Smoking

Lord Patel Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Blackstone (Lab)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests as set out in the register. Would the Minister agree that smoking in pregnancy has enormously damaging effects, leading to much poorer birth outcomes than for mothers who do not smoke? Would he also agree that incentives to pregnant women not to smoke have been very effective? In the light of this, could he give a guarantee that the existing scheme, which comes to an end this year, will be continued with adequate resources, so that it is not in any way disrupted?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I totally agree with the noble Baroness on the importance of stopping smoking—always, but especially during pregnancy. In fact, we have a maternity debate coming straight after this, where this will be one of the things that we discuss. I hope, from showing that we are putting all this spend in place, that we are backing everything that works. As long as the anti-smoking in pregnancy measure continues to work, that will be one of the major features to make sure that we are continuing to stop all activity, but especially in pregnant ladies.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, in the light of the last question, I will change my question. What assessment have the Government made of the long-term harm that vaping will cause, particularly to young people?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

The honest answer is that we do not know yet, and that is a problem. As we know, a number of these things take time to play through. That is why we want to make sure we take a precautionary approach. In this legislation, we aim to really stop anything that is targeted at young people in terms of vaping. We see vaping as an important tool to help people quit smoking, but we are equally sure that we never want anyone to start vaping. That is why we will also look at banning anything that targets young people, such as flavouring and packaging. We want to stop anything targeted at youth vaping.