Under-age Vaping

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne]

The hon. Lady makes a powerful case. Those are precisely the reasons why we have called this debate. It should shock each and every one of us. The ease of access to e-cigarettes for children, many younger than the ages she gave as an example, just cannot be allowed. We must be doing all we can on e-cigarettes, as we did to tackle the packaging and advertising of actual cigarettes, to ensure that children are weaned off their nicotine addiction and that other children do not start vaping in the first place.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a very effective speech to open this debate. He quoted the figure of 30% for Yorkshire and the Humber. The figure for the north-west is 29%, which shows very little difference. Those figures are twice that for London, so it may be that some hon. Members are not aware of how bad the problem is getting. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has warned that youth vaping is fast becoming an epidemic. Worryingly, the number of children admitted to hospital as a result of vaping has almost quadrupled. Is my hon. Friend, as a fellow Greater Manchester MP, concerned about how many more children might suffer those health impacts before the Government take the action that is needed?

[Andrew Gwynne]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. As a Greater Manchester MP, I see the problem in my constituency and she will see it in hers. It concerns me greatly, because within our city region there are already communities that have some of the worst health inequalities. A lot of those health inequalities have been exacerbated by a higher than average prevalence of smoking. Even now, as smoking rates have declined, there are still communities in the areas we represent that have an abnormally high number of smokers. I do not want, in tackling smoking and reducing some of the health inequalities that are caused through smoking, to be storing up future problems with a new generation caused as a direct consequence of vaping or, more sinisterly, as a gateway to smoking later on in life. She is absolutely right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien]

I completely agree with the hon. Lady on that point; this is exactly what our enforcement squad is doing, and I completely agree about the importance of doing it.

On the call for evidence, we will be producing our response in early autumn, identifying and outlining areas where the Government will go further. The key point is that we need evidence to take effective action to stop children vaping. While that call for evidence has been running, we have already taken further steps. At the end of May, the Prime Minister announced several new measures to support our efforts to tackle youth and kids’ vaping. That included closing the loophole in our laws that has been allowing companies to give out free samples of vapes to under-18s, which ASH estimates could total as many as 20,000 a year. He also announced that we will overhaul the rules on selling nicotine-free vapes to under-18s and on issuing fines to shops selling vapes to the under-18s.

The Prime Minister also announced that we will update the school curriculum, to emphasise the health risks of vaping within relationships, sex and health education lessons, just as schools currently do for smoking and drinking, so that kids understand the risks of vaping. We will be writing to police forces to ensure dedicated school liaison officers across the country are using the new resources available to keep illegal vapes out of schools.

I want to use this opportunity to outline the work we are doing to successfully reduce smoking, not least because the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson touched on it. In the 1970s, more than 40% of people smoked, and it was still 21% in 2010. Since then, we have taken a series of steps, including doubling excise duties and introducing a minimum excise tax on the cheapest cigarettes, that have helped to drive down smoking to a record low of just 13% in England.

We have gone from 21% to 13%, but of course we want to go further. In 2019, we announced our ambition for England to go smoke-free by 2030, which is considered to be 5% or less. Over the past decade, we have made significant progress towards making England smoke free. We have continued to invest in local stop-smoking services, to help smokers get the right support for them. We continue to work in support of the NHS. Last year alone, we provided £35 million to the NHS long-term plan commitments on smoking.

Youth smoking rates are now at their lowest rates on record. In 2021, just 3.3% of 15-year-olds were regular smokers, although of course we want to reduce that figure even further. Through the new measures I announced in April, the Government will be supporting many more smokers to quit through the tobacco reduction strategy. Some 1 million smokers will be encouraged to Swap to Stop, swapping cigarettes for vapes under a new national scheme that targets those who are most at risk and gives them free vapes. That is first scheme of its kind in the world. It is based on experience from the successful local pilots, and is an evidence-based initiative.

Likewise, we will offer innovative, but evidence-based, financial incentives for all women to stop smoking in pregnancy. Again, this is based on evidence that has been gathered during local pilot schemes and the strategy will be implemented at a national level. Shortly, we will launch a consultation on cigarette pack inserts to provide further information to support smokers to quit, which is something Canada has done successfully.

Further, those who supply tobacco for sale in the UK must be registered for tobacco track and trace, and obtain an economic operator ID. We brought in that scheme to tackle illegal tobacco, but we now want to use the existing system in a new way, to help strengthen enforcement and to target the illicit market. From now on, when people are found selling illicit tobacco, we will not just seize their products but remove their economic operator ID, so they will no longer be able to buy or sell tobacco. We are exploring how to share information with local partners about who is registered on the track and trace system, so that they know who is and who is not legally entitled to sell tobacco in their areas, helping to drive enforcement.

We are committed to doing all we can to prevent children from starting to vape and we are already taking robust action in a range of areas. We are actively working on ways that we can go further, but it is essential that those methods are evidence based and that we have measures that will be effective.

[Barbara Keeley]

The Minister will have heard the figures given earlier: my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) said that 30% of secondary school pupils in Yorkshire and Humberside have tried vaping and I said that the figure for the north-west was 29%. I quoted the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health saying that youth vaping is “fast becoming epidemic”. He is talking about an evidence-based plan, but what is the situation around evidence? My local area still has very high levels of smoking, but we are now seeing the same pattern tracking in vaping among young people as we did in smoking. Does he agree that there needs to be different and further action in those places where the figures are so bad?

[Neil O’Brien]

The theme of my speech is that we have already taken action and we will continue to take action, but that it has to be evidence based. A range of suggestions has been made during the debate, and I am sure there will be more, about different things to do with flavours, packaging, colours and marketing. There needs to be evidence and definition about those things. Some people will probably say that we should ban all flavours; some will say, “Let’s ban all coloured vapes”; some will say that we should have plain packaging or vapes should be hidden from view. We will need to take an evidence-based view on all those issues, rather than just assuming that one knows the answer immediately.

It is not totally obvious to me what the position is of the Opposition Front Bench team on any of those issues—whether they would ban all colours, ban all flavours, demand plain packaging, or want the same kind of restrictions as there are for cigarettes in terms of where they are placed in shops. I am happy to take an intervention if the shadow team have answers to those questions. Is it a yes or a no to those things?