(1 month ago)
Commons ChamberThe hon. Gentleman was doing so well at the start, and then he kind of blew it a bit towards the end. It is absolutely right that we put country before party, and we will work with whoever has the best interests of rebuilding our public services at heart. The issue that he raises specifically sounds interesting. What I would say is that unless we get the bigger picture sorted, and unless we make NHS work pay for dentists, we will not be able to rebuild the NHS dentistry system that we should be cherishing and seeking to reform. I am of course always open to conversations with him.
Just 39.2% of my constituents were able to access an NHS dentist over the past two years. That is an absolute disgrace, but the Health and Social Care Committee put together a report into NHS dentistry, setting out a blueprint for how to resolve the challenges, including access, looking at tie-ins and ensuring that we get more dentists registered. Will the Minister look at that report and follow its recommendations?
I congratulate my hon. Friend on her re-election; it is wonderful to see her back in her place. She is absolutely right that the tie-in consultation deadline was 18 July. We are considering those responses with an open mind. On the broader issues that she mentions, our rescue plan is 700,000 more appointments, incentives for new graduates to go to under-served areas, reform of the dental contract and making work pay for dentists. That plan is at the heart of the reforms that she mentioned and that is what we will be doing.
(3 months ago)
Commons ChamberMy goodness me. I thank my right hon. Friend. I have an inkling of the responsibilities and pressures that he bore during the pandemic. There will be many thoughts about how the Government and society handled the pandemic, but he devoted his absolute all to keeping people safe, and to moving our society out of the lockdowns. I thank him sincerely for all his work.
True to his character, my right hon. Friend wants to talk about the future. Outside the pandemic, he had a particular focus, when he was Health Secretary and in previous Cabinet positions, on the role that technology can play in our lives. Our NHS app now has three quarters of adults in England signed up to it. That is a testament to him and to those in the NHS who helped to deliver it. There are more subscribers to the NHS app than to Netflix. The most common users of the NHS app are those over the age of 65. We can see just how powerful the app can be, and the role that it will play in prevention, but we need to invest in the technology. I view the long-term workforce plan as critical to building the next 75 years of the NHS, as is the tech plan that the Chancellor announced in the spring Budget, which provides £3.45 billion for technology to drive forward progress in the NHS—a plan that the Opposition has not supported.
May I take this opportunity to thank all NHS staff for their dedication, professionalism and care, which are really quite extraordinary in the light of the circumstances that they face? I spent 30 years working in and around the NHS, and I know that it was on its knees in 1996 and 1997, before the Labour Government made such a difference, but nothing compares to the state of it today. I am thinking particularly about NHS dentistry; my constituents are having to wait seven years for an appointment with an NHS dentist. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) will meet dentists on the first Monday after Labour come to office.
The Secretary of State has not adopted a plan that would have worked, the one produced by the Health and Social Care Committee. Can she tell us why she did not adopt that plan in full, and what she will say to my constituents, who will vote at the polls for a service that works, as opposed to one that is broken?
I join the hon. Lady in thanking her local NHS staff, and, indeed, NHS staff throughout the country. The NHS employs more than 1.3 million people, and every single one of them contributes in their own way, from clinicians to nurses to hospital porters to administrative staff. All those people play a really important part in keeping us well and safe.
Notwithstanding the picture that the hon. Lady has sought to paint, I hope she will have the graciousness to acknowledge that we are diagnosing more cancer cases, and diagnosing them more quickly at stages 1 and 2. I hope she will acknowledge, for example, that some nine out of 10 cancer patients are treated within 31 days of a decision to treat them, and that the average waiting time in England—not Wales—is just under 15 weeks. Of course there is more to do, but we have plans in place.
I also urge the hon. Lady to look carefully at our dental recovery plan. We have seen more practices open up to provide more NHS appointments, and as the recovery plan is rolled out, we will see up to 2.5 million more appointments, roughly three times as many as will be seen under Labour’s dental recovery plans. Compare and contrast!
(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
Public Bill CommitteesIt is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain. I rise to support the proposals outlined by the Minister. It came as quite a shock that one of the recommendations of the Khan review was that the age-of-sale be raised by a year every year. We on the all-party group on smoking and health —I declare my interest—thought that we would end up simply raising the age from 18 to 21, but I am delighted that we have moved from that position to one of literally creating a smoke-free generation.
The key point will always be free choice—the free choice that is made is to smoke that first cigarette; after that, the individual is addicted. To colleagues of mine who may be listening or considering this as an issue of freedom of choice, I say that one only makes one choice. After that, there is no choice because one is addicted and therefore required to continue to fuel that addiction. It is vital that we create this smoke-free generation.
One of the fundamental issues is enforcement rules and premises—I know we will come to that, so I will not pre-judge it, but this will be key. One of my concerns —I ask the Minister to think about this—is what will happen about duty-free sales and provisions that, at the moment, are outside the scope of the Bill. There will be temptations for young people on trips abroad to buy cigarettes, either abroad or at duty-free, and bring them back, or for others to do so and provide them to young people. Clearly, we would all want that to be an offence, but as I read the Bill, the provisions do not cover that. We need to think about strengthening the legislation in that area.
I do not want to go on for a long time; I am delighted with the Bill. I have been campaigning for this sort of action for many years, so it is a delight to see. We need to get it on the statute book as fast as possible.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Dame Siobhan. Let me open by welcoming the Bill. I think the Government have taken a brave and bold step in introducing such a significant public health intervention. I worked in respiratory medicine for 20 years, and I saw the devastating impact of smoking on so many of my patients.
We must remember that the industry exists in order to ensure that its customers become addicted to their product: nicotine. It profits as a result, as we learned in the evidence sessions, from some of the poorest communities in our country. The Bill will address not only that gross inequality, but the behaviours of the industry and, in particular, it will ensure that we have a healthier future going forward. The tobacco-free generation measures will have such an impact on young people as they grow up.
We also need to ensure that the public health messages are really driven home. As colleagues have said, there is no liberty once someone has started smoking. There is no liberation because they become enslaved to addiction—to the highly addictive product, nicotine. It is therefore important that the Bill is passed to give that liberty to so many people who regret having commenced the journey of smoking. We need to remind everybody that once they start smoking, it is incredibly difficult to give up. Smoking is a product that kills two thirds of its customers. Therefore, the only people who benefit from smoking are the industry, which profits extensively from the misery of others.
I will certainly support the Bill through its passage, but I believe that there are areas where it can be strengthened. One, in particular, is advertising. We know that this pernicious industry has learned so well how to get around legislation at every turn. It has been incredibly difficult to ensure that the legislation encapsulates the safeguards needed to prevent the industry from doing that, but I do think that there are some loopholes in the Bill that need to be addressed around promotion, advertising, sponsorship and ensuring that retailers are supported in relation to age verification.
Simplifying things in the Bill will help everybody when it is fully implemented. We have Challenge 25; it is easily understood, and young people are used to showing their ID. Introducing that here would be a logical step in being able to see those restraints, and it will also mean that there is no variation in how shopkeepers will apply the law. It will take out inequality for their sake, too. I hope that the Minister reflects on that as we get to those points in the Bill.
My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. She will be interested to know that I have recently written to the Advertising Standards Authority to ask about how well it considers enforcement to be working, and what more it can do to enforce the already strict regulations. I am happy to share its response, when it comes, with all members of the Committee.
I will give way to the hon. Member for York Central and then to the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire.
I am really grateful to the Minister for the work that she is doing in this area, but clearly, for vaping, there is not equality with smoking in terms of an advertising ban. For simplicity’s sake, equalising the law would make a significant difference. We often think about packaging in shops, but today, the social media space is an incredibly powerful tool that young people are exposed to on a continuous basis. Therefore, extending the advertising, promotion and sponsorship ban could have such a significant impact, and it could be legislated for simply. As we have got so accustomed to the advertising ban for tobacco products, it can simply be translated for vapes. Will the Minister look into that?
