Tobacco and Vapes Bill

John Slinger Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 26th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Farage (Clacton) (Reform)]

I must declare an interest: I am a co-founder of Action on World Health.

I have to say, I find the tone of moral superiority in the Chamber this afternoon almost unbearable. Members clearly believe they are better human beings than those outside who choose to pursue activities that Members perhaps would not pursue. It would come as a bit of a shock, I suppose, to some in this Chamber, but there are some of us who like a smoke—we do. We even go for a few pints in a pub, we have a punt on the horses and I am even tempted to have the odd doughnut—I know; that is perhaps the naughtiest of all. We want to have fun. We want to make our own minds up. This place can educate us, tell us, give us the facts, but the idea that it should make those decisions for other people shows me that the spirit of Oliver Cromwell is alive and well.

[John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that a responsible Government should seek to improve public health, particularly the public health of the younger generation?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lillian Jones (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab)]

For me, the Tobacco and Vapes Bill is a landmark opportunity to improve health outcomes for people in my constituency of Kilmarnock and Loudoun, as well as people across the whole United Kingdom. Almost 80,000 people die each year from smoking-related illness, and many of my constituents have told me they wish that they had never started smoking in the first place. With this Bill, we draw a line under the public health tragedy that tobacco has caused over too many decades. On top of the tragedy of 80,000 deaths, every year smoking costs the NHS more than £3 billion and sees our economy lose more than £18 billion in productivity. This Bill is the bold action that our country needs and that my constituents in Kilmarnock and Loudoun will benefit from.

I am proud that this Labour Government are standing up to the tobacco lobby with the banning of tobacco products for anyone born in or after 2009. That radical change will save lives. In my constituency, I have seen people as young as 12 puffing on vapes on their way to school and when returning home. That is a huge concern for the health and wellbeing of those young people, and the ease of access that they have to vapes is simply unacceptable.

[John Slinger]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. She refers to the risk that young people will increasingly use vapes. Does she agree that the ban on advertising vapes cannot come quickly enough? In my constituency of Rugby, I see shops that look like sweet shops and whose names sound like sweet shops that are clearly designed to encourage and frankly entice young people to take up this unpleasant habit.

[Lillian Jones]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend on those points.

While some argue that vapes may be less harmful than smoking tobacco products, our new generation should not be encouraged to become dependent on the addictive effects of nicotine. This Bill does exactly the right thing in giving the Secretary of State the power to ban flavoured vapes that are very obviously marketed to children and young people. Researching the flavours on offer, I found cola gummies flavour, pink lemonade flavour, strawberry chew flavour and tropic bubblegum flavour, to name just a few. Can anyone really claim that those flavours and the countless others on offer are not aimed at children? Many Members from both sides of the House would raise more than an eyebrow at that claim.

This Bill will regulate the wild west of vaping, which we have seen expand on our high streets over the last decade. It will also address the issue of poor-quality vapes, which are a safety concern, including single-use vapes, and end the scourge of these products littering our streets and communities. As someone with a background of 23 years in the NHS, I know the difference that this Bill will make; it will save lives and help to save our environment, and I will be proud to vote for it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

Well, let me rephrase it. I tell you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that there are two things about this legislation—I have got it right now—and the first is its core objective and the second is the means by which that objective is met. I am, at the moment, talking about the means by which it is met, and I will say a little more about that when I address some of the amendments in my name and those of other Members. When we pass measures in this House—when we make laws—we should concentrate on both their purpose and their effect. If we do not do that, we are not doing our job as lawmakers. My concern about the Bill is that the effect will be compromised by the means, regardless of its purpose.

I entirely endorse what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) about plastic filters. I think that her new clause 2 would be a helpful addition to the Bill, and I should be amazed if the Minister did not embrace and adopt it. Perhaps it could be tabled as a Government amendment, but we may vote on it later. I am sure that the Government Whips will want to whip their Members to support it, because it is environmentally right, terribly sensible and entirely deliverable. It would oblige the industry to do the right thing and create filters that are biodegradable and which, as we heard earlier, are produced in immense numbers.

I have mentioned amendment 4, in the name of the right hon. Member for East Antrim, which deals with this nonsense of the rolling age of consent. It is a straightforward amendment that proposes that the age of consent should be 21—a considerable increase on where we are now—and that retailers must observe that. The hon. Member for Falkirk (Euan Stainbank) said that the matter was already being dealt with because there was already an age of consent. Yes, there is one age of consent, but not a series of ages of consent, with the need to assess people’s age presumably by some formal means. Perhaps they will have to take their passports with them every time they go to the newsagent to buy their papers and their ounce of Golden Virginia, or whatever else.

