Tobacco and Vapes Bill (Second sitting)

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 30th April 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

Q We heard in an evidence session earlier about the challenges in schools, with children vaping in increasing numbers. There is an impact on their education because of their becoming addicted, and that causes challenges in their interactions with the learning process. Do you think that the measures in the Bill are sufficient to deal with that growing problem? Do you have a view on whether we have a handle on the quantum of that problem, and are the measures on advertising sufficient to try to remedy that?

Greg Fell: Yes, in part, in terms of the measures in the Bill. I would treat vapes like I would treat cigarettes in terms of colours and marketing, with plain packs out of sight behind the counter and strongly enforced. I would take care, though: we use and want to continue to use vapes as a route out of smoking cigarettes, so getting the balance right remains important, but I would be quite aggressive about the regulation and the deterrent.

Education in schools by itself will not be sufficient. It might or might not be effective, but it will not be sufficient. Action on Smoking and Health has co-produced with a number of local authorities a range of resource packs for parents, teachers and others, which are fairly widely used, but they are not sufficient by themselves to stop the rise in young people vaping, so we need strong regulation with the enforcement of that to boot.

Cllr Fothergill: It is not part of this Bill, but it is part of LGA policy that we would like to see a ban on disposable vapes. There are 5 million sold every week, with the vast majority sold to younger people. The vast majority are thrown away. Those that are thrown away responsibly finish up in one of our recycling lorries where the lithium batteries cause major problems with fires. It is not part of this legislation, but we think that that needs to be tackled separately; I think it will be.

Greg Fell: One point that I just remembered on the resource pack that has been widely circulated to headteachers and schools: a line was taken in that to tell the truth—not to over-egg the pudding but to tell the truth and say what we do and do not know, because in my experience scaring kids usually switches them on to something rather than turning them off something. In the pack, we have also told the truth about the methods and tactics that the tobacco industry has used to get kids hooked on vapes, and that as a rule makes kids pretty angry. It certainly makes parents pretty angry when they realise what has happened.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

Q If I may, Mr Fell, I will bring you back to the issue of passive vaping. You talked about there not being so much evidence on the harms of passive vaping compared with passive smoking, which is correct. Of course, smoking has been around much longer for the effects to be understood. However, there are papers, published in reliable journals such as The BMJ, saying that those people—in particular, young adults who do not smoke or vape—who are exposed to passive vaping do get an increase in bronchial symptoms.

Greg Fell: Agreed.

[Dr Johnson]

Q There are effects. One reason why a former Government brought in the ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces was so that people would not be forced to experience such a risk, either at work or socially, which was one that they did not want to take. Would you, as a director of public health, support a ban in enclosed spaces for vaping, too?

Greg Fell: Possibly. I would need to go back to the science and have a really careful look at it. There is the danger of unintended consequences and turning people away from vaping as a route out of smoking. Outdoors it is not a thing; indoors—for me, it is a carefully balanced thing and I would want to go back to read the science. It is a while since I have read it, to be fair.

[Dr Johnson]

Q If someone cannot smoke in a pub, why would not being able to vape in a pub make them smoke?

Greg Fell: I am thinking of my logic now, and would agree. What I would not want is for somebody to not switch from smoking tobacco to vaping because they fear they would not be able to vape in a pub. That would be the unintended consequence I would try to avoid.

[The Chair]

David, do you want to add anything?

Cllr Fothergill: I have nothing to add.

--- Later in debate ---

[Preet Kaur Gill]

Q Is there anything you want to say on the age-of-sale verification process?

Adrian Simpson: In the large retail sector, we have worked on things such as Challenge 25 for many years, so we are used to challenging consumers buying products. One thing that we would like to make clear is that this can be a very controversial issue. We know that challenging consumers for proof of age leads to violence and aggression against shop workers. We think it would be beneficial if a long period were given for these regulations to come into effect, to give retailers the chance to educate their staff on these issues and to educate consumers.

[Dr Johnson]

Q I want to ask you about the licensing regime. You have to have a licence to sell alcohol and tobacco, and some have suggested that you should have to have a licence to sell nicotine full stop because it is an addictive substance. That would mean that you would need to have a licence to sell vapes, partly as a way of making them less accessible to children in the places that they may be sold. Would you support that?

Adrian Simpson: It is not an issue that we have discussed at any length in the British Retail Consortium. We are aware, of course, that there are parts of the UK where licensing is required for certain tobacco products. We are well used to the alcohol licensing that has been going on for many years. Unfortunately, I cannot comment on whether the whole sector would be in support of that. We would perhaps need to see how a potential licensing system would operate before we gave our full support to it.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

Q Thank you so much for being here. You will be aware that, in putting together legislation, huge effort is made to be balanced and not excessive and to make it doable and achievable, nowhere more so than for those who are trying to enforce it.

May I press you a bit further on the point that Preet made about whether the fines are sufficient? You have said that it is a bit complicated and will require some lead-in time—which is obviously provided, with the 2027 date—to give appropriate training to shop staff. The quantum of the fine was intended to enable on-the-spot fines, rather than having lengthy litigation because the person who incurs the fine does not have the cash and needs to go away, may or may not pay it, may or may not have to be pursued, may or may not have to go to court, and so on. Understanding that there are different views on all sides, is the balance just about right or, if you could have put your own wish list together, are there things that you would have done differently?

Adrian Simpson: We would have liked to see more education provided to retailers who might have broken the rules. A fine can be life-changing for someone who is given one, so we like to see whether there might be a way around that; perhaps the shop worker could be educated first, rather than going straight to a fine, if at all possible. We would like to see that balance of education before strict enforcement, if possible. That would be our wish.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Colleagues, we might be voting fairly soon, so short questions, please, and concise answers.

