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Health Bill [HL]

I thought I had better just say a few words. When I ran a grocery shop, I actually had a tobacco licence. I am not at all sure that it did any good but, nevertheless, it was a licence, which could be removed. But of course these are different times; the tobacco licence was abolished after the war. We are talking here about a licence that puts further pressure on retailers. They are under huge pressure at the moment not to sell to young people. They can be fined £2,500 if they do sell—and now, under this, they would be under threat of losing their licence, although they might innocently have sold a packet of cigarettes to an underage person. Frankly, I think that we need to nurture our small shops at the moment, whatever they sell. We are already in recession and are in danger of going into depression. The last thing that we should be doing at this point is adding further burdens to retailers and to put them under further pressure of fines, and perhaps even imprisonment—but, worst of all, losing their livelihoods. We need to be very careful about what we are doing, as the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, pointed out. We have a duty to protect the freedoms of the individual. That is one main reason why Parliament exists, apart from raising money for the Government. Parliamentarians are there to protect the individual liberties of people—and, unfortunately, some people appear to have forgotten that.