Electronic Cigarettes

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Craig Whittaker

Thursday 29th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Neil O’Brien)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Latham.

I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), who is a former colleague in the Department for Health and Social Care. I thank her not only for this debate and her brilliant speech, which was full of interesting observations and ideas, striking and concerning anecdotes, and great wit, but for her work in really driving the debate on vaping in recent months and years. She has been a leading voice in this area. Likewise, I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker) for his interesting insights.

Before I get into the main body of my speech, I will address some of the specific issues raised. My hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham asked about the availability of prescription products. The reason they are not available is that the producers have not come forward with them at this stage. We remain hopeful that that will happen, but we are reliant on commercial companies wanting to do it. That is not about concerns that it is less safe than smoking; it is just about commercial partners bringing that forward for approval.

The SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands), pointed out that, interestingly, vaping products are not available in China, even though it exports them to the rest of the world. I do not think that that has as much to do with the Chinese Communist party’s position on public health as it does with the fact that it gets huge revenues from its ownership of the tobacco industry, which is still extremely big in China. I think it has more to do with that than with an enlightened view on the relative safety of vaping and smoking.

The Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), asked specifically what we are doing on smoking. Smoking rates came down from some 40% in the 1970s to 21% in 2010, and they are now at a record low of 13%. That is partly because we have doubled excise duties and brought in a minimum excise tax on the cheapest cigarettes, but it is also because we continue to take further measures, including the measures I announced recently, such as the help for a million smokers to “swap to stop”, which is an innovative, world-first policy, and our provision of health incentives to help those smoking during pregnancy to stop. We know from partners in local areas that evidence-based policy works. Much has been done and there is yet more to do in the future.

I absolutely understand the concerns, and I am just as motivated as my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham by the challenge of youth vaping. Until recently, our regulations, such as the minimum age of sale, advertising restrictions and the cap on nicotine levels, had been holding down vaping rates. However, over the last two years we have started to see a surge in the use and promotion of cheap, colourful products that do not always comply with our regulations. As hon. Members have mentioned, there has been a sharp increase in children vaping and the awareness of vaping. That is of great concern to me, for exactly the same reason that it concerns my hon. Friend.

Despite its high effectiveness as a tool to help adults quit smoking, we are absolutely aware of the risks that vapes pose to children. Vapes are not risk-free. Nicotine is highly addictive, it can be harmful and there are unanswered questions on long-term use, as raised by my hon. Friend. As Professor Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, said:

“If you smoke, vaping is much safer; if you don’t smoke, don’t vape”.

Last month, the Prime Minister announced several new measures to tackle youth vaping, including taking steps to close the loophole in our laws that allows the vaping industry to give out free samples of vapes to under-18s. Recent data suggests that 2% of 11 to 15-year-old ever vapers—approximately 20,000 of them—said that they were given it by a vape company, so we will stop that.

Secondly, the Prime Minister announced that we will update the health education curriculum to teach kids about the risks of vaping, as called for by my hon. Friend, just as schools do for the risks of smoking and excessive drinking. To support that, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities is producing a new resource pack for schools on vaping for the start of the new academic year. The resources have been informed by research with teachers and young people. The activities will feature films made with young people in which they will talk in their own words about the issues around vaping, as well as a clear presentation of the latest evidence. Those resources build on other content we have already produced for young people, including on the Frank and Better Health websites, and input into educational resources produced by partners including the Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education Association.

The Prime Minister also announced that we will review the rules on selling nicotine-free vapes to under-18s, to ensure that our rules keep pace with what is happening in the industry, and review the rules on issuing fines to shops selling vapes to under-18s, to allow local trading standards to issue on-the-spot fines and fixed penalty notices more easily. That will complement existing fine and penalty procedures and cover both illegal and underage sales for vapes and tobacco. Those steps build on measures we are already undertaking.