[John Slinger]

rose—

[Sir John Hayes]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, who I thought asked a terribly weak question during Prime Minister’s Question Time earlier today. Let us see whether he can do better now.

[John Slinger]

It is not very pleasant of the right hon. Gentleman to say that, but I thank him for letting me intervene. Regarding the age of consent and the amendment calling for it to be raised to 21, does he not accept that the tobacco industry would merely target its immense marketing power on those who were over 21, and that that that could have a very bad effect on public health?

[Sir John Hayes]

The key thing about tobacco—as the hon. Member for Worthing West, the expert on public health who is sitting next to the hon. Gentleman, will no doubt confirm—is that people tend to acquire the habit early and, as the hon. Lady said, cannot break it. Not many people are non-smokers at 30 and become smokers at 40. The vast majority of smokers acquire the habit early in their lives. My father probably started smoking at 13. He gave up overnight when he was 75, because the price of Golden Virginia went up. I said to him, “Do you feel any better,” and he replied, “I didn’t feel ill when I smoked and I don’t feel ill now”—but that is another matter.

This issue really relates to young people and children in particular, and that brings me to vapes. I support much of what is in the Bill about them. Schools have an immense problem with vaping. Headteachers and teachers tell me that it is something that they have to be religious in scrutinising, because these things can find their way into schools so easily—in someone’s bag, for instance. Rather as with mobile phones, we must enforce a ban on vapes in schools with rigour. I think that the measures being introduced in the Bill will reinforce that, so I share the Government’s ambition in that respect.

On new clause 12, which stands in my name, I again find it hard to believe that the Government will not accept it willingly, because it simply says that we should review how effective the legislation is. It is probably true that every Bill we debate ought to have something like this attached to it, because it is a good idea—once a Bill has been published, debated, considered and passed into law—that it should be regularly reviewed in such a way.

I understand that the movers of this Bill, its advocates and its enthusiasts believe that they are doing the right thing, and I am not unsympathetic to some of their ambitions. I do sometimes—often indeed—wish that this House was coloured by common sense as liberally as it is peppered with piety. None the less, let me be generous and say that I know that the Minister and others feel that they are doing something noble. However, it is absolutely right, when we legislate in this House, that we do so with the greatest care, with clear and desirable purposes of the kind I mentioned a moment or two ago, appropriate means and measurable effects.

Rare Cancers Bill

John Slinger Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 14th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) on bringing forward his important Bill. I also commend hon. Members across this House for their powerful and moving speeches, particularly those of my hon. Friends the Members for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn), for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh) and for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray), who showed that the love for a sibling or child persists forever and can be harnessed to bring about change.

I am speaking today because my constituent Mr Peter Realf contacted me about his son Stephen, who was training to be an RAF pilot when he was diagnosed with astrocytoma. He was just 19. Tragically, despite his cancer being described as “low-grade” and despite receiving treatment that prolonged his life, he died six years later, aged just 26. I cannot imagine the pain and sense of loss felt by Stephen’s family and friends, and my heart goes out to them and all those who have faced the consequences of this cruel disease.

Mr Realf and his family have campaigned tirelessly since Stephen’s death to address the baffling paradox that despite brain tumours killing more children and adults under 40 than any other cancer, and despite them robbing patients of more years of their life than any other cancer, only a fraction of the Government’s research funding into cancer is used for brain tumours at just 1.37% of national spend, according to the charity Brain Tumour Research.

Stephen Realf’s case is stark: a talented, hard-working and clearly impressive young man who died young, losing perhaps 50 years of life and 50 years of potential. A huge public petition and an article written by Stephen’s sister Maria led in 2015 to the then-new Petitions Committee of this House conducting its first inquiry. I challenge any right hon. and hon. Member to read the report’s conclusions from 2016—nine years ago—and not to conclude that, in general, little has improved since then.

We should be deeply concerned—though perhaps, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden has indicated, the appropriate emotion is a stronger one. We hear of the additional £40 million pledged by the last Government and how, according to reports, £28 million of it is yet to be released to scientists. After one of the relevant authorities, the National Institute for Health and Care Research, came to see us at the all-party parliamentary group on brain tumours recently, my colleagues and the campaigners, patients and families present still could not fathom just why the money had not been spent in all those years.

