Rishi Sunak plans to raise smoking age year-by-year

Receive free UK politics updates

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest UK politics news every morning.

Rishi Sunak on Wednesday promised to create the first “smoke-free generation” as he announced a new law to stop children aged 14 or younger this year ever being sold cigarettes legally in England.

In his closing speech to the Conservative party conference in Manchester, Sunak said smoking caused one in four cancer deaths and killed 64,000 people a year with most people picking up the habit before they turned 20.

Sunak said his intervention was “not a values judgment on people who smoke”, and it would not be fair to take away the right to smoke of anyone who currently did so.

Under the plan, MPs will be given a free vote on the planned legislation, which would be “a matter of conscience, and I want you all, and the country, to know where mine is”, he added.

The opposition Labour party said it would back the move. But within minutes of making the announcement, the prime minister faced a political backlash from some fellow Tories who saw the intervention as an attempt to trammel personal choice. 

Former prime minister Liz Truss said that she would vote against the proposal, having called on the government to “stop banning things” in a speech earlier in the week. 

The health department said the proposed legislation would make it an offence for anyone born on or after January 1 2009 to be sold tobacco products — in effect raising the smoking age by a year each year until it applied to the whole population.

Officials said the policy had the potential to phase out smoking in young people almost completely as early as 2040.

The plans mirror world-first legislation implemented this year by New Zealand, which introduced a law to raise the smoking age year-by-year.

The sales ban will apply only in England, however. Simon Clark, director of the lobby group Forest, which is funded by the tobacco industry, said: “Anyone who wants to smoke will buy tobacco abroad or from illicit sources.”  

In a separate proposal, aimed at cracking down on youth vaping, the government said it would consult on restricting disposable vapes and regulating flavours and packaging to reduce their appeal to children. 

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of the charity Action on Smoking and Health, welcomed the prime minister’s announcement, saying it would “hasten the day when smoking is obsolete”. 

Other experts supported the policies, but said the government needed to go further. Chris Thomas, head of the think-tank IPPR’s commission on health and prosperity, said: “A coherent public health strategy now demands similar ambition on obesity, gambling, alcohol and housing in the coming months.” 

The government is currently behind on its target to make England “smoke-free” by 2030 by reducing smoking prevalence to below 5 per cent. Projections by Cancer Research UK, released last month, said that at current rates of decline the ambition would not be met until 2039.

Sunak’s announcement sliced nearly 3 per cent off cigarette maker Imperial Brands’ share price, which counts the UK among its five biggest markets, and about 1.5 per cent off the share price of British American Tobacco.