Under-age Vaping

Kirsten Oswald Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

It is very welcome that we are here today. There is surely nobody in this place who thinks that we should not be working to protect children and young people from the health harms of vaping. The SNP absolutely supports the motion that we are discussing today. I am also very glad that the SNP Scottish Government are taking this issue seriously, too. They are looking at tighter restrictions on vaping advertising and promotion, they have a tobacco action plan being published later this year, and an urgent review is under way of the environmental impacts. Certainly, the management of single-use vapes is something that significantly concerns me. The potential policy responses could include a ban—on a personal note, I sincerely hope that that is what happens.

I have been in a number of these debates and, usually, comments are made about smoking cessation. Just to be clear: I am very supportive of all measures that allow people to be supported to stop smoking. Reusable vapes are a potential option. My concerns are very significantly around disposable vapes, but we should look at this issue as broadly as possible. Countries around the world are already doing that. In Argentina, Japan and Thailand, there is a complete ban on e-cigarettes. In the Netherlands, production stopped on 1 July and sales will end on 1 October. China, which is the main exporter of these vapes worldwide, has itself banned the sale of flavoured e-cigarettes. As things stand, there are 35 countries, which covers around 41% of the world population, where e-cigarettes have been banned.

One of the reasons why I became interested in this issue was that a constituent of mine, Laura Young, drew it to my attention. She said that whenever she was out walking with her dog she saw these disposables discarded everywhere. Of course, once she said that to me, I could no longer walk anywhere without finding disposable vapes myself. They are everywhere. It is an incredible amount of litter. They are on streets, on beaches, and in our schools, as we have heard. I found one in the loo in Portcullis House yesterday. They are described as disposables, but these things, which are being thrown away so casually, are not disposable; they contain plastic waste, and rare and potentially harmful elements including lithium.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

I am greatly relieved that my hon. Friend has touched on the environmental consequences. I realise that the motion is about children and vaping, and I think there is scarce evidence that there is anything other than harm available to children from vaping, in terms of their respiratory and oral health. Quite apart from that, the clue is in the title: disposable vapes. Only 30% of the million or so that are consumed in the United Kingdom every week are recycled, and those that are dumped are littering our communities and environment with their heating elements, lithium batteries and plastic packaging. Those that end up in landfill contribute significantly to the 250 fires a year at landfill sites. There is literally nothing to recommend these abhorrent products, so why does she think that the Tory Government are dithering in this way?

[Kirsten Oswald]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and am delighted that he is as enraged as I am about the harm that these products are causing. I know that in his community people are equally as concerned as in mine. His comment bears reflecting upon, because how realistic is it that children will find ways to recycle this disposable product, or so-called disposable product, which is undoubtedly targeted at children, given that they are probably hiding it from their parents in the first place? There are no positive grounds for keeping these things about. I secured a debate last year focusing on the environmental impact, which bears reflecting on. My hon. Friend is right, so I am glad that he made the points that he did.

I am also deeply concerned about the impact on children and young people, because these vapes are so available, so inviting, and so increasingly used by younger people. I am particularly concerned about under-18s. The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), who opened the debate very powerfully, talked about the Health and Social Care Committee having heard from a headteacher about the significant proportion of children vaping regularly. If we speak to headteachers in any of our constituencies, they will say the same thing. I was also alarmed, though unfortunately not surprised, to hear him highlight issues of primary-aged children vaping. That is terrifying. It is why today’s motion needs to be taken seriously.

The Advertising Standards Authority says that

“adverts for e-cigarettes must be targeted responsibly”.

I am not sure that that is what is happening. Such ads must, apparently,

“not be directed at under-18s”.

Again, the ASA has a job of work to do there. I wonder, although I suspect that it is perhaps unable to, whether it would want to look at issues such as sports advertising. Blackburn Rovers—other teams may do this, but this is the only team that I am aware of that are doing it—are being sponsored by a vaping retailer, Totally Wicked, for the sixth season in a row. We would find it unacceptable if our football club came out with cigarette branding on their shirts. I cannot understand why it is any more acceptable for a football club to come out with vaping advertising. I am keen for the Minister, or Government Members, to address that.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

Would the hon. Lady be similarly outraged to know that the same company supports St Helens rugby football club, and called the stadium Totally Wicked?