I am relatively new to this place, but I have been observing politics for a long time, and something about this issue does not fit. It does not feel right. Something is profoundly wrong. Where there should be outrage, there appears to be relative indifference—not to death and suffering, of course, but to the need for radical changes to get money flowing. Where there should be urgency among the authorities—for, after all, people are dying, often young—there appears to be a degree of inertia, and where there should be action, we often get lost in the chilling snowstorm of bureaucracy.

I am not impugning the decency, compassion or professionalism of officials, researchers or clinicians; they are of course committed to helping to cure, treat and prevent cancer. However, as with other examples of institutional failure, it does not take overt malice, just the absence of grip and tenacity in the face of injustice, or of challenging the status quo, for good things not to happen, or even for bad and preventable outcomes to occur.

I do not know why progress does not seem to be happening. What reasons could there possibly be for the continuing paradox of the underfunding of rare cancer research? We must find out the reasons and overcome those forces, or perhaps even vested interests, because the stakes could not be higher. Little has changed in terms of treatment and survivability since the 1960s. Patients with brain tumours do not have time on their side, as many hon. Members have said; sadly, most of those diagnosed die within five years.

The following statistics from Brain Tumour Research are stark, but, before I read them, I should say that I am glad of the progress on more common cancers, which have affected my family as they have every family. Brain Tumour Research states:

“Brain tumours kill more children than leukaemia. Brain tumours kill more men under 70 than prostate cancer and more women under 35 than breast cancer. Incidences of and deaths from brain tumours are increasing… At the current rate of spending, it could take 100 years for brain cancer to catch up with developments in other diseases and find a cure.”

That is why the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West is so needed. It offers practical steps to get more funding into research to take on and defeat those cancers.

Finally, I know my ministerial colleagues want only the best for patients, so I gently encourage them, if they have not already done so, to ask this question of officials: “Why is it that research into these cancers, which cause so much death and suffering among the young and rob so many people of so many years of life, are receiving so little funding?” Ministers should keep asking until they get a satisfactory answer. MPs should keep asking until we get a satisfactory answer. We should work together, cross-party if possible, to overcome obstacles and we should certainly pass this Bill. The pain, loss, concern and even anger must be channelled into urgent, substantive action. We owe it to the past, current and future victims of rare cancers and to their families.

NHS England Update

John Slinger Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend, and I echo what he said about the talents of people at NHS England. I did not take this decision with the Prime Minister lightly. Indeed, it was not my instinct coming into government, but it has been shaped by what I have seen and experienced over the past eight months. Clinical leadership is vital, and that is not just doctors; it is also nurses and other clinical leadership. We have a brilliant chief nursing officer, who remains in place and will be part of that clinical leadership team. I can assure my hon. Friend that we do not want any political interference in what should be decisions for clinicians. What we need is the right political leadership to give that clinical leadership the tools, power and freedom to do the job that only they can do, and that they do best.

[John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)]

This welcome reform cannot come quickly enough in Warwickshire where councillors, local health campaigners, I and others have been making the case for a doctor-led urgent treatment centre at our local hospital, the Hospital of St Cross, to complement the excellent nurse-led and GP out of hours service, but many of my constituents are concerned about having to travel to the larger hospital in Coventry and the long waiting times they find there. The integrated care board has a review of urgent care under way in Warwickshire, but I still do not know when it will be completed and my constituents want to know when urgent care at our local hospital will be upgraded. Does my right hon. Friend agree that his reforms to NHS England should equip ICBs more effectively to respond to local needs?

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his perseverance in bobbing for so long; they should prescribe it on the NHS. I say to my hon. Friend that this is why I strongly believe in local decision making to make sure services are configured and designed to meet the differing needs of local communities while providing the same standard and quality of care in every part of the country. He also described the frustration of people who will often, including in the future, necessarily be living some distance from their general hospitals; that is why we have to shift out of hospital with the NHS being not just the national health service but a neighbourhood health service, with as many services as possible closer to people’s homes and indeed in people’s homes. That is the exciting future that is up for grabs, and that is the future we will realise thanks to the reforms we are making today. I am delighted they have been greeted with such support right across the House.

Obesity: Food and Diet

John Slinger Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

A bariatric bed is a special big, strong bed used in hospitals for extremely obese people. When I was a medical student, there was no such thing as a bariatric bed—not invented, not needed. But then, hospitals did not have food banks for their staff either. So how have we got our relationship with food into such a mess?