With your permission, Dame Siobhain, I will take the intervention on the same subject from the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire.
We have to consider the various tactics used by big tobacco. I campaigned long and hard for the standardised packaging of tobacco products, which was finally achieved, and one of my concerns then was the way that packaging is used to attract young people to start smoking. I support the provisions, but one concern might be that big tobacco will respond by reducing the number of cigarettes in a pack and selling them at a cheaper price. Will there be regulations to ensure that, for example, companies cannot sell them in single packs? We have to think about what these evil people will do to sell and push their product. Very simply, can we look at something to ensure that they cannot do that?
I support the points that have already been made, but I will not repeat them, because they have been made eloquently.
Why is the fine in clause 4(2) only at level 3, whereas elsewhere in the legislation the fines are at level 4? We know that cigarettes being sold as single items, and packs being broken up and sold in that way, encourages people to smoke. We also know that they will be targeted at children and young people, as well as people in greater deprivation.
There are 14.5 million people in our country who are living in poverty, and there is a much higher prevalence of smoking in that population. The increase in the price of tobacco products has been a major determinant of how much people smoke and whether people smoke at all. It therefore seems perverse that the fine applied to breaking up cigarette packs is less than that applied elsewhere in the Bill, where there is a level 4 fine. Can the Minister explain the reasoning behind dropping the level of fine? Why is it not in line with the other measures in the Bill?
I do not have all the answers to hon. Members’ questions. The purpose of the clause is to restate and clarify the statute book, so the answer to many of the “Why haven’t you done this or that?” questions is that the intention was to tidy up the statute book rather than address all the other potential issues that could be solved. I will certainly come back to hon. Members with the answers to their questions.
As colleagues will appreciate, there are thousands of potential add-ons to the legislation, but it is important to remember that the core purpose of the Bill is to create the smoke-free generation. On those well-made points and suggestions, I do not know whether they were considered and ruled out or whether they were not considered, but I will come back to hon. Members with answers.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 4 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 5
Age of sale notice at point of sale: England
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
I, too, welcome the fact that legislation is at last being supported by the Government and is before us today. I have deep concern about the impacts of vaping—and not just on physical health, although much research clearly needs to be done to understand the extent of that. In the Health Committee, we saw a paper on the DNA methylation changes that take place in the oral cavity. We have not seen the impact on the lungs, because that would require more invasive sampling, but the evidence shows that much research needs to be done to understand the implications of vaping on physical health.
I am also concerned that we are looking only at the age of 18. I understand the Government’s reasons—clearly, young people can readily become addicted to the nicotine in these products, and I welcome the measures to restrain that—but I have serious concerns about those over 18 who commence vaping. I understand that a paper will be coming out in Sweden showing that people move from vaping to smoking, so I am concerned that there could be unintended consequences if we do not take more extensive measures on vaping.
I absolutely understand that the Government are using the Bill to send a clear public health message that vaping is safer than smoking and that smoking kills, so if people can move from smoking to vaping, that is a positive health change. However, we do not yet know the extent of the harm that can be done by vaping, so we could well be back here again if we do not put proper measures in the Bill to facilitate more action more rapidly, should evidence come forward on the impacts of vaping.
I have talked about physical health, but we know that vaping involves an addictive product, and we do not want to see another generation of people becoming addicted to a nicotine product. We must recall that the vaping industry, like the tobacco industry of old—well, it is still in existence—has the sole interest of bringing forward another generation of people who are addicted to a substance, to ensure that those people buy its products and it profits. Leaving individuals with that dependency means that they are in bondage not only financially but in terms of their health. We must ensure that we properly examine the scope of the challenges involved in leaving over-18s exposed.
The hon. Lady is making a very informed speech, but I want to pick up on one thing. She said that the sole purpose of the vaping industry is to get people addicted to vaping, but does she acknowledge that many people across the UK, and particularly adults, as we heard in evidence, have reduced their addiction through vaping? They are tapering down the amount of nicotine they are using, as opposed to when they were smoking. We also heard that there were some health benefits from people moving from smoking to vaping.
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for the point she made. Certainly, I did highlight that transitional benefit of moving from smoking to vaping to, hopefully, stopping altogether. However, we must also highlight that vaping is not without risk, and we need to give that serious consideration. I am just concerned that the Government are slightly light, shall I say, in terms of their concern about vaping, in order to drive down the smoking. I absolutely understand that, because smoking kills, but I just think that we could be on the “too light” side. I know that it is about balance, but I hope that we can reflect on that during the course of the Bill.
I want to draw out one question that I have about clause 9 and giving away vapes. I certainly understand why the measures would be applied to industry, but I want to ask about public health measures that could be deployed. I recognise that the clause is about under-18s, but unfortunately, despite the current legislation, we know that many people under 18 smoke, and we obviously need to ensure that they stop and move into a safer space. The Government have been very much pressing the idea that vaping is a route out of smoking. Does the Public Health Minister see vaping as a means to help people under the age of 18 to stop smoking, or will they have no access to vapes? I would just like some clarity around that. Clearly, there are other smoking-cessation programmes and products available, but it would be useful to know the answer to that question. If vaping is to be used in that way, and clinicians are to be able in future to prescribe or indeed provide vapes for young people to stop smoking—if that was the only tool—we need to understand whether we are to have a blanket ban in the Bill. It would be very useful to understand that.
Once again, I thank all hon. Members for their thoughtful and considered remarks —I really do appreciate them. Essentially, the questions are pretty much around the product notification and the availability of quit aids to under-18s. Hon. Members may not have spotted this, but the notification of vapes to the MHRA is something on which we are taking powers. There will be a further consultation on that point because it did not come under the scope of the original consultation. We will have the powers to require notification of vapes to the MHRA.
The other point that has been raised by a few colleagues is, “How do we help under-18s to stop smoking?” Under the MHRA, there is licensed nicotine replacement therapy, which is licensed for 12 to 18-year-olds. Of course, all under-18s can go to their local stop-smoking services.
To the point from the hon. Member for York Central about whether young people should be able to access vaping as a quit aid, my instinct would be, “No, absolutely not,” and I think that that would be her instinct also. However, I must slightly correct the record: it is certainly not the Government’s position that vaping is in any way safe; it is merely less harmful than smoking. I would reiterate that if you don’t smoke, don’t vape. And children should never vape, so they should not be turning to vaping, even as a quit aid. In my view, that would also be the thin end of the wedge, because people would simply say, “Well, I am only vaping because I am trying to stop smoking.” I cannot imagine that ever being a suitable way to help children to stop.
As the hon. Lady will know, the MHRA is not an enforcement body; enforcement is for trading standards. As I mentioned earlier, there will be new resources for trading standards, as well as new training and guidelines. Also, fines will go direct to local authorities, which employ enforcement officers, so there will be a huge ramping-up of enforcement on illicit vapes, non-compliant vapes and so on. That is the place for enforcement.
On the MHRA and notification of other types of vapes, there will be powers, and the consultation will take place in due course.
While the Minister is doing the work on vapes, will she also look at nicotine pouches, which are incredibly concerning? We have heard that the strength of the nicotine in pouches far exceeds that in vapes. People are therefore getting a very high dose of nicotine and are sometimes not aware of the level they are getting.
I am frantically looking through my pack here. Clause 10 covers nicotine pouches, so we will come on to that—[Interruption.] The Whip is saying it will be after lunch, if that is not too much of a sneaky “get out of jail” card. With the hon. Lady’s acceptance, I will defer that until later.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 7 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 8 and 9 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Aaron Bell.)
