atkins defended the changes insisting there is “no liberty in addiction”.
She said: “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.”
If you believe in freedom, you have to accept that people have to be free to make bad decisions, as well as good decisions
Sir Jake Berry
“I would argue it is our responsibility, indeed our duty, to protect the next generation and this is what this Bill will do.”
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.”
‘SMOKERS WISH THEY NEVER STARTED’
Number 10 said: “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.”
However, 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 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.”