[Kirsten Oswald]

I would be equally outraged. I know how much work the hon. Lady does in this regard. I am unsurprised to find that we are both enraged by the same thing. This is really unacceptable. If we are serious about dealing with the harms to children and young people, we really should expect sports clubs to be somewhere that they can see positive imagery and have positive influences. I recently visited a vaping shop near to where I live. I know they are sold in other outlets too, in corner shops and supermarkets, on Amazon and eBay, and we have heard about them being sold in a barbershop as well. They are not difficult to find, and they are so inviting. When I went into the shop, it looked lovely: the display was beautiful, with nice colours and names and all kinds of fancy shapes that looked like highlighters or lipsticks. I have seen some online that look like brightly coloured fidget spinners. These things are quite enticing, are they not? They are very attractive, and that is obviously deliberate.

I was interested to hear about the King’s College study on plain packaging, because anything that makes vapes less attractive to young people is obviously worth considering. I say that for many reasons, one being that I heard recently about young people purchasing disposable vapes to match their outfits. I must say that that had never occurred to me before, but why not? If they are purchasing them, they might want them to match their outfits, just as they might think about what flavour they would like, such as bubblegum or grape soda. The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish talked about them looking like an old-fashioned sweet shop, and he was right about that.

Disposable vapes are designed to be enticing, to draw young people in. They are throwaway and they are affordable. The right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) was absolutely right to describe them as pocket-money purchases. Parents will not always know what their children are purchasing with pocket money; presumably children throw disposable vapes away, as I have said, before the parents find them. As parents, we have no idea whether our children are using them. I hope mine are not, but none of us can know that, because they are so easy to find and so easy to throw away that we must be alive to the fact that we might not have the full picture.

Presumably we cannot all have the full picture, because, if we look at the statistics, in a recent YouGov/ASH survey the proportion of children aged between 11 and 17 who vape has gone up from 4% in 2020 to 7% in 2022, and the proportion of children who have tried vaping overall is now sitting at 16%. We have heard significantly higher figures than that cited in this debate.

I think it is reasonable to look for disposable vapes to be removed from sale. That is certainly what I would like to see. I am pleased to hear calls for retailers to ban single-use vapes in Scotland, where environmental and health charities have joined forces to call for an end to the sale of disposable vapes. Groups such as Keep Scotland Beautiful, ASH Scotland and the Marine Conservation Society are urging retailers to follow the good example of Waitrose, who I take my hat off to here, in banning the sale of those single-use products.

Waitrose did that because of reports suggesting that their popularity was soaring among people who had not previously smoked, as we have heard already, including the younger generation. It is really important that we examine the subject. I am pleased about the Scottish Government’s action in that regard and I echo Barry Fisher, the chief executive of Keep Scotland Beautiful, who also talks about a “litter emergency” and emphasises that the time to act is now.

The time to act is now also on the illicit vapes we have heard about already—the dodgy vapes and the chemicals within them. Lab research shows that they have up to twice the daily safe amount of lead and nine times the daily safe amount of nickel. There is also chromium in there. We do not want our children to be ingesting those substances, and those studies are based only on some vapes confiscated from a school in England, so we do not know what else is out there; we just know it should not be. Dodgy vapes have deeply concerning health impacts. In Scotland, there have been reports of illegal vapes confiscated from a school that left children coughing up blood. Which of us wants that for our children? We need to act.

It is deeply concerning—and that is before we even get into the notion of young people who have never previously smoked using disposable vapes and then graduating on to smoking cigarettes. We know that is an issue. The producers of vapes would have us believe they were intended to rectify and remedy that very problem, but it turns out to be the opposite that happens. The World Health Organisation has expressed significant concern about that, stating that children who use such products are three times more likely to use tobacco products in the future. If the Minister is looking for evidence, that is the kind of statistic he ought to bear in mind.