(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
Public Bill CommitteesI support clause 10. We heard compelling evidence from Professor Gilmore last week about the tactics the industry uses to try to get young people addicted to nicotine, so that it can continue to profit from their buying the products for the rest of their lives. We also heard from Professor Gilmore about emerging evidence showing that exposure to nicotine at a young age, particularly as a teenager, can rewire the brain, making it more difficult to quit. I therefore welcome the powers in clause 10 that allow the Government to be flexible and respond to changing techniques in the market in order to stop children becoming addicted to nicotine, but why do we not just make it illegal to sell nicotine of any kind to children?
I appreciate being called to speak to clause 10, which is a very important part of the Bill. As we have heard many times already, the industry will look at every possible mechanism to try to bring about a new generation of people who are addicted to nicotine and make it harder for them to quit. That goes not just for people under 18 but for those in later adolescence and adulthood.
My concern is with products already on the market that are being taken up quite readily. Next week, the Health and Social Care Committee will look at the public health measures being taken in Sweden. We will see how nicotine pouches—snus, as they are referred to there—are being used as an alternative to smoking, really quite extensively.
Does the hon. Lady agree that nicotine pouches are starting to be marketed to young people in a similar way to vapes, with an increasing amount of flavours, a relatively inexpensive price per unit and horrifyingly high levels of nicotine?
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making that point, which is certainly where I want to go with my speech. She is right: the industry will look at every single option to reformulate its products, including introducing nicotine pouches disguised with various flavours and colours—you name it, they will do it—to induce young people to engage with them. If we do not get ahead of the curve, the industry will be right there—I guarantee it.
We need to wise up to the tactics the industry has deployed over decades and recognise that, whether with pouches or something else further down the line, it is again on the move to sell its products in a reformulated way. I urge the Minister to look at whether this should be covered by secondary legislation—I know she is concerned about the amount of secondary legislation that will come through from the Bill—or in the Bill as vaping is.
Does the hon. Lady not accept the counter-argument that putting things in the Bill means that we have to change primary legislation, but that by doing things via regulations, the Government can make changes in a speedy fashion and combat big tobacco’s fleetness of foot in bringing terribly addictive new products to the market?
I am grateful to the hon. Member for that, and I agree that we want to be able to adapt as soon as the market does, but right now the industry is promoting nicotine pouches and we must ensure that we take the earliest opportunity to bring them into the scope of legislation, so that the industry does not just think, “Well, we’ve got six months now to promote our product.” Given the way the industry is behaving, this is a bit like a game of cat and mouse, and we need to do whatever we can to ensure that we are ahead of the curve, whether that is through primary or secondary legislation.
I ask the Minister to ensure that the regulations are brought forward expeditiously and that the first set—we may need further sets; I appreciate what the hon. Member for Harrow East says—is introduced in the shortest time possible. Can she tell the Committee what the timescale will be for that, so that we know how quickly these other products will be brought within the scope of the Bill, ensuring that young people are protected?
I agree with the hon. Lady and with my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East. Clause 10 applies to clauses 7, 8 and 9, giving the Government flexibility on all three. As the hon. Lady said, it is great to have the flexibility to bring in regulations to amend clauses 8 and 9, but on clause 7, can she think of any good reason why we would want to be able to sell nicotine products to under-18s?
The hon. Lady is following up on a theme that I probed at earlier stages of the Bill, notably on Second Reading. I believe that we need to look at stringent measures, so that people do not have their choices restricted by the addiction that they adopt. It is really important that young people today, or anyone else who engages with these products, do not get addicted at an early stage. We have to look at the issue of the impact of addiction in that wider realm, as we are doing on the Health and Social Care Committee, which is looking at products that are addictive and harmful to health in connection with the public health measures that we are scrutinising.
The hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham makes an important point, and at a later stage of the legislative process I hope to examine how we address the drug nicotine and its harmful impacts on young people and more widely. Addiction has been utilised by people who exploit the lives of others for their own profit, and we need to ensure that they do not get the opportunity again with children, young people or adults. They plague those who live in the greatest deprivation in our country, driving them to more harmful addiction. I therefore welcome the legislation, but I believe that we can go further. Given the industry’s activities right at this moment in trying to find new ways around legislation before it is even on the statute book, the Committee needs to be wise about ensuring that it does not get that opportunity.
Everything that the hon. Member for York Central just said is worth reflecting on. Clause 43 applies to Scotland, and we are also talking about clause 10.
I spent a little time looking at nicotine pouches, which suddenly seem to be everywhere—or perhaps it is just that I am finding them advertised to me. I am definitely not the right person to advertise them to, but whenever I go on to social media, I inexplicably find them appearing before my eyes. There are a whole lot of questions around that. I will not be taking them, so that is fine, but other people will. We have heard about the uptake among young men in particular, which is concerning, because we heard some powerful evidence from health experts about the real harms that can be caused and the addiction that will follow people throughout their lives.
All the time, industry is finding new ways to hook young people. Some of the websites that I have looked at suggest that the pouches are a way to “avoid the health risk”. That is obviously not true—it is patent nonsense, actually. They also suggest that, for a sportsperson, “according to some reports”—that is me quoting again—there are “performance” benefits. Again, that is patent nonsense. It is obviously absolute rubbish, but I think it speaks to the narrative that surrounds pouches, as if they are somehow okay—a good thing—and they are not going to cause the harms that other nicotine-based products do. But of course these things will cause harm, and the addiction risk and health challenges are still there, too. The social normality, acceptability and prevalence of these things is deeply depressing. Their use by sportspeople in particular puts them across with some kind of veneer of being okay. They are not okay; they are deeply damaging to health.
Unsurprisingly, I am always keen to hear from the Minister about advertising and football strips, but to take that a step further, because we are talking about the same sports-based area, will she say how we can use legislation to keep ahead of companies that are so fleet of foot in hooking into things that people are interested in to promote these products directly or, more concerningly, indirectly?
I wholeheartedly endorse almost everything I have heard. I share hon. Members’ concerns and applaud them for their commitment to solving the issue of nicotine pouches. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East rightly pointed out, should the industry find a way around something in the Bill, we would have to legislate again with primary legislation. The right thing to do, therefore, is to take powers to make secondary legislation that gets on top of the issue and future-proofs us, so that right across the United Kingdom we can tackle this appalling scourge: the tobacco industry’s determination to get our children addicted.
Extraordinarily, the tobacco industry dominates the UK nicotine pouches market, and it claims to self-regulate—that is, it claims not to sell to under-18s. That is absolutely extraordinary. A recent study suggests that although nicotine pouch use is low among adults, with roughly one in 400 adults in Great Britain using them, nicotine pouches are increasingly popular with younger, largely male audiences. The Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment has identified gaps in research and flagged that the long-term health harms are not known, but use by non-smokers is likely to be associated with some adverse health effects due to the nicotine.
We all know that other nicotine products need to be clamped down on. We will not need to consult on age of sale restrictions on nicotine products; we will be able to use regulations, hopefully in this Parliament, with implementation from 2025. It is certainly our plan to consult on all of this regulation to get ahead of nicotine pouches and other nicotine products with a view to implementing the regulations in 2025.
I do not know whether the Minister is aware that the strength of the nicotine in these products is excessively high—much higher than in other products—and so they rapidly bring about addiction. When the Government brought forward measures to try to educate the country about alcohol use, they did a comparison. Perhaps it would be helpful to do a comparison about the amount of nicotine that individuals are taking through a nicotine pouch, because the public would be alarmed to know that we are talking about their taking multiple factors of nicotine into their bodies.
The hon. Lady is absolutely right; they vary from 2 mg to 150 mg per pouch. I imagine that that variation would make it hard to provide a complete comparison, but she is quite right that education will be a big part of the implementation.
My hon. Friend makes a good point. The Bill takes powers to bring forward the age of sale restriction, and that in itself will not require further consultation. It is my expectation that, if possible, that will be brought forward in this Parliament. However, as has been explained, if we put something in the Bill, the industry will get around it by saying, for example, “This doesn’t contain nicotine”—except it does, as we have already seen.