Earlier this year, in April, I announced new measures to step up our efforts to stop kids getting hooked on vaping. First, we launched a call for evidence on youth vaping to identify opportunities to reduce the number of children accessing and using vape products, and to explore where Government can go further. That explored a range of issues, several of which were touched on by my hon. Friend, including the appearance and characteristics of vapes, the marketing and promotion of vapes, and the role of social media, as touched on by the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North. It sought to better understand the vape market, looking at issues such as the price of low-cost products, mentioned by my hon. Friend, and the environmental impact of vapes. The call for evidence closed on 6 June, and Department of Health and Social Care officials have begun to carefully examine the responses. We will be publishing our response in early autumn, identifying and outlining areas where we can go further.

I also announced in April that we are going further to enforce the existing rules on vaping. I announced a specialised illicit vaping enforcement squad, which is a dedicated team to tackle underage vape sales and the illicit products that young people have access to. That will hold companies to account and enforce our current rules. We are providing an extra £3 million to trading standards, which will help share knowledge and intelligence across the country. It will undertake test purchasing, disrupt illicit supply, including from organised crime gangs, and remove illegal products from shelves at our borders, which will tackle the horrifying issue raised by my hon. Friend about the content of some illicit vapes. There will be more testing to ensure compliance with our rules, and we will be bolstering the training capacity of trading standards too.

Companies failing to comply with the law will absolutely be held to account. In some cases, we have already got companies to withdraw products from their shelves if they have not met our rules. I am pleased to announce that National Trading Standards has begun setting up the operation, gathering intelligence, training staff and bolstering capacity to begin field work later this summer.

I absolutely appreciate the calls for single-use vapes to be banned due to their environmental impact, and also because of their appeal to young people. In 2022, about 52% of young people who vaped used disposable products, compared with just 8% in 2021. We are concerned by the increasing use of these products and their improper disposal, for the reasons my hon. Friend mentioned. We are exploring a whole range of options to address this through the youth vaping call for evidence.

This is absolutely not a reason for not doing anything, but one of the issues we will have to deal with is the nature of the industry, which is based in Shenzhen, is highly nimble and manufactures lots of different things. It will be a challenge to address issues specific to disposable vapes, because the industry will try to get around them by saying, “This is potentially refillable.” In theory, my biro is refillable, but in practice, and if it was cheap, it can simply be thrown away. Careful consideration needs to be given to the question of what is and is not disposable, if we are going to put some weight on it. I am not in any way arguing that nothing can be done, but extremely careful thought is required to ensure that the actions we take are highly effective.

All vapes, including single-use vapes, fall within the scope of the UK’s Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations 2013, which require importers and manufacturers of vapes to finance the cost of collection and proper treatment of all equipment that is disposed of via local authority household waste sites and returned to retailers and internet sellers. From an environmental perspective, the starting point must be to assist businesses to understand their obligations and bring them into compliance. If we can achieve that, the environmental impacts can be reduced. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will shortly be consulting on reforming the WEEE Regulations to ensure that more of this material is properly recycled.

We are committed to doing all we can to prevent children from starting vaping, and we are already taking robust action in a range of areas. We are also looking closely at how we can go further. As I mentioned, early this autumn we will publish the response to the youth vaping call for evidence and outline our next steps, and we want to move fast.

[Craig Whittaker]

Before the Minister concludes, does he have any thoughts on the World Health Organisation forum in Panama this November and whether the UK will be subscribing to the WHO requests or pursuing our own policies as a sovereign nation?

[Neil O’Brien]

My right hon. Friend asks an important question. We will set out our position for that conference of the parties in due course. On the question of heat-not-vape products, they are, as far as one can see from the evidence, more dangerous and contain more toxic chemicals than vapes, so there is a concern about the use of those products. When I was on the Science and Technology Committee, I remember looking at all these different products and the new things on the market. There is a substantial gap in terms of safety. It may be that they are safer than smoking, but there are serious concerns about the health effects of heat-not-burn products—even more significant than those about vapes, which have been raised in this debate.

I end as I began by paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham for all the work she has done to drive this important debate. As constituency MPs, we all see this important and growing issue in our schools and through talking to young people. We are moving at pace and will continue to do so to address these challenges. It is important that we calibrate our approach correctly so that it is effective. We have already done a number of things, and we stand ready to do more to tackle this extremely important issue.