The epidemic of obesity is a public health emergency costing billions. Millions of our citizens are dying early. The Government simply must act. This cannot be left to the market. We did it with smoking, and now we will do it with obesity. We have no choice. We know that at the heart of the matter is high-fat, high-sugar, high-salt, factory-produced food that is often ultra-processed, cheap, convenient, tasty and very profitable for a few very large food businesses. Nor must we forget that it is our poor citizens who are most affected—those who are cash-poor, time-poor and at high risk of a poor diet.

We cannot continue like this. The Government must act to change food habits. This is not the nanny state; this is simply good government. “Smoking kills,” it says on cigarette packets. Some food kills, too, so how about “The food in this packet will kill you if it is not part of a healthy, mixed diet”? Obesity is a massive issue for surgeons, increasing morbidity and mortality. Although we can staple stomachs or inject up to 3.5 million people with anti-obesity drugs, we all know that that is not the answer. Let us use the power of Government to legislate: warnings on food packets, breakfast clubs in schools, which we have already introduced, advertising bans, tax incentives, cooking education and an end to the dependence on the cheap, unhealthy food that blights the lives of so many of our citizens. We have no choice.

[John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way during a very interesting speech. Does he agree that the national curriculum review presents the Government with an opportunity to encourage and strengthen the healthy eating component of the relationships, sex and health education curriculum so that citizens and especially young people are empowered to make healthier decisions on eating?

[Peter Prinsley]

My hon. Friend’s intervention was not really an intervention, because I had reached the end of what I wished to say. Nevertheless, I thank him sincerely.

Hospice and Palliative Care

John Slinger Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler) and the Backbench Business Committee for enabling this important debate.

This morning, I visited Myton hospices’ Rugby Myton support hub, which, together with its two in-patient centres and teams providing many distinct services, gives valued care to my constituents in Rugby. I want to put on record my sincere gratitude to all the staff and volunteers. The team this morning briefed me on the services they provide at the hub, which I will briefly mention. They provide coffee mornings, counselling for patients and families, opportunities to enjoy arts and crafts and to hear music, physical exercise sessions, self-care advice, support for carers and much more. All are delivered with kindness, and all are supported by an amazing array of volunteers. This is all backed by incredible fundraisers, including the former mayor of Rugby, Councillor Maggie O’Rourke; Myton was her mayoral charity recently. Local communities often rise to the challenge of fundraising, and they recently helped Myton to secure £240,000 to recruit, train and pay five registered nurses, so that more people in Coventry and Warwickshire can access a hospice bed.

I hope the Minister will consider three points that arose from my visit. First, volunteers and good will are of course wonderful, but they can only go so far, so any additional long-term funding from the local ICB or central Government would go a very long way, particularly given that the charitable nature of hospices means that there can be a multiplier effect. Secondly, to dispel myths, today I saw that hospices are not just about the last few weeks or days of life. They give a huge range of support to people with life-limiting conditions, so that they can live better until the very end of their life. Furthermore, they are there to support families, and hospices wish to engage with people much earlier in their illnesses. Thirdly, on communications, I hope the Minister will consider the point that despite the best efforts of organisations such as Myton hospice, many people do not understand what hospices are and what services they provide, or that they are free and are not private providers in the traditional sense. What more can the Government do to help hospices educate the public about their services, particularly now that there is more of a spotlight on palliative care, following the recent vote on the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater)?

Income Tax (Charge)

John Slinger Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend the Chancellor inspired many people last week, including girls and women. The unfortunate comments from the new Leader of the Opposition about the first Budget by a woman Chancellor are not shared by the young women I have spoken to. My right hon. Friend inspired us MPs too, not merely with big-ticket items such as the core schools budget going up by £2.3 billion, but with a more subtle form of inspiration about the long term. It would be more popular in the short term simply to spend money on public services, but our Government have made difficult choices, such as £5.5 billion-worth of savings and ensuring that public money is spent wisely through the new office for value for money. My right hon. Friend has made tough decisions on tax, spending and welfare to restore our economic stability, which helps my constituents.

Freezing the small business multiplier for one year will protect more than 1,000 small businesses in Rugby constituency from inflationary bill increases. Thousands of my constituents will benefit from the increases in the national minimum wage and national living wage, boosting incomes by up to £1,400, and 1,100 carers in Rugby who are in receipt of carer’s allowance will benefit from the working limit being lifted, allowing them to earn more and still claim. Rugby’s 19,000 pensioners will see the state pension increase by 4.1% with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor maintaining the triple lock—that is more than twice the uplift given to people receiving benefits.