The other thing I want to raise with hon. Members is that clauses 61 to 63, which will grant the ability to restrict flavours, packaging and location in store, will also apply to nicotine products. Those measures are clearly designed to reduce their attractiveness to children.
In response to my questions and accepting the clause as it is written, can the Minister give the Committee an assurance about when the regulations will be brought forward to ensure that products such as nicotine pouches will come within scope of the Bill?
All I can say to the hon. Lady is that she has heard me, and I am determined to bring that forward as soon as possible. There are good reasons for not putting the provision on the face of the Bill, which are to do with future-proofing. I can only give her my absolute assurance that, as soon as humanly possible, I will bring the regulations forward for consultation where necessary and for implementation where not.
If I might be so bold, I think the Minister is making life slightly complicated for herself. We know the impact that taking smoking products out of the line of sight of people who go into shops or supermarkets has had. Putting them in closed cabinets has very much had the effect that we would want. People do not see the products, but they have to request them; they are not on display for people to just glance an eye over. They are simply not there in the line of sight.
If the same legislation applied to all vaping and nicotine products, that would make things simpler for shopkeepers and supermarkets. They already have the shelving and the shutters; it is not as if they would have to make a financial investment in new shelving. They would not have to do anything different—just pick up the vapes and put them into a contained, enclosed space. I do not see any reason why that could not be in primary legislation, because it would be so simple, and I believe the expectation of the public is already there.
I walked down a street in York just the other day, and almost every shop had their little vape display. Putting them behind the counter, behind screens, behind shutters, would be the simplest method of dealing with that. We know it is effective for smoking. There is no reason why tobacco products should be dealt with at a different standard than vaping products when people go to purchase them, and we would get the effect of “out of sight, out of mind”. We know how much the industry spends on packaging to draw the eye to products, and how powerful that is. Putting them out of sight would have the required effect of reducing people’s thinking about those products.
Simplifying and bringing the legislation into line, for shopkeepers, the public and for us as legislators would meet the public expectation that this is what will happen. I do not think we need separate legislation to deal with vapes one way and smoking products another. Let us just pool it together, make it simple and say that this is about protecting the public. I do not think anyone will bat an eyelid.
I rise in support of clause 11 on restricting the display of vaping and nicotine products. I have been horrified to see that after the Government, with good intentions, made it difficult for children to see sweets at the counter, to reduce pester power and help protect them from obesity, the sweets were in many cases replaced by vapes. The Government are doing exactly the right thing in taking the powers to look at displays. As has been mentioned, the ability and flexibility of doing so through regulations means that we can move swiftly when the industry seeks to get round the latest rules. I think that is great.
I have two examples for the Minister. Would they be covered by paragraph (1)(c)? The first is a mini-mart in Grantham. The entire shop window is covered in pictures of things such as Kinder chocolate, Haribos, fruit and very large-size vape devices in bright colours. I was in WH Smith in Nottingham last weekend; this is a shop that sells children’s books, children’s toys, sweets and children’s stationery, yet at the till there is a very large video display of vape adverts immediately behind the shopkeeper’s head. Will these two types of advertising and display be covered by the regulations?
I want to put one issue to the Minister before she sums up these clauses. Obviously, the overwhelming number of retailers will wish to conform to the rules and regulations under which they exist. On re-reading the Bill, I notice that it does not cover the contents of products. For example, we have cited the issue of so-called nicotine-free products that contain nicotine and, indeed, many other products that may have different amounts of nicotine from what is stated. We hear anecdotally of some suppliers wanting to reduce the amount of nicotine in vapes to get people to buy more of them because the nicotine hit is insufficient. Under these powers, will trading standards officers have the opportunity to look at those products and take action against retailers who are clearly selling products whose contents clearly do not accord with what should be in them?
I want to pick up on this point as well because it is incredibly important, and we cannot put the responsibilities on to trading standards if they do not have the tools to do the job. Clearly, this is a new field and, as we have discussed throughout the Bill, new products will come out and be marketed if we do not get ahead of the curve. It is therefore important that we ensure that new testing kits are made available and that we look at how they can be brought into play.
We heard strong evidence last week about the benefits of introducing a track and trace system, which would simplify the work of trading standards. If a product has not been through that process, and there is therefore not an authoritative basis on which to say that it can be sold, it would clearly be an illicit product. If a proper track and trace process was put in place, that could aid the work of trading standards, and addressing the real challenges we are trying to deal with through these clauses would not require such extensive resourcing.
Will the Minister therefore comment on her appetite for bringing in a track and trace system for vaping and other nicotine products to get ahead of the curve? That would ensure that the illicit trade is suppressed and does not rear its ugly head and that it is as easy as possible for trading standards to uphold every part of the Bill.
This is obviously an incredibly important area of enforcement, and successful enforcement is integral to the success of this policy.
To the question from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston about Operation Joseph, in the year before the operation—2022-23—2.1 million illicit vapes were seized by trading standards across England. In the same year, 1,199 test purchases were carried out by trading standards in England, with 27.3% resulting in an illegal sale. Those are the numbers. As the hon. Lady says, Operation Joseph has had £3 million of investment over two years, led by National Trading Standards. It conducts a range of illicit vape enforcement activities, including data collection and analysis of the scale of illegal products and under-age sales; market surveillance; under-age sales testing; court enforcement action; and upskilling of trading standards staff. A further operation—Operation CeCe —was established in January 2021 as a joint venture between National Trading Standards and His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to tackle illicit tobacco sales.
So those individual measures are in place. As hon. Members will know, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency looks at the product notifications for legal products, which have to meet the compliance standards of the MHRA. It is then for trading standards to enforce, and they have had a significant increase in resources to tackle enforcement, as I have set out. I am obviously happy to write to Members with more detail should they wish.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 19 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 20 and 21 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 22
Power of ministers to take over enforcement functions
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The amendment is very simple: it would amend clause 24, which introduces fixed penalty notices for retailers that breach age of sale, proxy purchasing and free distribution restrictions on tobacco, vapes and nicotine products, by doubling the fixed penalty notice from £100 to £200.
The need for the amendment is clear. In 2022-23, national trading standards identified that 20% of the 1,000 vape test purchases carried out with retailers resulted in an illegal sale. In 2019-20, 50% of councils that undertook test purchasing reported that cigarettes or tobacco products were sold to under-age people in at least one premises. Despite existing regulations, there is a big and widespread problem, which suggests that the current penalties and fines, which can end up as high as £2,500, are an insufficient deterrent. I strongly support giving trading standards officers the power to issue on-the-spot fines to retailers doing the wrong thing, but the current level of the fine is too low.
My amendment would increase fines to £200, precisely doubling the deterrent in the Bill. Under the Bill as drafted by the Government, offenders can be forced to pay only £50 if they pay off their fixed penalty notice within 14 days, and it is surely too easy for those breaching the law to factor that in as the cost of doing business. Stakeholders including the Association of Convenience Stores and the Local Government Association agree that £100 is too low and that £200 makes logical sense as the level at which to set fines, equalising it with the level for other, similar offences, such as that proposed in the draft regulations for the disposable vapes ban. In the Government’s consultation, £200 was also the most popular response—three times as many respondents supported £200 over £100.
The other reason why my amendment is important is that the penalties from fixed penalty notices can be retained by the local authority. I have raised my concerns, as others have, about the decline of local trading standards, and the amendment would increase the funds they have available to enforce other aspects of the Bill, including regulations yet to be made under it. All of that comes with a cost, and anything that we can do to give local authorities the tools they need to enforce the regulations, the better. I note that clause 26 would provide the power to amend the level of the fixed penalty notice by way of regulations, so the issue could be revisited if needed.
I urge other Committee members to support my amendment in order to strengthen enforcement and provide a proper deterrent to rogue retailers that choose to sell addictive and dangerous products to children.
