Tobacco and Vapes Bill (First sitting)

Bambos Charalambous Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 30th April 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

I chair the all-party parliamentary group on smoking and health.

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

I do not know whether it is an actual declaration, but I did the Cancer Research 10k fun run in February—the winter run.

[The Chair]

That is more of a boast than a declaration of interest.

Tobacco and Vapes Bill (Third sitting)

Bambos Charalambous Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 1st May 2024 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I inform Committee members that we have 14 minutes to go and three people who have not yet spoken and would like to. I want to bring in the Minister and the shadow Minister at the end. I notice that there is huge unanimity among our panel members. Could I also ask you to be brief and perhaps get one of your number to answer a question so that we get everybody in? Bambos Charalambous is next.

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

Q Sir Chris, you mentioned tobacco-related diseases. I want to focus on the impact that that has on the NHS. How would the Bill help the NHS in the short term and then in the long term?

Professor Sir Chris Whitty: In the interests of brevity—the medical director of the NHS is one of your next witnesses—there would be an immediate effect on the NHS because things like asthma attacks in children would be affected almost immediately. Over time there will be a growing positive impact on the NHS as people do not prematurely become unwell with chronic diseases that are extremely difficult to treat and consume enormous resources, in addition to the much more important thing of the extraordinary impact on individuals and their families, their social life, their work life and so on. So there will be a positive and growing impact. If you look forward 30, 40, 50 years, the impact of the Bill on the NHS will be substantial, but we will start to see the effects rapidly, particularly at the paediatric end of the spectrum.

[Trudy Harrison (Copeland) (Con)]

Q Bearing in mind what the Chair just said about being brief, can the panel explain the stages of addiction—the physiological, psychological, biological impacts of addiction—and perhaps comment on the frequently heard statement that this is a free country, people should have choice and then use discipline?

Professor Sir Chris Whitty: I will reiterate my point and then hand over to Sir Frank for a longer answer. Cigarettes are a product designed to take choice away. That is the whole basis of the industry. If you are pro-choice you are anti-cigarette—absolutely, straightforwardly, no question.

Sir Francis Atherton: As I have said, nicotine is an incredibly addictive substance and it does not take long to become addicted, so it is not really a stage; it is almost instantaneous. People smoke a few cigarettes and the nicotine addiction kicks in. Obviously, it varies from person to person, but by and large it is highly addictive to young people. The younger you start, the more addictive it is, but it is addictive across the whole of the lifecycle, so nobody is immune to that addiction. Breaking that cycle of addiction and getting out of it gets you into psychological dependencies and repeated attempts to quit—the things that many smokers have been through, which cost them so much time, energy and effort, in terms of money and their personal effort and wellbeing. That is all I can say about the status of addiction. Was there anything more specific that you wanted to know?

Tobacco and Vapes Bill (Fourth sitting)

Bambos Charalambous Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 1st May 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Johnson]

Q Could you clarify something else? If I were a vape manufacturer wanting to get full registration as a medical product for one of my vapes, and I did an apple flavour and a gummy bear flavour, would I have to put those products through separately because the apple flavour is a different chemical to the gummy bear flavour?

Dr Squire: Any product that has different constituents would have to be put through separately, because we would have to test everything. I can see the issue around flavouring is about making it attractive to children, and we are not interested in that, but we look at what the chemicals and substances are in a product, which will be different for different flavours, so we would have to look at those separately and make sure that they all came up to scratch.

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

Q I ask more for clarification, if a GP wanted to offer a patient a vape as a means of reducing smoking, would that have to be licensed by the MHRA as a medical device? Would it have to be licensed through your organisation?

Dr Squire: Yes, if you want a licensed product that can be prescribed, that would be a medical product. I know, because I was talking to one earlier, that GPs do recommend that their patients go and buy a vape. They do not have any choices at the moment, because there are no licensed products available on the market in the UK.

[Bambos Charalambous]

Q So they would just suggest that someone go and buy a vape in a shop to help them to reduce their smoking, rather than suggest one that had been through your rigorous process?

Dr Squire: At the moment, the limiting factor on the availability of licensed products is that we need manufacturers to come forward and apply for a medical licence. We continue to encourage that, including putting out the guidance. If anyone wanted to talk to us about bringing a product to market, we would talk to them about that, but they are not out there at the moment.

[Bambos Charalambous]

Q So there is no obligation on the vape manufacturers to come to you to check the vape?

Dr Squire: Not if they are putting a product on the market that is not making any medical claims. If they are putting it on the market and not making medical claims, it is a consumer product and they do not have to come to us. If they start to make medical claims, including that it will help you to give up smoking, they need to come and talk to us. They should not be making medical claims without having it as a licensed product.

[Trudy Harrison (Copeland) (Con)]

Q We have heard various accounts of the impacts of vapes on children and young people—that there are limited direct consequences of vaping on children and young people’s bodies, but plentiful and multiple different indirect impacts of that behaviour in schools and such like. I am starting to hear that it almost feels like an unbearable choice between whether we protect children and young people from vaping, or prevent older people from being able to stop smoking through the use of vapes. I am struggling with making that choice; I can see both sides of the argument. Do you have a view? Could you help the parliamentarians here to understand the choice we are faced with?

Dr Squire: The Bill helps in all ways. The Bill is very clear on tobacco and, as I say, we do not have a role on that, but the proposal is to put more requirements on vapes, and in our experience more requirements add to the barrier to something getting on to the market, which is helpful. One of the problems we have with e-cigarettes is their availability.

I am not sure I see the choice between the two. We are seeing here a Bill that, as people have said before, is balanced. It recognises that vapes are useful for people who already smoke, and it puts in some very big restrictions on people who already smoke, but it also tightens the rules around vapes. I think that is what gives it the balance, which is helpful. The problem, which others are more qualified than I am to talk about, is: if we did not have vapes at all, where would people who smoke go? It is not a good answer, but if you do not smoke, don’t vape. That has been said a number of times, and we definitely agree with it.