Some in my constituency have expressed concern about local hospital health provision. Labour founded the NHS—we will fix it and we will fund it. It is because of my right hon. Friend’s decisions that this Government can provide an extra £25.7 billion in two years to help cut waiting times, and £1.5 billion capital funding nationally for new surgical hubs and diagnostic scanners. That much-needed investment could not have happened had my right hon. Friend chosen immediate popularity by making unfunded promises that raised perfectly legitimate hopes among the public, just as the last Government did when they promised 40 new hospitals without having funding streams in place. The toxic legacy of that false hope is felt by the public, and expressed to every one of us in our inboxes. This Chancellor, this Labour party, this Government will restore faith in the very concept that government can improve lives.

It would perhaps have been more popular to pretend that there were no difficult decisions, only sunlit uplands, or that green shoots do not require watering and that public services can improve without proper investment. But we do not seek short-term popularity. This Budget lays the foundations for long-term economic stability, growth, investment and fairness, and enables us to begin delivering much-needed change to improve our constituents’ lives. As we do that, we will have the opportunity to earn the trust of the public we serve.

Access to Primary Healthcare

John Slinger Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

This really has been a vibrant and powerful debate. I thank the Liberal Democrats for using their Opposition day constructively to shine a searing spotlight on the challenges that our constituents face. Hon. Members made a series of outstanding contributions, but I thank in particular my hon. Friends the Members for Aylesbury (Laura Kyrke-Smith), for Bury North (Mr Frith), for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn), for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan), for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin), for Croydon East (Natasha Irons), for Lichfield (Dave Robertson), for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald), for Worthing West (Dr Cooper), for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales), for Thurrock (Jen Craft), for Gloucester (Alex McIntyre), for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley), for Blackpool South (Chris Webb) and for Hexham (Joe Morris) for demonstrating why our party always has been, and always will be, the champion of the NHS.

I also congratulate the hon. Members for North Devon (Ian Roome), for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) and for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon) on their excellent maiden speeches. It is quite shocking to note, however, that in spite of the vital importance of this debate to our constituents, there was not a single contribution from the Conservative Back Benches. [Hon. Members: “Shame!”] Not only do the Conservatives refuse to apologise for the last 14 years, but they have run for the hills. Their silence truly speaks volumes.

Labour Members deal with facts and the unvarnished truth. On the subject of today’s debate, the list of facts illustrating the appalling neglect and incompetence of the last 14 years is truly as long as my arm. If I were to pick out just one statistic to summarise the last 14 years, I might choose that the most common reason for children aged five to nine being admitted to hospital is tooth decay. It is a truly Dickensian state of affairs. I could also point to the UK’s decreasing GP numbers, as there are 1,500 fewer compared with seven years ago, against the backdrop of a rising population. Or I could pick the collapse in patient satisfaction from 80% in 2009 to a shocking 35% last year. Or I could single out the fact that more than 1,000 pharmacies have shut their doors since 2017, and that almost six pharmacies a week have left the market in the last year.

The charge sheet is so long that a month of debates in this Chamber could not cover the profound damage that has been done by 14 years of short-termism and sticking-plaster politics, and by the botched top-down reorganisation in 2012. The reality is that the Tories doused the house in petrol and covid lit the match.

[John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)]

The reaction to a proposed ward closure in my local St Cross hospital in Rugby shows how concerned the public are about the health system after 14 years of underinvestment by the last Government. In this case, however, the closure is because patients are being cared for closer to home. Does my hon. Friend agree that bringing more services into the community, and into smaller hospitals such as the one in my constituency, is integral to managing present and future demand, and to putting our NHS on a sustainable footing?

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This strategic shift from hospitals into the community will be vital and central to our 10-year plan for the future of our health and care system.

Primary care is the NHS’s front door, but the Tories spent 14 years bricking it over. Now it is walled off to millions of people across our country, so it falls to this Labour Government to tear down that wall. We know that there is not a second to waste, not least on mental health. It is unacceptable that so many children, young people and adults are not receiving the mental health care they need. We know that waits for mental health services are far too long, and we are determined to change that. We will recruit 8,500 additional mental health workers across child and adult mental health services, we will introduce a specialist mental health professional in every school, and we will roll out Young Futures hubs in every community.

We will reopen the front door to the NHS by rebuilding general practice on the firm foundations it needs to get the service back on its feet and fit for the future.