Heated Tobacco

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 26th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government policy on heated tobacco.

May I say how pleased I am to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray? I immediately declare my interest as an honorary life fellow of Cancer Research UK.

Smoking remains a terrible public health problem in the United Kingdom. The Government recently referred to it as the “continuing tobacco epidemic”. It is the country’s principal cause of cancer and single greatest cause of preventable illnesses and avoidable deaths. Some 7.4 million people in this country smoke, and smoking is the cause of around 100,000 deaths every year. There is a mistaken perception that the problem of smoking has largely been addressed, which might be because smoking, like many other societal ills, does not affect everyone equally. The smoking rate remains around 25% in many of the poorest areas of the country, whereas it is around 5% in more prosperous areas. In my constituency of Clwyd West, the rate is above the national average, at 17% to 18%.

The Government are to be commended for their achievements on smoking, and indeed for their ambitions for the future. Since 2010, Conservative-led Governments have brought the smoking rate down from 20.2% to 15.5%, which is a significant accomplishment. The Government are to be applauded for their ambition to lower smoking rates to 12% by 2020. Although they have not set yet a target date, the Government aim eventually to create a smoke-free generation, which they define as less than 5% of adults smoking. However, the challenge today is far greater than it was a decade ago, because smokers with a higher level of motivation to quit will have done so already. Those who remain have withstood years of public health campaigns and societal pressures, as well as the rise of e-cigarettes as an alternative to smoking.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on bringing this important matter to the House for consideration. Does he agree that advice must be provided first about smoking cessation, rather than about vaping or any other alternative method? Does he also agree that although there are no long-term indications of the effects of vaping, whether burned or heated, the chemicals that are used will not be neutral, and there will therefore always be an element of concern and a need for greater research?

[Mr Jones]

Clearly, the ideal is for people to give up smoking altogether, but there are ways of reducing it. I will go into that in my speech. The hon. Gentleman makes a point to which I shall also refer: there is a need for research on the effects of alternatives to combustible tobacco.

E-cigarettes have had a revolutionary effect on efforts to reduce smoking rates in this country, and credit must go to the Government for facilitating that. E-cigarettes have had a highly positive impact on helping smokers to quit. In 2010, a particularly enlightened member of the behavioural insights team, David Halpern, influenced the Government’s decision not only to resist banning e-cigarettes—other countries were poised to do so—but to seek deliberately to make them more widely available. David Halpern advanced the principle of harm reduction: it is more effective to give somebody a reduced risk product than to insist unrealistically on immediate total abstinence. An expert in harm reduction, Professor Gerry Stimson of Imperial College, has supported that argument, pointing out that it is easier to persuade people to do something if that thing is enjoyable rather than a painful chore. He said:

“For those trying to stop smoking, e-cigarettes have profoundly changed the experience. For the first time quitting cigarettes is no longer associated with being a ‘patient’ and personal struggle.”