Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Andrew Cooper Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 26th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Cooper (Mid Cheshire) (Lab)]

This piece of legislation carries immense significance for the health of our nation, and I welcome the steps being taken to protect people from the harms of tobacco, to create a smokefree generation and to tackle youth vaping. We are all too aware that smoking remains the biggest cause of preventable illness and death in our country, with decades of evidence in support of that. One in four cancers is driven by smoking. Around 160 people every day are diagnosed with a smoking-related cancer. Smoking causes asthma, stillbirths and dementia. The evidence around second-hand smoke is overwhelming; it causes increased rates of cancer, heart disease, stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease—the list goes on.

Tobacco consumption is a primary driver of health inequalities right across the country. In the most deprived areas, the mortality rate ascribed to smoking is more than double that in the least deprived areas, as we have heard. This Bill is about not just health but alleviating the economic burden on our healthcare system. According to Action on Smoking and Health, smoking-related illnesses cost the NHS £1.9 billion each year in England alone. In Mid Cheshire, the cost of smoking exceeds £52 million annually, and more than £2 million in direct healthcare costs alone. By curbing tobacco use, we can alleviate some of that financial strain and redirect those resources towards more urgent health needs. Investing in prevention is far more cost-effective than treating diseases caused by tobacco.

In the time that I have, I want to focus on the regulation of vaping in the Bill. It is important to strike the right balance between reducing harm from tobacco and protecting young people. Vaping has a role to play in helping adults to quit smoking, and there are estimates that as many as an extra 70,000 people in England quit smoking by using vapes as an aid. However, youth vaping has more than doubled in the last five years, while almost six times more 11 to 17-year-olds vape now than did a decade ago. Many vaping products have very clearly been targeted at children through their packaging, flavours and marketing. While vaping is less harmful than tobacco, the vast majority of vaping liquids still contain nicotine, which is highly addictive and more impactful on children’s brains when they are trying to quit. Many of the long-term health effects of inhaled ingredients such as colourings and flavourings are unknown.

It is our responsibility to safeguard the health of our communities, particularly our children, who are vulnerable to the allure of smoking and vaping. I certainly welcome the Bill’s emphasis on more responsible regulation of vaping products. The power for the Secretary of State to require producers to produce studies on the ingredients of their products will be a vital tool in demonstrating the long-term effects of what is being put into vaping liquids.

The Tobacco and Vapes Bill is a crucial piece of legislation that aims to tackle a critical public health challenge. It will promote informed choices and alleviate economic burdens, and ultimately help us achieve our ambition of creating a smokefree UK. That is why I am proud to support this important Bill.

World Stroke Day

Andrew Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Dyke]

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention and for all the work she has done in this area. I will come to the issue of ambulance response times a little later in my speech.

Delays in urgent care are currently leading to high mortality rates, and post-stroke services that provide crucial emotional, practical and social support are often treated as optional, rather than essential.

[Andrew Cooper (Mid Cheshire) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Lady for securing this important debate. She rightly talks about the need for stroke patients to receive urgent medical treatment. Last month, I attended a thrombectomy awareness event at which my constituent, Mark Paterson, was speaking as a stroke survivor. Mark’s remarkable recovery was thanks to the emergency thrombectomy procedure he received. Sadly, many others are not so lucky, with too many people dying or suffering disability due to the previous Government’s postcode lottery in care. About this time last year, the Stroke Association said that about 9.8% of patients receive that treatment in London, compared with 0.4% in the east of England. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need to see an increase in the proportion of patients receiving thrombectomies across the country?

[Sarah Dyke]

I thank the hon. Member for the intervention. He makes a strong point.

Our health and social care services are likely failing the 14,159 registered stroke survivors in Somerset at some stage in the system, but there is reason to be optimistic. If the Government put stroke at the heart of our health and social care system, each and every part of the system will be stronger and deliver better outcomes for everyone—not just stroke survivors.