Huge profits are being made on the back of all those sales of vapes to children. Big business is being done here, but it is not always being done by the rules. The most popular brand for children is Elfbar, but in July an Observer investigation found that Elfbar had flouted the rules to promote its products to young people in the UK. Advertising videos and promotions on TikTok, for instance, were felt to be of concern. Some of those videos attracted hundreds of thousands of views, on a platform that is used by three quarters of 16 and 17-year-olds.

We have already heard about children’s doctors calling for a complete ban on disposable vapes. The hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), who is herself a children’s doctor, has spoken out about that. If we will not listen to the views of children’s doctors about the impact of vapes on children’s health, who will we listen to?

I am heartened that Humza Yousaf, our First Minister, says that a ban on disposable vapes is under consideration, and by the incredible hard work being done by the campaign group ASH, which absolutely deserves our thanks. I also thank the organisers of the TRNSMT festival, which took place in Glasgow last weekend, because they did not permit disposable vapes there, and I absolutely applaud them for that.

Less positively, however, I cannot thank the administration of East Renfrewshire Council, which is where I live. The motion, which I think is a good one, includes a passage about working with councils, and that is absolutely right. Of the 32 councils in Scotland, 28 supported motions calling for a ban on disposable vapes. Regrettably, East Renfrewshire Council was not one of them. It did not support the ban, seemingly because a ban was supported by the SNP. I am really unimpressed by that. It is a poor show from that Labour Administration and their Conservative enablers that they could not bring themselves in step with the whole of the rest of the country and, I suspect, with the Members who are present in the debate. That seems somewhat ironic given the motion that is before the House. I hope that they will reflect on that and change their mind, and that we will get a full set of councils to support the ban—although the numbers so far are pretty impressive.

I hope that the Scottish Government come to the conclusion that these things are too dangerous and damaging, although I am grateful for their sterling work so far. I hope that the UK Government will listen to what is being said to them. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Dave Doogan), I was not entirely convinced that a huge degree of listening was going on, but I hope that I am wrong about that and that we will hear about a very serious focus on the matter. The industry will not take the steps that are needed; politicians need to do that. Disposable vapes are a danger to the environment and to our young people. It is high time that we took them off the shelf.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

As the Chair of said Committee, I am very conscious of the importance of these issues, and I am pleased to see them debated in the House. I welcome the debate, but anywhere I have seen this issue debated, including in my cross-party Select Committee—many of its members are here—I do not see an awful lot of politics in it. I have a lot of time for the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), but I thought that he was uncharacteristically partisan in his remarks—a Labour Government this and a Tory Government that. I thought that that was misplaced, but maybe that’s just me.

Our Committee heard from the chief medical officer back in February at the start of our major inquiry on prevention. Professor Whitty highlighted then what he called “an appalling situation” whereby vaping, which he described as

“an addictive product with…unknown consequences for developing minds”,

is being marketed to children. I absolutely agree with him that that is totally unacceptable and out of control. As a parent of secondary school-age children, I see, hear and read letters home about the subject in a way that I never imagined I would only a couple of years ago, let alone when I started in this House 13 years ago.

Professor Whitty noted that

“rates of vaping have doubled in the last couple of years among children”,

which is consistent with what we are all hearing as constituency MPs. That situation cannot be allowed to continue, which is why I agree with the part of the Opposition’s motion that calls for plain packaging for vaping. The record will show that I most certainly did not vote against new clause 4 to the Health and Care Act, tabled by the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), in November 2021. I support that part of the motion—it is consistent and in line with what happens for cigarettes. I do not think anybody would argue that we should go back to the days of the Marlboro Man and branding on cigarette packets, so I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to take that point away.

[Kirsten Oswald]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way as he is getting into the meat of his speech. Does he share my concerns about the impact that advertising on sports kits could have on any attempts to bring down the number of children vaping?

[Steve Brine]

Yes, I do. I suspect that point may be raised later in the debate by one of my fellow Committee members, if she catches your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Blackburn Rovers issue has been raised, and it is not a historical sports deal, either: some may think that it was something that happened last season, but they have renewed it for the new season, which in my opinion is the opposite of “totally wicked”. I have young children who use that expression, and I can see why that would be attractive to a company wishing for Blackburn Rovers to carry its advertising on their shirts—I can only think that is the company’s motivation. I would ask Blackburn Rovers to look themselves in the mirror about that deal as much as the company that is doing the advertising, because it takes two to tango. Yes, I am concerned about that.

