Asked by: Mike Hancock (Independent - Portsmouth South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the positive and negative effects of e-cigarettes on people with asthma.
Answered by Jane Ellison
No such assessment has been made.
Asked by: Mike Hancock (Independent - Portsmouth South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of research on the efficacy and safety of e-cigarettes as a smoking cessation aid.
Answered by Jane Ellison
According to the ASH Smokefree GB survey, around two million adults in Great Britain currently use e-cigarettes. A third are ex-smokers who have given up completely, and a further third are using them as part of a quit attempt.
While e-cigarettes are not completely without risk, they carry a far lower risk to health than smoking tobacco. A recent Cochrane Review found that e-cigarettes can help smokers to quit or reduce their smoking and the National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training (NCSCT) advice to local stop smoking services is that they should be open to helping smokers who want to quit smoking with the help of e-cigarettes, especially in those that have tried, but not succeeded, in stopping smoking with the use of licenced stop smoking medicines.
Public Health England (PHE) is responsible for reviewing the evidence on e-cigarettes and providing evidence-based recommendations to inform the Government’s future thinking. In May 2014 PHE published an expert report from Professor John Britton, one of the UK’s leading respiratory physicians and tobacco researchers (available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/311887/Ecigarettes_report.pdf).
Asked by: Mike Hancock (Independent - Portsmouth South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will assess the potential merits of signing a covenant with Portsmouth City Council to prevent the land at the St James' Hospital site being developed.
Answered by Dan Poulter
This is a matter for NHS Property Services (NHS PS).
NHS PS has advised that there is no operational rationale for a covenant to restrict the future use and development of surplus land and buildings at the site.
We understand there are local proposals, under the St Mary’s and St James’ Estate Project in Portsmouth, aiming:
- to make St Mary’s Community Health Campus the focus of community care services in Portsmouth;
- to retain mental health facilities at St James’ Hospital;
- to reduce substantial areas of unused space at both sites;
- to dispose of surplus land and buildings at St James’ and invest in St Mary’s and other NHS facilities in the city, and
- to generate savings of circa £3 million in the ongoing cost of running the NHS-owned and occupied estate.
As part of the rationalisation plans, we are advised surplus land and buildings at St James’ Hospital will be released for redevelopment and this will take place over two phases.