[Dr Johnson]

Q My question follows on from that of my colleague. Lincolnshire police measured what was in vapes confiscated from children in my constituency. They found chemicals like diethylene glycol diacetate, antifreeze, Steol-M, poster varnish and others. As I understand it, when they look at a vape in a box, one of the challenges for enforcers is being able to tell whether it is a real, legitimate vape that contains what it is supposed to contain or a fake vape that contains a whole load of nonsense and potentially harmful chemicals. How could the legislation help you with that?

Secondly, someone showed me on packets of cigarettes recently that there is a scannable code, and trading standards have a special scanner that they can scan that with. Would that sort of thing help on so-called legitimate vapes?

Kate Pike: Potentially. The track-and-trace legislation on tobacco that enables us to scan a packet of tobacco and find out if it is where it should be—it is tracked all the way through the system—could potentially work on vapes. It would be very complicated to bring in—well, not complicated; it would be a big exercise to bring in track and trace for vapes, but it is potentially something. As you know, there is a consultation out at the moment for vapes to become an excise product, so it could possibly be that we introduce track and trace alongside that for vapes.

If you look at a vape and you look at the packaging, there are lots of red flags that tell us if it is illegal. We can usually tell by the packaging alone. We are doing some market surveillance work at the moment for vapes that look as if they should be compliant; they are notified to the MHRA, to check the ingredients. So far, touch wood, we are not finding too many issues in those nominally compliant vapes. But there are so many illegal vapes out there. It is actually quite easy to see that they are illegal, when you see them. We do know how to identify them at the moment, but obviously it could become more difficult. We will just have to make sure that the new regulations are still enforceable when they come in. For example, if there is a ban on types of flavour, we would want that to be really clear. We do not want to have to go round sniffing or tasting. It needs to be clear by the description, rather than just some sort of guess along the lines of, “Is that strawberry bakewell-flavoured?” It would be very difficult for us to manage that.

[Kirsten Oswald]

Q I do not know if others have had this experience, but I am aware that I am increasingly being advertised at online by products that, although I am not really sure what they are, are certainly connected or proximate to tobacco or vapes. That leads me to wonder whether there are any tobacco, vaping or other connected or related products that are not covered by this Bill, which you think perhaps should be.

Kate Pike: I think the Bill is really good at closing some of those loopholes. It will include an age restriction on 0% nicotine vapes, for example. There are other nicotine products, such as the little nicotine pouches. The popular term is, I think, snus, but we know that snus is already banned in this country. The enabling regulations to put a regulatory framework around products like that will be really helpful. These industries are very innovative, so we just need to make sure that we are keeping up with our regulation. I think that the enabling regulation powers will enable us to keep up with new products, but it is continually little steps, and regulation chasing after innovation. We would like it to be the other way round, really.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mary Glindon]

I would just like to say that vaping is 95% safer than smoking.

[Dr Johnson]

Q I proposed a ten-minute rule Bill to ban disposable vapes last February, so I am delighted to see that the Government have brought in an statutory instrument to do exactly that. I am disappointed, but not surprised, to hear you say that industry is doing its best to circumnavigate the regulations before they are even brought in.

I have two questions. First, how do we ensure that the regulations are flexible enough for us to be able to stay ahead of such measures? Secondly, could you say a bit about the effect on wildlife? My hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson) has talked about puppies picking these things up in their mouths and the danger they can pose if the puppies bite into them. Could you talk a bit more about the danger that they pose to wildlife when they are thrown away?

Laura Young: Of course. On the regulations, I think that we have to think creatively and innovatively about some of the workarounds that might be being used. We are already seeing charging ports just being popped on the bottom. Of course, that might mean that the battery can be recharged a few extra times, but if it cannot be refilled with the solution, it is still, in practice, a single-use item and will have to be thrown away eventually.

The issue is about ensuring that we look at the builds and make sure that they are modular and that the circular-economy principles that we want to achieve are set in stone. I think that that means working as best as possible with the retailers and the manufacturers—although that will be really difficult—and looking to other initiatives, whether that is single-use plastics bans or treaties on plastic, one of which has just come to an end globally, to see what we can do.

I will tell you a story about the wildlife. A wildlife photographer, a birdwatcher, was taking some images of a marine bird doing a very normal activity, which was picking up a shellfish—what looked like a razorfish—and dropping it from a height to smash it open to get some delicious dinner. But after this young gull had failed multiple times, this photographer realised that, unfortunately, what it was actually picking up and dropping was a disposable vape. We are seeing not only domestic animals, such as cats and dogs and things that we love as pets, getting hold of disposable vapes and potentially breaking them open, but actual wildlife being impacted—picking them up, thinking they are shells on the beach, and trying to eat what is inside them.

That is just from the very short time that we have been paying attention and looking out for this, and from keen birdwatchers capturing it, so we know that there will be extensive wildlife impacts. We are only now scrambling around to try to find more evidence, but we know that it is already happening, and that that is just one example. The photographs are on Twitter, if anyone did want to go and find them. It is sad, but it is definitely the reality of what we are seeing.

[Mary Kelly Foy]

Q Just a very quick question: would you agree that this is symptomatic of the throwaway society that we live in? We have disposable vapes, plastic toys with happy meals and toasters—all small appliances that do not last long enough. They are all thrown away and are damaging the environment. I know that, in Durham, all sorts of electronic devices are thrown in the river, and that is interfering with wildlife.