A couple of weeks ago, the Health Committee held one of our topical oral evidence sessions on youth vaping. We did so because we are very concerned about increasing media reports of children taking up vaping, as well as what we are hearing in the House and from our own constituents. During that evidence session, we heard from representatives from the health policy world and the medical and education sectors about the impact of the rising trend in child vaping. As was mentioned by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish, we heard directly from a headteacher from the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson)—a fellow Committee member—about the disruption that vaping is causing in her school. She did indeed talk about the impact on education of students vaping in the toilets and setting off the fire alarms.

We heard about the cost associated with putting heat sensors on top of fire alarm sensors—teachers have got enough to be doing! We heard about the disruption, which has an impact on education. During exam season recently, there were examples of exams being impacted by alarms being set off. As the headteacher told us,

“I became really concerned about interruptions to the exam season, so I had to change the smoke sensors to heat sensors really quickly to prevent us being in and out while students were sitting GCSEs and A-levels.”

That beggars belief. Young people have suffered enough in the past few years, their education has been disrupted enough, and now this—an epidemic of vaping that we are allowing to happen.

I raised the same point with the children’s doctor who gave evidence to the Select Committee. The issue of toileting in schools has wider impacts than just the disruption of education: children do not want to use the toilets, because they do not want to walk into an environment where people are vaping. They are worried about that, so toilets have become off-limits places. There is a much wider issue around toileting in schools and schools closing toilets. There is a very good charity called ERIC that works in the area of children’s bowel and bladder health, and without getting into too much detail, there is an impact on the retentiveness of children who do not use the toilet when they are at school. That can have serious medical implications, so once again, it beggars belief that we find ourselves in this situation because of vaping.

In my opinion, the industry has not gone anywhere near far enough in ensuring that its products do not appeal to the young demographic, and it is disingenuous for it to claim otherwise. Shops are able to display wide ranges of vapes in colourful, flavoured varieties and in locations that do not usually sell similar products: for example, we heard about vapes being sold in chicken shops and pound shops. That is in sharp contrast to tobacco products, which must be locked away and packaged in standardised plain packaging containing health warnings.

Evidence given to us by ASH from its surveys shows that flavour is a reason but not the main reason why young people who have never smoked start vaping. The most common reason for trying vaping among young never smokers is “just to give it a try”, at 54%, followed by “other people use them so I join in”, at 18%, and then there is “I like the flavours”, at just 12%. It is worth putting that statistic on the record, because there was a bit of a debate earlier between those on the Front Benches about flavours.

I have a few other points. Vapes are an age-controlled product; it is not legal for people under the age of 18 to buy them. There are a number of ways that young people obtain vapes anyway—for example, through the lack of age verification in shops or by buying them from other sellers who are often older teenagers who buy in bulk to sell them on, sometimes in school settings. I know schools take a very tough line on that, and rightly so, but teachers have better things to do than play trading standards officers on campus. We are particularly concerned in the Select Committee about online ordering, which is an area I think would benefit from more Government attention in order to avoid the law being circumvented. Overall, there is a need for much better enforcement of the law on not selling the products to under-18s. It is crucial that trading standards officers tackle non-compliant vendors, and of course are resourced to do so. I know the Minister is seized of that, and he rightly put that in his recent tobacco plan. I say tobacco plan, but I mean the tobacco strategy; as someone who has written a tobacco control plan, I was careful about using that word.

Price is another important issue, particularly the price of disposable vapes, as others have mentioned. They are much cheaper than tobacco products—much cheaper—in part because they are not subject to the same levels of excise duty. I understand that that is clearly not a matter for the Minister on the Front Bench, but maybe he could take that up with his Treasury colleagues. ASH told us that there is evidence that children are highly price-sensitive when it comes to buying these products, and that adding an excise charge of £5 on the battery, which is what we have often heard about, would act as a significant deterrent.

