Science and Technology Committee

Darren Jones Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Norman Lamb]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for his work in initiating debate about this issue in the previous Committee and for his work on this inquiry. On that final point, vaping without some of the offensive flavours—or flavours that some people find offensive—is certainly helpful in encouraging people to be tolerant of vaping. The great value of this report is to reinforce the public health messages and encourage people to understand the relative harm of e-cigarettes as against smoking.

On the hon. Gentleman’s first point, it is interesting that the United States, Australia and some other countries take a different approach that appears to be based on doing nothing until they have all the evidence. As the evidence quoted made clear, however, there is a price to be paid for that caution, which is that we are not getting the clear message, based on evidence, to smokers that shifting to e-cigarettes will save lives here and now. So I think this country is leading the way with this strong consensus—coalition of support—around this clear evidence. The great value of the report is to reinforce this message to people: “If you can’t give up smoking entirely, it is in your interests to shift to e-cigarettes because that will help save your life.”

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

I welcome the amount of public engagement received off the back of the publication of this report, which shows a desire by the public to understand the evidence on what is a relatively new product about which there are many misconceptions, but one of the key pieces of feedback I received from constituents was, I fear off the back of some misreporting, that our Select Committee report was recommending vaping on buses, so for clarity for this House, my constituents and the wider public, will the Chairman make it clear that we were not recommending that vaping be allowed on buses?

[Norman Lamb]

I believe the expression is “read my lips”: we were not recommending vaping on buses. I hope that is helpful.