I rise to support my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston. I completely agree that when we set these figures, we often forget that the economy has moved on so much, and that the rise in inflation has meant that so many things cost so much more. Just £100 is a very small amount to many shops, which take their cut from these products. It is therefore essential that we move into the realms of reality, not least because the consultation advised the Government that £200 would be an appropriate starting point and would have public support.
Clause 26 says that the figure can be amended by the Secretary of State, should they choose to do so. So the amendment would not place a limit in primary legislation, but it would make this a more realistic deterrent to ensure that shopkeepers abide by the law. It is also really important to have an incentive for them to ensure that they are fully up to speed with their obligations. This change would focus their minds as regulations are introduced, as the Minister alluded to, and ensure that they keep themselves up to date, because they know that the penalty makes it worth doing that. I therefore urge the Committee to adopt my hon. Friend’s amendment. It is a simple measure that would not cause the Minister any grief as the Bill passes through its later stages.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston for bringing this discussion to the Committee, and I fully appreciate the sentiment behind the amendment. I completely understand why it is attractive to raise the fixed penalty notice and make it more material to the individual, but I urge hon. Members to take into account the fact that local trading standards take a proportionate approach to tobacco and vape enforcement. The Bill proposes fixed penalty notices of £100 to enable trading standards to take swifter action by issuing on-the-spot fines, rather than needing to go through lengthy court processes. Littering, parking or under-age alcohol sales attract on-the-spot fines. The proposal in the Bill is for £100, or £50 if it is paid within two weeks. That avoids people thinking, “I can’t pay this, so you’ll have to pursue me through the courts.” That creates an incentive for these issues never to come to court, and it can clog up court time and so on. I fully appreciate the hon. Lady’s point, but this is about practicality.
I find it slightly odd that the hon. Lady says £100 is affordable but £200 is not. I would be shocked to get a £100 on-the-spot fine, and I am sure she would, too. Most retail workers would find a £100 fine to be quite devastating vis-à-vis their daily cost of living. I fully understand the sentiment behind the amendment, but £100 is in line with the precedent set by penalties for comparable offences. The fixed penalty notice for under-age alcohol sales is £90. If the penalty were raised to £200, as the amendment suggests, trading standards could issue higher on-the-spot fines, but how many of us have that kind of money on us? It would push a person into severe difficulty. As we have discussed, there is a very swift escalation—it is a “two strikes and you are out” policy—and there is the ability to take the business to task, too, so I think the current penalty is actually quite stringent.
I completely agree; the hon. Lady makes a good point. What people would see as a deterrent is an open question. I would see a £100 fine as a deterrent; I do not have £100 in my purse, so I would have to go to the cash point. I would not be keen to do that, and Members of Parliament earn quite a bit more than most retail workers. That is the truth of it. I actually think that setting the fine in line with the £90 fine for the offence of selling alcohol to someone under age is quite a material deterrent.
I think the Minister is making slightly the wrong comparison. A retail outlet will have a till, and that till will have money in it. Therefore, it will be the business, not the shop worker, paying the fine. She makes the point that for one person, £100 could be incredibly steep, but for someone working in a venue that sells products out of the scope of the legislation, paying £200 out of a till is not really out of the ordinary, and these businesses make extortionate profits out of these things. I wonder if she could address that point.
The hon. Lady makes a good point. There is an open question as to what the right level is, but it is for trading standards to decide whether the individual member of staff or the business pays the fine. So this is a very relevant point, but it is not just about taking the money out of the till. That is not necessarily the choice that trading standards would make; the fine may well be imposed on the individual.
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
Public Bill CommitteesQ
Professor Sir Chris Whitty: I think we are all very keen for the Bill to get through in the time that remains in this Parliament, so none of us would want to complicate this, but as Sir Gregor says, what we really want is for sports to be very firmly in the area of things that promote health. This is one of the areas that I do not think any of us would suggest is promoting health, so in broad terms we would agree, while not wanting in any way to complicate the Bill that is before Parliament at the moment.
Q
Professor Sir Chris Whitty: I wonder whether Sir Michael might want to go first, and then Sir Frank.
Professor Sir Michael McBride: We have to start somewhere. What we actively want to do, at this point in time, is encourage those individuals who smoke to quit smoking. We recognise that there are nicotine replacement products other than vapes that are very effective and that individuals successfully use, but for some individuals, as has been stated already and as is outlined in the relevant NICE guidance, vapes can be effective and are safer than smoking. It is about finding the sweet spot—hence the powers to consult.
We need to get a balance to ensure that we are absolutely not creating circumstances in which vaping is attractive to young children, starts a lifetime of addiction to nicotine and is potentially a gateway to smoking tobacco, as I think your question is suggesting. But at this point in time, this is an important step to ensure that the next generation are protected from smoking tobacco. We need to support those individuals who currently smoke or are currently addicted to nicotine to gradually move away from that addiction. That includes supporting smokers who currently smoke to quit, but we are increasingly seeing individuals who wish to quit vaping and are finding it difficult.
We are at the start of a journey. As Sir Chris has said, we do not want to delay this Bill and this important step change, in terms of making very significant progress. Sir Frank, do you want to add to that?
Sir Francis Atherton: Very briefly. The principle of alignment is a positive one. Keeping it simple for the public is in the interest of messaging, as a general point. In Wales, we did try—in 2016, I think it was—to align smoke-free and vape-free public places. Personally, I think that there is merit in that, but we have to be careful, because some of the arguments are different. The arguments around smoke-free public places are based on passive smoking, but we do not have a lot of data on passive vaping; many people see it as a nuisance, but that is a very different argument. We need to be a little bit cautious about that, even though I would personally be in favour.
The important thing is to remember that we really need to keep vapes as the quit tool. Your point about moving towards a nicotine-free next generation is absolutely right; that is really what we want to do. If we can make it less acceptable and less prevalent that children take up vaping, we should move towards that. The reality is that over the last three years we have seen a tripling of vaping among our children and young people. That is just unacceptable. The measures in the Bill will help deal with that and lead us, we hope, towards the nicotine-free generation that you talk about.
Q
Professor Sir Gregor Ian Smith: My view on the Bill as it stands is that it is a starting point for how we take this work forward. It is adequate in that sense because this is a really important area. For me, the absolute priority has to be to remove young people’s ability to access vapes and so begin the journey to nicotine addiction.
I am not in favour of criminalising the possession of these products, but I am certainly in favour of banning their sale to younger people. If we can achieve that at this stage, and, as Sir Michael said in his previous answer, if we can begin to shift the culture so that people do not start to use vapes and begin to become addicted—potentially also by using other nicotine and tobacco products—for me that will be a good job done.
If we do things that way, it will allow us to protect the useful use of vapes: where people with a lifelong addiction to tobacco can use them as way to help them stop. That is the only justification that I can see now for the way we have set this up and for continuing to use vapes in society: as a useful tool for those with a pre-existing addiction to tobacco, so that they can reduce the harm and gradually stop using tobacco—through formal cessation services, as well.
Professor Sir Chris Whitty: I agree with Sir Gregor. To reiterate, the Minister wanted to get a balance and most people would agree that criminalising people for individual possession is a step further than anyone would want and is needed. I do not think there is a clamour for that from anybody, and I think it would not help the Bill.
On prescription vapes, I would like to see those available for use at the moment. So far—I will go into the reasons for this on another occasion—no products are available that we can prescribe. We would all very much like those products to be there so that people can prescribe them. That is different from saying that they should be only on prescription; at this point, we do not even have any products to prescribe at all. If we did, that would be a very firm step in the right direction, but it depends on the industry coming forward with products.
Speaking directly to the industry, I should say that I do think there is a very important niche for prescription vapes. They would be very useful for some people, particularly those on low incomes who, for other health reasons, have free prescriptions. I encourage anyone from the industry who is listening to think seriously about bringing forward a prescription vaping product appropriate for aiding people to quit.