There are a lot of young people in the Gallery, and I wonder what they are thinking listening to this debate. I would urge right hon. and hon. Members to talk to young people, as I am sure we all do, either in their own homes or in the schools in our constituencies, and to ask them their motivation for vaping and what story they know about vaping, because their stories are interesting. I dropped into a vape shop in my constituency just the other day. I made a full disclosure: I told them who I was and that I chair the Health and Social Care Committee. High street vape shops are often very responsible in what they do, and this shop was very clear about how it approaches young people who come in. It told me about a product that basically looked like a bag of Skittles—other nice sweets are available. Skittles took the producer to court and the producer then had to withdraw that product. It does not take a genius to understand why someone might want to brand a vape to look like a bag of Skittles. Popping into vape shops and talking to them about how they do their business is time well spent on a constituency Friday.

To conclude, I have so many serious concerns about disposable vapes and the way they are marketed to children. However, I have to say that I do not support a total ban because, as ASH told the Select Committee in evidence, they can play an important part in helping people to quit smoking. We have to be very careful about a broad-brush ban, but the Government need to step forward even more than they already have, and this debate may help the Minister to form his views. I know he is personally very seized of this issue; he has spoken to me about it on a number of occasions.

The Government need to stay on this issue as an urgent case. A number of friends who also have children at secondary school have asked me, “What are the Government doing about this?” because they know what I do. The concern out there in parent land is growing by the day, and we parents are concerned—very concerned—about this. We on the Select Committee are also very concerned about it, and we will be writing to the Minister and the Secretary of State off the back of our session a couple of weeks ago to set out some of our concerns and some of the recommendations we may make. I hope the Government will take that on board, and come back to us promptly as part of the ongoing consultation the Minister has told us about.

I agree with some of the interventions that have been made. The Khan review was commissioned by the Government and it is a robust piece of work containing with lots of evidence. There is an awful lot to be seized of. I appreciate that it is challenging to get grid slots and get stuff through No.10, but the Prime Minister has personally identified himself with this issue and is concerned about it. I therefore say to the Minister that in that regard he would be pushing at an open door if he banged on a black door with a No.10 on it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I thank the Labour Front-Bench team for a great choice of debate today. I thank, too, all those Members who have made nice comments about me today. I agree with the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), who said that it is a shame to see children’s health being made a party political issue, because surely everybody in this House, from every party, wants children’s health to be as good as possible. In that vein I declare an interest as both a consultant paediatrician and a member of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

I was pleased to see the shadow Minister talk about Laranya Caslin, the headteacher of St George’s Academy in Sleaford, who spoke so eloquently at the Select Committee about her experiences of children vaping in her school. Let me reflect on some of the things that she said. She said that there was heavy peer pressure in school encouraging children to vape. She said that vaping was seen to be cool and that children had to vape to feel that they were part of the in-group. She also talked about how it has a higher burden of addiction. She said that, sometimes, children would go out at break time to have a cigarette, or to share a cigarette with friends, but now they vape not just during break times but need to top up during lessons. That continual top-up is something that we see in Parliament, too. Yesterday, while eating in the Tea Room, a Member of the House was vaping at the table. It must be said that we did have quite a long session of votes yesterday. During voting, in the Labour Members’ cloakroom, a Member of the Opposition Front Bench was sat vaping. We are seeing people topping up anywhere and everywhere it would seem, and that is something that I would like to see stop.

As many Members have mentioned, the flavours and colours of vapes are very child-friendly: there are even unicorn flavours, which I struggle to believe are directed at teenagers, never mind adults. My 12-year-old would not thank you for anything with a unicorn on, because that is very much for younger children. Indeed, we saw in the Healthwatch survey that 11% of 10 and 11-year-olds are already vaping. That grew to 42.4% of 16 to 17-year-olds, with a gradual increase during the teenage years. Laranya Caslin also told us that flavours are important to the peer pressure on children to vape. She talked about how children would discuss, “Have you tried the cherry cola? Have you tried the unicorn milkshake? Have you tried the green gummy bear?” It is the flavours that enable that discussion to take place among peers, which encourages children.