Leaving aside the human cost, there is also an economic cost, as strokes lead to an avoidable £1.6 billion annual loss of productivity. I recently spoke to Garry, who works in Somerset and had a stroke in his 30s. He told me that he could have been back to work after nine months if he had had access to life-after-stroke care. Instead, he spent five years recovering, during which time he had to rely on the benefits system. At the start of the debate, I said that stroke is preventable, treatable and recoverable. If that is true—I know that it is—why are people like Garry forced to waste years in the prime of their life learning how to recover from strokes themselves?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank the hon. Lady for that telling intervention. She is absolutely right: so much of the challenge and the opportunity before us is about how we use traditional media, social media, all forms of communication and awareness-raising campaigns and techniques. By definition, we are dealing with a situation in which speed is of the essence. It is truly a public health challenge, because it is only the public who can do what Will did in that circumstance. I certainly pay tribute to Will for acting so quickly and to the Act FAST campaign. I am sure Members will welcome that we are looking to build on the success of Act FAST and to replicate and renew it.

That campaign will run in England across TV, radio, social media, national press and ethnic minority TV and radio stations. The campaign includes specific communications for multicultural and disabled audiences. A higher reduction in mortality rates over the next 10 years will require a focus on NHS England stroke priorities, including rapid diagnosis and increasing access to time-dependent specialist acute stroke care. We know that so many deadly diseases can be avoided if we seek help in enough time. That is why we are working to improve access to treatments. Current targets include increasing thrombectomy rates to 10% and thrombolysis rates to 20% through facilitating ambulance service use of pre-hospital video triage and use of AI decision support tools for brain imaging in comprehensive stroke centres. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper) has a keen interest in that issue.

[Andrew Cooper (Mid Cheshire) (Lab)]

Building on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), does the Minister agree that stroke patients should have the highest priority for ambulance call-outs—as high as cardiac arrest, for example?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I am a little wary of generalising too much, because I know that so many decisions have to be made in real time by our skilled ambulance drivers and paramedics and the many others involved, but my hon. Friend makes a valid point. In a general sense, he is absolutely right that stroke needs to take priority. The red thread going through this entire debate is the need for speed. It is all about prioritising and acting quickly; he is absolutely right about that.

In the past year, we have seen a 30% increase in the number of thrombectomies delivered in England. Alongside that, our 20 integrated stroke delivery networks are looking to optimise care pathways. The General Medical Council is addressing critical workforce gaps through its thrombectomy credentialling programme, and our national optimal stroke imaging pathway is improving information sharing.

I am aware of the reconfiguration in the constituency of the hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton. NHS Somerset integrated care board has decided to close the hyper-acute stroke unit at Yeovil hospital and to establish a single hyper-acute stroke unit at Musgrove Park hospital in Taunton to provide 24/7 emergency treatment. All service changes should be based on clear evidence that they will deliver better outcomes for patients. A high bar is set out in guidance for intervening in contested reconfiguration cases, and the reconfiguration of services should be a matter for the local NHS. I would expect all avenues of local resolution to have been exhausted before a call-in request is made. The Department has received a formal request to call in NHS Somerset ICB’s decision, and Ministers will make a decision on whether to use their call-in powers in due course.

Unfortunately, there is still significant variation across the country in access and outcomes in relation to stroke. For example, the percentage of suspected stroke patients who received the necessary brain scan within an hour of arrival at hospital varies from 80% in Kent to only around 40% in Shropshire. That variation needs to change, and we need to bring the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS. That will be one of the central challenges for the Government going forward.

The Government have a profound ambition to improve the lives and health outcomes of people who survive a stroke. At this point, I would like to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford and Bow (Uma Kumaran) and to the man in the Public Gallery for what they have been through and for their fortitude. It was certainly not easy for my hon. Friend to come to this place and to have to go through the extremely difficult situation that she did. I also pay tribute to all the key partners and stakeholders who worked with her and her family to get through it. That really is a tribute to the immensely important work they do.