Q
Professor Sir Steven Powis: I have already highlighted some of the short-term impacts, and there will undoubtedly be short-term impacts. Some conditions are exacerbated by smoking, with asthma in children being an obvious one. I have talked about mental health conditions and the way that smoking exacerbates conditions such as depression and chronic mental health illness.
We will start to see immediate effects, but those effects will grow over time. I have given you some of the conditions that are impacted on by smoking—there are well over 100 of them—but I can give some more stats. By stopping children from ever starting to smoke, we estimate that we will prevent about 30,000 new cases of smoking-related lung cancer every year. More than 1.4 million people suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which is a chronic disease of the lungs caused by smoking—it causes nine out of every 10 cases. As I said, that is a disease that clinicians commonly see. A common cause of admissions to emergency departments, through the winter particularly, is other respiratory infections on top of COPD—these are diseases that future clinicians will see rarely. They will not see them in the way that clinicians of my generation have had to manage them. The impact will begin immediately, but over time that impact will get greater.
Q
Professor Sir Stephen Powis: As I outlined earlier, the impact on the NHS of vaping at the moment is relatively small compared with the impact of smoking. Nevertheless, there is an impact, and we are seeing growing numbers. I have highlighted the number of admissions per year, but they have doubled over the past few years, so that impact is becoming apparent. For example, yellow card reporting to the MHRA is a mechanism for reporting harm, and again the number of incidents related to vaping is increasing, although still in relatively low numbers.
As I said earlier, however, what is important here is that the evidence base, although emerging, is growing. This is an opportunity for us not to get into a position where, in years to come, we regret that we did not take the steps early on to change the trajectory. Instead of seeing rising impact on the NHS—small at the moment, but with the potential to be greater—that trajectory should be changed. This is a golden opportunity for parliamentarians to step in early and to prevent further pressure building over time on the NHS, while recognising that the evidence is still emerging.
I agree with the chief medical officers you heard earlier: I do not believe that vaping is safe. It is undoubtedly safer than smoking, which is why we support its use as a means of smoking cessation, but beyond that the evidence is building that it is not safe. Unquestionably, it will have a building impact on the NHS.
Q
How much do we know about the difference between the impacts of smoking and vaping? Thinking of the impact of vaping on babies, is vaping still an okay thing for pregnant women to be doing? Do we need to specifically address the impacts of vaping and smoking on pregnant people in the Bill?
Kate Brintworth: If we start with the evidence, as we have heard this morning there is a limited evidence base around vaping, but that does not mean we should be complacent. We know there is evidence around the transfer of chemicals and the reduction in lung capacity, which we see. As Chris said, while that is an improvement against the very, very low bar of smoking, we would see it as one step on a journey—an interim measure to being nicotine and tobacco free. On that basis, I do not think I would frame it as being okay to vape. We would see it as a tool—a means to an end—to reach the position of being nicotine and smoke free.
We will absolutely support research monitoring the impact of vaping. We cannot be complacent that it is going to be all right. However, at the moment, vaping is absolutely better than smoking, with the very well documented impacts that I have described on not just the mother but the baby and the future health of the family; we know that children born into households where smoking occurs are likely to start smoking themselves.
Thank you very much. One last question: do you think the financial incentives for pregnant women and their partners would help?
Professor Turner: I think this is extremely contentious, but the evidence is that it does—sorry, you did ask me about pregnancy before. Pregnancy itself can be one of those opportunities to quit. Those parents who continue smoking—12% in Cumbria—feel terribly guilty. Anything we can do for that person, who has been addicted since she was 15 or 16, can help them to quit. There is no doubt—in Dundee, the trials have shown that, if you give mums incentives, in terms of vouchers rather than money, it helps them to quit, particularly if they are from deprived communities.
Q
Professor Hawthorne: I am not a nicotine expert, but my understanding is that there is a risk from vaping, but it is about 5% of the risk from smoking. That is the best I can do in comparing the two. When I talk to patients about stopping smoking, vaping is one of the things we talk about as an alternative, with a view to eventually stopping vaping as well. Of course, there are all the other products: we use patches and chewing gum—all the usual things. It is difficult to quantify exactly how much less dangerous vaping is than smoking.
Professor Turner: Just to supplement that, as a user—if that is the right word—or a customer buying a vape, you can select the dose you want. There are doses that are equivalent to cigarettes and doses that you can wean yourself down on.
You asked whether we would be missing an opportunity if we do not introduce a smoke-free generation. I think we would absolutely be missing an opportunity. If we look back, the legislation on smoke-free public spaces across the UK was landmark. We all remember the days when you went on a plane and there was a smoking bit up front and a non-smoking bit at the back. If we were to go back and say there would be no smoking areas, we would think, “Wow, that would be transformational.” We have come on a journey, and the legislation has been part of it. I see a smoke-free generation as the logical next step, and I really think we have to take it.
Q
Professor Turner: To me, smoking and nicotine are two sides of the same coin. Nicotine addiction is smoking.
I just want to advise the panel that we have about 13 or 14 minutes to go, and four Members want to ask questions, so be kind to your colleagues.
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
Public Bill CommitteesQ
I want to ask about the passive effect of vaping. We know that if you are proximal to someone vaping you can smell the blueberry flavour, or whatever it is. Do you have any evidence on the passive health effects of vapes?
We have five minutes left and I do not think there will be time for any further questions. I may have missed it, but I am not sure whether anybody responded to Rachel Maskell’s points. In responding, could you cover those as well?
Deborah Arnott: Can I just confirm, Rachael, that your question was about public health messaging, restrictions and smoke-free laws?
Including where people can vape, yes.
Deborah Arnott: To go to that one first, I think it is really important—the chief medical officer has said this too—to make the distinction between smoking and vaping. Smoke-free laws were implemented after very strong evidence about second-hand smoke causing lung cancer and heart disease. We do not have that for vaping. It is important that regulations are in place, and we are seeing that—you cannot vape on public transport or aeroplanes or in most workplaces, and that is fine—but making it legislative implies that it is equivalent to smoking.
On the point about displays and promotion, our surveys show that children are most aware of the promotion of vapes in store and online, and that is where the priority has to be in strengthening the legislation. Restrictions on how products are displayed, and the packaging and labelling stuff that we have already talked about, are really important.
In terms of additional measures, on the vaping side, there is one thing that I would say is vital. At the moment, clause 63 does not allow for a change in the product requirements set out in the Tobacco and Related Products Regulations, following on from the EU tobacco products directive, which was designed in 2013, over 10 years ago. We need the Government to have powers to change the general product requirements, not just ones related to branding, and that is the other amendment on vaping that I think is really important. There are other things, but I have possibly run out of time, so we can share those with the Committee separately.
That would be helpful, thank you. We are up against the clock, but is there anything additional that either of the other two witnesses want to say very briefly?
Sheila Duffy: Thank you for your time. ASH Scotland supports an increasing European movement towards SAFE—smoke and aerosol-free environments—for the sake of health. I would say, on the evidence base on tobacco, that we have 100 years of scientific evidence, and it took 30 to 60 years to see the heaviest health impacts from tobacco. We should be more cautious about e-cigarettes as recreational products. The World Health Organisation, in its call to action in December last year, suggested that they should be carefully handled as cessation products, not as a whole-population approach. We would support ambient advertising and sponsorship being closed down. In terms of what further the UK Parliament could do, use the powers you have to regulate things like social media and be very aware of the massive commercial influences on thinking, which far outweigh any resource that small third-sector advocacy organisations can bring.
Michelle Mitchell: We need to keep our eye on the big prize. We have talked about the evidence and statistics relating to smoking. This would be a world-leading piece of legislation, and we urge you in Parliament to pass it in full with the scope recommended by the Government. I think you would be leaving an incredible legacy of health, wealth and a healthy country for future generations.