I asked the industry representative, “Why do you need these flavours? Why can’t you make them basic mint flavour, no flavour at all, or tobacco flavour?” He said that when people smoke they lose their sense of taste to an extent. Indeed, the NHS website says that one of the benefits of stopping smoking is that after 48 hours a sense of taste will start to return. What the industry has found, it told me, is that if it has tobacco or plain flavoured vapes, people will move off smoking on to the vape, but when their tastebuds return they will not like the vape anymore and will discontinue their vape use. That is of course what we want them to do, but it is perhaps not what the industry wants them to do. Making it cherry cola flavoured, bubble gum flavoured, or whatever flavour the person likes to inhale means that they will continue to be addicted to that product and continue to use it. I encourage the Minister to consider that when she considers banning flavours, or which flavours should be allowed to be used.

The ten-minute rule Bill that I introduced on 8 February this year would have banned disposables. I understand that the Minister has challenges in defining a disposable in a way that the industry, which has such a heavy financial interest in the product, cannot get around and make the legislation weak quickly. I look for an update in how that is going, but 1.3 million are disposed of every week. We have heard already about the fires that they can cause, and the fact that most of them are not recycled. I understand that they are very difficult to recycle, because the nicotine salts leak into the plastic. It is not like a plastic water bottle, which can be easily recycled if it is disposed of properly. These vapes cannot be, because they become a hazardous waste, because the nicotine has leaked into the plastic itself.

[Kirsten Oswald]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that the whole way these things are designed seems as if it is to prevent them from being recycled? They are impossible to take to bits. They contain, as she said, plastic, which is then infused with other substances. There are lithium batteries, and all manner of things. How would one possibly go about recycling that properly? I think that the answer is that one could not unless one were a specialist.

[Dr Johnson]

The hon. Lady is right: these things are incredibly difficult to recycle, and since 70% of children use disposable vapes, and they are the most attractive and cheapest for children to use, it is increasingly important that we ensure that they are not available. The call to ban disposables has been backed by a wide variety of people, including the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, of which I am a member, the Children’s Commissioner, and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. There is a widespread desire across all parties, and across communities, to see these products banned.

The industry said at the Select Committee that a ban will drive the industry underground and make things illicit, but as we heard from the hon. Lady earlier, that is already happening. There are already illicit vapes. When a school in my constituency confiscated five vapes and the police tested them, they found antifreeze and all sorts of products, including trichloroethylene, which was banned before I was born. All those types of products are contained in vapes already, so that cat is very much already out of the bag and should not dissuade us from getting rid of these disposable products.

We also heard on the Health and Social Care Committee about the health challenges. We hear that vapes are 95% safer than smoking. The industry continues to repeat that statistic. Where does it come from? How could anyone possibly quantify that? It comes from 2013, when a group of people who were not specifically experts in tobacco control got together and had a discussion. They then published a paper. Let me read something that was published in The Lancet at the time, which was more than 10 years ago. The editorial of The Lancet said:

“But neither PHE nor McNeill and Hajek report the caveats that Nutt and colleagues themselves emphasised in their paper. First, there was a ‘lack of hard evidence for the harms of most products on most of the criteria’. Second, ‘there was no formal criterion for the recruitment of the experts’. In other words, the opinions of a small group of individuals with no prespecified expertise in tobacco control were based on an almost total absence of evidence of harm. It is on this extraordinarily flimsy foundation that PHE based the major conclusion and message of its report.”

The Lancet also noted that

“one of the authors of the Nutt paper…reports serving as a consultant to…an e-cigarette distributor”,

and that another

“reports serving as a consultant to manufacturers of smoking cessation products.”

In the Westminster Hall debate on 29 June I asked the Minister to look further into the veracity of the claim that vaping is 95% safer, and whether, given that that study was 10 years ago, the modern evidence for that still stacks up. I look to the Minister for an update on how they are getting on with that, because we heard in the Health and Social Care Committee that there are significant health impacts for children, with eight children hospitalised from St George’s Academy in Sleaford alone.

