Baby Loss (Public Health Guidelines)

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

May I congratulate the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince) on securing the debate? As an officer of the all-party group on smoking and health, I must congratulate him on the length of time that he has for this debate. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that we would get more than a one-and-a-half hour debate in Westminster Hall for such a matter.

The hon. Gentleman rightly pointed out the dangers of smoking in pregnancy. I do not plan to fill up these three and a half hours—I can see some smiles of relief—but I will pick up one or two issues that he raised. The Minister knows that I and many other Members have been calling for the new tobacco control plan for quite a while, since the last one finished at the end of 2015. The word I would add to that, because things do move on, is “comprehensive”; it ought to be a comprehensive tobacco smoking control plan. There are areas where that could help very much indeed.

Smoking in pregnancy is a massive issue that is obviously caused by nicotine addiction. For many years, the only way that people could meet that addiction, other than with chewing gum and patches, was by using cigarettes. Hon. Members will know that Public Health England published a report on e-cigarettes in August 2015, saying that they were 95% safer than the tobacco in cigarettes as a means of taking in nicotine. It is pretty obvious to me that consumers are moving to e-cigarettes on a vast scale, and the Government are also moving towards e-cigarettes to look into how they can help in certain situations.

I recently tabled the following written question:

“To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps are being taken by (a) his Department, (b) the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency and (c) Public Health England to encourage research into the use of e-cigarettes.”

Although the Minister may not have direct responsibility for this, I would like to tell him that I am very pleased with the answer, which I received today and which says that his Department is “working closely” with all the organisations

“to encourage research into the use of electronic cigarettes…and monitor the emerging evidence. PHE’s next updated evidence report on e-cigarettes is expected to be published before the end of the 2017. In addition to the publication…PHE have partnered with Cancer Research UK and the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies to develop a forum that brings together policy makers, researchers, practitioners and the non-governmental organisation representatives to discuss the emerging evidence, identify research priorities and generate ideas for new research projects, thereby enhancing collaboration between forum participants.”

I am sorry for going on about that, but it is a comprehensive answer that talks about identifying research priorities. We could not have a better advocate for such a priority than the statistics on the effects of smoking tobacco in pregnancy read out by the hon. Member for Colchester. The people involved, including PHE, which is doing a magnificent job, ought to be looking at whether smoking in pregnancy could be one area for comprehensive research. Perhaps we could replace the cigarette—a mechanism for satisfying nicotine addiction that we all know is very bad for us—and use something like e-cigarettes to satisfy the addiction in pregnant women without the risk to the individual woman and her child.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing this up, and I congratulate the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood), on the answer I received today. We should be ensuring that we look into these areas in some detail to ensure that we can avoid the awful statistics that the hon. Gentleman read out.