Q
Dr Griffiths: As Deborah from ASH said, vapes are a fairly new product, so the research and evidence base, which we have in abundance for tobacco and smoking, is still forming for vaping. However, there are indications that it is not great for health. We are cautious and worried about the long-term implications. What we do know is that vaping can be an important cessation tool for those trying to quit smoking, and that many do want to quit, so we strongly encourage anything that stops smoking, but the people who are turning to vaping as an alternative to smoking for the first time is of deep concern to us. We do not understand the long-term health implications, but the addiction to nicotine deeply concerns us.
Sarah Sleet: We strongly agree. It is a very delicate balancing act between stopping the harm caused by smoking and looking to the long-term with regard to vaping. Quite clearly, smoking is far more damaging for adults and children. Anything that can steer people away from smoking will be healthier than continuing to smoke in the long run, but we do recognise that more attention and more research need to be put into vaping.
Q
Sheila Duffy: As I said earlier, it is a delicate balancing act. We need to move people away from smoking, and anything that does that is a good thing, but we need to look at the long-term effects of vaping. The balancing act in the proposals around restricting access to vaping—making sure that nobody under-age gets access to vapes, denormalising them by taking them away behind the counter and so on—all of those are good measures to reduce the number of children moving on to vaping, but they need to be enforced. We need to make sure that we have the right enforcement action in place to make sure that that actually happens.
Dr Griffiths: You gave a great example of early science that causes us concern, and it perhaps will not surprise you to know that as a body that is based in science and evidence, we at the BHF take statistics incredibly seriously. We are worried that the body of evidence will grow. We would hugely support and welcome a position where vaping was available to people as a cessation tool, but absolutely would discourage anyone else from taking it up as a starting point for nicotine consumption.
Q
Dr Griffiths: It has a huge impact, and thanks to some of the previous legislation there have been some improvements that we can measure and track with great certainty. Second-hand smoke is undoubtedly a cause of cardiovascular disease, and for those people unfortunate enough to be exposed to it, it is a serious issue. Just over 15 years ago, there was a study that looked at coronary heart disease and cardiovascular disease in men. It showed a significant uplift for those exposed to second-hand smoke on a regular basis that was roughly the equivalent in risk of smoking nine cigarettes a day. So there is a very clear basis for saying that second-hand smoke causes heart and circulatory disease.
Sarah Sleet: I would add the legislation on smoking in closed places—there was of course the legislation back in 2015 about children and smoking in cars—was based on very good evidence and was introduced for very good reasons. It proved to be a popular measure. Second-hand smoke in this context as well is an important additional factor to consider in terms of the harms balanced against the need to restrict these particular products.
Q
Matthew Shanks: Yes. I absolutely agree.
That is really helpful.
Patrick Roach: I am not going to add to that, partly because I am here representing the interests of our members. The issue is about how we can control access to products, particularly illegal products, for school-age pupils. We therefore think that it is absolutely right that the Bill has identified the need to secure robust measures to protect the health and wellbeing of children and young people.
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
Public Bill CommitteesQ
Cllr Fothergill: Specifically on vaping, we support the move to plain packaging, moving them away from the counter and restricting flavours—we support all those things. I have to say that we recognise the role of vaping in helping people to give up smoking, but where children and younger people are involved, we want to move the vapes away and make them less accessible. Trading standards will enforce that, as long as there are clear definitions of what can be sold, where it can be sold and who it can be sold to. A lot of the work that they do is evidence-led, so they will work on people who are giving them tip-offs or where they are seeing that there is a trend in an area where those products are being sold. As long as we are resourced and we recognise that a lot of that evidence-led work is required, it is entirely achievable.
Greg Fell: I have a fairly similar view. Largely, trading standards do this work now. The easier and simpler we can make it, and the more we make sure that it is resourced appropriately, the better, but they largely do this job now pretty well.
Q
Greg Fell: Hopefully only illegal vapes contain cannabis or Spice, and not legally produced ones—I sincerely hope that is the case. I have mixed views on vaping in public. I think that Prof McNeill will talk later this afternoon. It is worth reading her evidence review for the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, which has a whole chapter on the passive inhalation of vapes. The ADPH does not have an official position on the passive inhalation of vapes, but my personal view is that in open spaces I am not too worried about it. In enclosed spaces, I might be, particularly for people who have pre-existing respiratory conditions, but I do not think that the evidence supports it being as big an issue as people think. However, that is definitely a question for Prof McNeill, who is the expert on such matters.
Q
Cllr Fothergill: I have already said that we believe the amount of the fine needs to be reviewed. We believe it is right to do it by a local penalty notice, which is issued locally and can be enforced. We do not believe that £100, reduced to £50 if it is paid within 14 days, is sufficient. It will not have the effect that it needs to have and it should be reviewed.
We are also keen, as part of the Bill, for a review of whether we should be brought into line with Scotland on age verification. Scotland has very clear guidelines that legally, people have to produce identification that they are of an age to buy, and we think this is an opportunity for us to bring that in as well. There are two things where we would like to see enforcement strengthened: mandatory age verification and an increase to local penalty notices.
Q
Greg Fell: I do not know that there is a lot of evidence on the gateway effect of switching from vaping to smoking. Again, there are proper experts, some of whom are sitting behind me. It might be something that you want to test them on later, but I do not know that there is lots of evidence of that. Nobody thinks it would be a good thing to do. I think it is fair to say that there is widespread misunderstanding, and occasionally misinformation, about the dangers of vaping in much of the popular press. When we read a study about immensely high doses of vape in the lungs of mice, that leads to awfully lurid headlines, and that causes people to have misunderstandings and misinformation about the relative risks and benefits of vaping compared with smoking. Sadly, I cannot stop that, but it is a problem and I do not think there is an easy solution, because the media like to publish good headlines. I get that; I understand it, but it often skews us away from what the science is actually telling us.
Q
Kate Pike: The Bill will have enabling regulations on vapes, with powers and criminal sanctions. That is good, but the specifics around where the vapes are positioned in store will be down to the next stage. We get calls all the time from people saying, “There’s a shop in my area called Toys and Vapes—do something about it!” There is actually no legislation that we can use to tackle that.
If you do not want the vapes next to the sweets, legislate for it. We will enforce what it says in the legislation, but we cannot make it up. People are always saying, “That’s not right,” but we cannot enforce morals. We can only enforce the law, so get it in there. If you do not want the vapes there, for very good reasons, give us legislation and we can enforce it.
Q
Kate Pike: Illegal drugs are not a trading standards issue. If drugs are consumed via vape or by injection or rolled up in a roll-up, that is not our issue; that is a police issue. We can only enforce the law around the products where the enforcement is given to trading standards. We have no role whatsoever in illegal drugs in vapes. But there is a huge amount of enforcement around illegal drugs in this country, with the police, and the public health approach, about ensuring that people do not use illegal drugs. However they consume them, it is really important that they are on board—
Q
Kate Pike: If you have intelligence around a vape seller selling an illegal drug in a vape, or in any other sort of format, that should be reported to the police. The police will take action against illegal drug sales, or Border Force at the ports and borders. There is a huge enforcement body around illegal drugs.
John Herriman: It is the market surveillance point again. If you have the right level of market surveillance, which is down to capacity, you will have trading standards officers, as well as those from other agencies, out and about who will detect the stuff. Then you can take the appropriate enforcement activity by whichever agency is appropriate at that particular point.
I take the point that was made earlier. I was walking down Hackney high street with trading standards just a couple of weeks ago. About every third or fourth shop, regardless of whatever the main thing it sold was, was also selling vapes on visible display. It is about making sure that we are aware of the level of vapes being sold, and that we therefore take the appropriate action, which is what the Bill should enable us to do.
Colleagues, we might be voting fairly soon, so short questions, please, and concise answers.