We also heard about children being frightened to go into toilets, as the Select Committee Chair said. Some of those children were frightened to do so because they found that when they did, it triggered their asthma symptoms. Those are children who do not vape, but who have asthma and are frightened to go into the toilets because there is so much vaping vapour left in the toilets by other children that it is triggering their asthma and making them unwell. Some of these children are unable to go to the toilet all day, which leads them to have problems not only with asthma, but with urinary retention, which potentially leaves them at risk of urinary infection and incontinence issues in later life. It is for that reason that Dr Stewart from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health told us that she supported a ban on the use of vaping in public places.

I would also like the Minister to look at the use of accessories. On Etsy.com today, under the categories “girly smoking accessories” or “cute smoking accessories”, for £7.78—within the pocket money range—one can buy a teddy bear vape stand. It is a tiny teddy bear that people can stand their vape in when they are not using it. Will the Minister look at whether such items are suitable for sale, given that they are essentially there to attract children to this activity?

Moving on to advertising, we have a bizarre situation where Transport for London banned an advert for “Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding” that initially featured a picture of a three-tier wedding cake, because it would encourage people to eat fat, salt and sugar and that might drive the obesity crisis. That was on the tube, yet TfL buses have many adverts for vaping, including ones that appear to me personally to make vaping look cool and something to be aspired to.

I think TfL’s priorities are all wrong. The London Bus Advertising group states, as part of the group’s advertising to encourage people to put their adverts on the buses, that 5.8 million people would see the buses per week. I would ask those on the shadow Front Bench to use their good offices with the Labour Mayor of London to consider whether he can influence the chair of TfL to remove not just cake adverts, but vaping adverts from places such as tubes, buses and taxis, where they may be seen by children.

In the Minister’s opening remarks he talked about tobacco track and trace, and I wonder whether he is planning to bring in the same for vaping.

The other thing I want to talk about is taxation. Other hon. Members have talked about the price of disposable vapes and how they are accessible with pocket money. Very rarely comes an opportunity for a Chancellor to bring in a tax that will promote the public’s health, still make vaping cheaper than smoking, protect our children’s health and be relatively popular, yet raise revenue. While we wait to ban the disposable versions, I encourage the Chancellor to consider adding at the next fiscal event perhaps £5 to the price of a vape, to move them out of the pocket money range.

In summary, the Minister needs to look at a whole range of measures to challenge children’s vaping, including price, location, sale and use, colours, flavours, disposable items, advertising, education and enforcement.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

I join Members from across the House in expressing concern about the way in which vaping is marketed to, and taken up by, children.

We have heard that vaping is a useful tool to help people to quit smoking, and that it is safer than smoking tobacco and cuts down the chances of developing conditions such as cancer. However, the Liberal Democrats are deeply concerned by the rise and prevalence of single-use disposable vapes, which are explicitly targeted at young people, be it through the use of brightly coloured advertisements, a range of playful colours or their placement near the front of supermarkets. We must ensure that young people do not become addicted to those products, and that vapes do not become a gateway to smoking. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), who, during her excellent speech, referred to the location of vape bars in supermarkets. I will expand on that point by talking a little about my own experience of it.

A few months ago, a parent of a student at Tiverton High School in Devon reached out to me as he was deeply concerned by the rise in the theft of vapes from our local Morrisons supermarket, which is just a short walk from Tiverton High School, making it easily accessible before and after school, and perhaps during lunch breaks. I visited the store and found that the vape stand was indeed right next to the shop entrance, offering a range of single-use disposable vapes. My staff spoke to the staff at the store, and it emerged that that spot was, yes, chosen by the vendor. The vendor specifically insisted on the vape stand being at the front of the shop in that way, and paid extra for it. As is the case in other supermarkets, the security team were not regularly stationed by the front of the shop, so it seemed ludicrous to me and my team that those products were placed so close to the door and left unprotected.

We took up the cause and campaigned with community representatives, including those from Tiverton High School, and spoke with staff from Morrisons to get that changed. After a short investigation, the store offered first to have a security guard stand next to the vape stand, but clearly, that was not enough. I am pleased to say that, after a lot of pressure, the vapes are now kept safely behind security doors, which are locked during school opening and closing periods on weekdays, meaning that vapes can be bought only from the kiosk.

