Following his appointment to the House of Lords in 1999 Lord Faulkner has played a prominent part in a range of tobacco control debates and campaigns, including those which secured the passage of the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act 2002, and moves to make the House of Lords an almost entirely smoke-free environment (December 2004).
A former trustee of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, in 2005 he introduced a Private Bill on behalf of the city of Liverpool to make it smoke-free, the Bill being subsequently withdrawn on the passing of the Health Bill in 2006.