Draft Tobacco and Related Products (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2023

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2023 General Committees

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Harris. I, too, welcome the draft regulations and wish to highlight the inequality that has arisen between Northern Ireland and England. I have to say that the sluggish response from the Government, knowing the harm that tobacco causes, is quite astounding. I very much hope that we will shortly see regulation on heated tobacco products here in England.

I want to home in on the harm that is being done by putting flavourings into tobacco products. The Health and Social Care Committee recently took evidence not only from health experts, but from the industry. It became incredibly evident to us that this is yet another marketing ploy by the tobacco industry to sell its harmful and life-threatening products. We heard evidence from the head of a school, who said that the topic of conversation for young people in the playground was about the different flavours that they were trying. That is clearly where legislation like this will protect young people. For instance, we were told about different flavours of vape, such as gummy bear, slushy, unicorn milk and unicorn frappé. The introduction of those flavours is clearly not aimed at an adult audience. We are talking about vanilla and other flavours in heated tobacco products, but it will not be long before we see them being extended to products that are attractive to children, to get them to take up smoking.

What through in our inquiry, which applies to the draft regulations, is that the industry is driven to recruit a new generation of addicts, whether they are addicted to tobacco products or to nicotine products, to drive up their profits from another generation, having killed off the last. It is therefore absolutely essential that we get the draft regulations on the statute book not just in Northern Ireland but across England and the rest of the UK. It is evident what the industry is about, and I urge the Minister to go far further and far more quickly, so that we stop producing another generation of addicts to these products and ensure that we safeguard people from the real public health concerns that we all have.