That is very welcome news. I thank and pay tribute to Frazer Gould, from my part of Devon, who raised this issue with me. I do not think it should take a constituent lobbying a Member of Parliament, and that Member of Parliament getting directly involved, to ensure that those addictive products are not left openly accessible to young people.

[Kirsten Oswald]

The hon. Member is making an excellent speech. It is very helpful of him to point out the constructive actions of his constituent in this regard, although he is correct to say that it is we who should act. We should appreciate all the constituents of ours who are very focused on this, including my constituent Laura Young, who has done so much work to try to get vapes off our streets.

[Richard Foord]

I am grateful to the hon. Member. I also pay tribute to other constituents of mine: many of the young people who attend Tiverton High School. I do not want to mischaracterise them as people who are only out to steal vape bars from the supermarket at lunch times. I have been to that school several times, and there are some brilliant pupils there. Many of them are aware of the risks of becoming addicted to vape bars.

The campaigners, the high school and my team have worked with Morrisons and we have got that arrangement in place, but that is clearly just one arrangement with one supermarket. What we definitely need to do is think about single-use vape bars in the round. It is clear that we need to ban the sale of single-use disposable vapes, clamp down on the appealing packaging and the advertising of those products, and ensure that the shameless vaping companies cannot get our children hooked on those addictive devices.

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)]

One of the great pleasures of being tail-end Charlie in these debates is that one has the opportunity to sit through and listen to every contribution. The disadvantage is getting nudged to hurry up by those on the Front Bench. So, I have torn up my original speech, Madam Deputy Speaker, and will focus instead on the bits from the contributions of others that you did not have the opportunity to hear yourself.

There have been lots of interesting suggestions on how we can solve this problem, which we all agree needs to be addressed. I am a father of teenage children as well, and I share the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine). I have experience of my own children’s friends using vapes—their friends, I hasten to add.

[Kirsten Oswald]

That’s what they all say!

[Jerome Mayhew]

As the hon. Lady says, that is what they all say. Obviously that is wholly inappropriate, but part of the problem in reaching the correct solution to this shared concern has been demonstrated by the richness of the debate we have had today.

All sorts of suggestions have been made. My non-exhaustive list indicates that some hon. Members said that we should ban flavours. Some of them said that we should ban all flavours; others said that we should ban only flavours that are targeted directly at young palates. There have been suggestions that we should ban disposable vapes, or that we should require bland packaging for vapes, although others suggested that the issue is not so much the packaging as the fact that they should be hidden behind closed doors. There has been a suggestion that we should increase the cost of vapes, but that was controversial—the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon) rightly pointed out that for adults seeking to give up smoking who are on very limited means, the cost of vapes is a very relevant consideration.

[Jerome Mayhew]

I am grateful for that intervention. I do not have skin in the game about whether it is better to have a higher cost or a lower cost, but my hon. Friend’s intervention has highlighted my fundamental point, which is that this is a complex area where we need evidence to base our policy on.

It has been suggested that we should crack down on marketing. Others have suggested that we should increase education in schools, and there is a wider debate about schools policy and the use of loos in schools. There are other concerns, overriding all of these, about what impact our actions in relation to vapes—including single-use vapes—could have on the ability of adults to give up smoking, in order to continue the downward trend of smoking addiction in this country. These are serious and interrelated issues. If this debate were to result in a Division, there is no way that I could support the Labour motion, which focuses solely on banning branding and advertising for the young, because it may not go far enough. It may just focus on one little area, when the richness of the debate on both sides has highlighted how much wider and more complex the issue is.

As such, what we are really talking about is not so much our concerns about vaping, including by children: the main issue is, “How should we make our law?” It is a given on both sides of the Chamber that action should be taken, and the first speech on behalf of the Government, made by the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O'Brien) made it clear that the Government have already acted and are intending to go further. In fact, the Secretary of State said at Health questions yesterday that the Government were looking to go further, particularly on single-use disposables. It is not a question of whether we are going to act: the question is, on what basis do we act? For my money, we should act on the evidence and not solely on anecdote, important though that is.

[Kirsten Oswald]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I would gently say that the hon. Lady has made a long contribution, and I do have two other speakers to get in. That is the only problem.