Science and Technology Committee

Debate between Chris Elmore and Norman Lamb

Thursday 6th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Norman Lamb]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that really helpful contribution. First, on the case for encouraging smokers to shift to e-cigarettes—that is clearly a big concern of his—let me quote Dr Jamie Brown of University College London:

“Any perceived risk associated with offering reassurance before we have the long-term data…must be balanced against the risk associated with the opportunity cost of failing to inform the millions of people who are currently smoking uniquely dangerous products that e-cigarettes are safer when they believe”,

wrongly, that

“they are not.”

That is a really important public health message to get across.

With regard to public spaces, we wanted to clearly distinguish between the public health justification for policies and the nuisance issue. The evidence clearly says that secondary vaping—someone taking vapour into their lungs because of the close proximity of people who are vaping—carries nothing like the same risk as secondary smoking, which carries a very serious risk and led to the legislation passed in this House to ban smoking in public areas.

However, there is a good justification, which I totally accept, for not allowing vaping because of the nuisance—because people find it invasive. I personally dislike the sweet strawberry flavours and so on that we are often confronted by at close quarters. What is frustrating is that some of the graphics used in relation to the report, including by the BBC, showed people vaping on public transport, but we were not making a recommendation on that; we were just saying, “Let’s have a public discussion informed by the evidence and then reach our conclusions.” We should not just automatically treat vaping in the same way as what the academic I mentioned described as the “uniquely dangerous” activity of smoking tobacco.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s Committee’s report. Health is of course a devolved function in Wales and it is not for this House or any Member of it to suggest what policies should be implemented in Scotland or Wales. However, does he agree that it is important that when Select Committees of this House conduct these sorts of inquiries that information can be shared with the devolved Administrations, so that they can take part in a wider debate around these issues? At the end of the last Assembly term, there was a Bill to ban e-cigarettes in Wales. It was lost for various other reasons and not passed in the last days of the Assembly sitting. Does he agree that, with this new information and evidence coming forward, it is proper that Select Committees of this House do shared working on public health issues and pass on evidence where they think it is of worth for UK-wide issues, because smoking is not reserved to England or any of the other nations of the UK?

[Norman Lamb]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his helpful contribution and totally agree with him. I will make sure that we specifically send the report to the devolved Administrations, and he highlights the fact that there is now such strong consensus through all the organisations I referred to—Cancer Research UK, the British Heart Foundation and so on—of the relative harm reduction through adopting e-cigarettes as opposed to smoking. Any confusion of that message will result in fewer people giving up smoking and more people in our country dying, and we must stop that.