(4 months ago)
Commons ChamberI congratulate everyone who has spoken in the debate. The House has come together to highlight something that I am struggling with: when people are at their most vulnerable, they are having to beg for money to fund important services. That should not be the case, yet here we are with an NHS that is clearly not functioning and other services are also feeling the pain. The reorganisation of the NHS devolved powers to ICBs, but we must remember that it is the responsibility of the Government to ensure that the structures function. That is not happening at the moment, and our constituents are losing out. A word that keeps echoing in my mind, rolling off our lips as it always does, is the NHS: the “national” health service. Yet we are hearing about a postcode lottery, where different areas have different experiences, with different ICBs funding to different tunes and where you live accounts for how you die. Surely, we are better than that? In the words of one clinician about the extraordinary provision at St Leonard’s Hospice in York:
“Having worked with people at the end of life through my career, I didn’t know care like that was possible.”
However, as with all hospices, if funding is not addressed, such care will not be possible.
It was this Parliament that inferred the duty, through the Health and Care Act 2022, to address the inequality in access to palliative and end of life care, so that everyone can have the best clinical and holistic support possible, if the right funding is stabilised and put in place. Currently, however, we know that many people—Hospice UK says one in four—are not accessing palliative care. That is 150,000 people every year who die without the support they require. That number is set to rise 25% by 2048 and, according to Marie Curie, by 13% in the next decade. This debate cannot just be about what happens now, but what happens in the future.
In York, the hospice ran an £800,000 deficit last year. The hospice at home funding has remained static for the past seven years, while demand has doubled and the ICB has provided just a 1.2% increase. Sue Ryder believes that the real cost increase over the past year was 10%. Hospice UK figures released say there has been an 11% increase for the payroll this year to around £130 million. Martin House, the local children’s hospice, costs £9.9 million to run. With a total income of £8.6 million, it had a £1.3 million deficit. Only 18% of its funding came from the statutory sources, £1.1 million came from the national children’s hospice grant and £700,000 came from the ICB. Hospice UK estimates a £77 million deficit for the financial year just past—the worst for 20 years.
As demand and costs are rising, the funding is not rising to match. As of 12 April 2024, St Leonard’s hospice in York did not know how much money it was getting from the ICB: left to carry all the risk and left to depend on its reserves, and that, of course, not guaranteed for the future. Martin House, which is also using its reserves to expand its services, knows that it will have only six months of reserves. It certainly does not know what is happening with its funding after this financial year.
The children’s sector, yes, has received a grant, but what comes next? We cannot just run our hospices by running marathons and running charity shops. It is driving inequality. In areas of greater deprivation, fundraising is even harder and therefore the hospices are getting even less money.
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and I thank the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) for securing the debate. It has been a wonderful and sincere debate, but does my hon. Friend agree that there should be more equality between care at home—hospice at home—and care at the hospice? There is no doubt that there is nothing better than care in a hospice—absolutely no doubt. I have nursed four members of my family at end of life, and getting clinical support at home when it was needed was always a problem—my brother had to search for morphine at night. Does she agree that staff are funded even less and are on the minimum wage?
I am really grateful to my hon. Friend for raising those points and I will come on to the issue of hospice at home. We know it is absolutely vital that people can choose where they die. Not everyone wants to die in a clinical setting—indeed, a hospice is barely a clinical setting—but many choose to die at home and they should be able to receive the care they need. She is right. We must have integration with the rest of the NHS. A district nurse may not be able to push palliative care to the extent that a palliative care specialist would in providing pain relief and the support somebody needs at the end of life at home. We need it to be timely and we need to ensure it is fully funded. The Health and Social Care Committee found that when it visited Royal Trinity hospice, as part its assisted dying inquiry. The point was made that we need to ensure we have the training so that clinicians have the competencies and the confidence to administer the pain relief and the palliative care that is necessary, and to ensure that the service is available universally. It is not and that must be addressed.
In York, of the 1,000 people who benefited from St Leonard’s hospice last year, 50% received hospice care at home. That number will grow over time and we need to ensure those services are there as they are needed. Of course, we know that if people are not on that pathway they end up in the acute service. They are put through the trauma of A&E, costing the NHS goodness knows how much, and then they do not get the care they need. Trinity Hospice talked about what it was doing to divert people away from that pathway and into proper care, either at home or within its wider services. There is much still to secure on that front.
If I may, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will raise just one more major point before I close, which relates to inequality. We know there is real inequality at the end of people’s lives. Some of it is based along socioeconomic lines, and some of it is emphasised within minority communities. We need to deal with that to ensure we have universal provision, address the death literacy of our nation, and ensure the support is there when it is needed. I am particularly concerned about the lack of comprehensive funding for our palliative care services.
I urge the Minister to look at funding staffing costs, which are 69% of all funding. It has been suggested by Marie Curie that 70% of funding come from the state, and I think that is about right. We can phase that in, but we need to ensure we address the inequality that is driven through the system. We need to put in the research that is needed, so there is better data on who is accessing care and who is not, and we need to ensure that we are pushing palliative care as far as we can. If we do not, and we debate assisted dying, I am worried that people will be fearful that they will not be able to access the care that could be possible should that service be properly funded. I really urge the Minister to make that a priority before that debate takes place. Mr Deputy Speaker, I will end on that point.
(4 months, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberI am going to make some progress and then I will give way.
As I have said, the tobacco industry questions the necessity of the Bill on the grounds that smoking rates are already falling. It is absolutely correct that smoking rates are down, but as I said, there is nothing inevitable about that. Smoking remains the largest preventable cause of death, disability and ill health. In England alone, creating a smoke-free generation could prevent almost half a million cases of heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and other deadly diseases by the turn of the century, increasing thousands of people’s quality of life and reducing pressure on our NHS. An independent review has found that if we stand by and do nothing, nearly half a million more people will die from smoking by the end of this decade. We must therefore ask what place this addiction has in our society, and we are not the only ones to ask that question of ourselves. We know that our policy of creating a smoke-free generation is supported by the majority of retailers, and by about 70% of the public.
The economic case for creating a smoke-free generation is also profound. Each year smoking costs our economy a minimum of £17 billion, which is far more than the £10 billion of tax revenue that it attracts. It costs the average smoker £2,500 a year—money that those people could spend on other goods and services or put towards buying a new car or home. It costs our entire economy by stalling productivity and driving economic inactivity, to the extent that the damage caused by smoking accounts for almost 7p in every £1 of income tax we pay. As Conservatives we are committed to reducing the tax burden on hard-working people and improving the productivity of the state, which is why this Government have cut the double taxation on work not once but twice, giving our hard-working constituents a £900 average tax cut. That is a moral and principled approach.
Having celebrated the first 75 years of the NHS last year, I am determined to reform it to make it faster, simpler and fairer for the next 75 years, and part of that productivity work involves recognising that we must reduce the single most preventable cause of ill health, disability and death in the UK. This reform will benefit not just our children but anyone who may be affected by passive smoking, and, indeed, future taxpayers whose hard-earned income helps to fund our health service. Today we are taking a historic step in that direction. Creating a smoke-free generation could deliver productivity gains of £16 billion by 2056. It will prevent illness and promote good health, help people to get into work and drive economic growth, all the while reducing pressure on the NHS.
I have already taken an intervention from the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley). I will take one more, from the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), and then I will make some progress—although I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) in a moment.
The Secretary of State has talked about addiction to nicotine. If, as she has suggested, vaping is a pathway to stopping smoking, why does she not envisage a vape-free generation arriving in parallel with a smoke-free generation, so that we can have a nicotine-free generation across the board? Why does she not expand her legislation to ensure that young people take up neither smoking nor vaping?
The House has already legislated to ensure that vapes cannot be sold to people under 18. However, as we are seeing in our local shops, the vaping industry is finding ways of marketing its products that seem designed for younger minds and younger preferences. Once the Bill has been passed, that age limit will be maintained for vaping but, importantly, from January 2027 onwards we will not see the sale of legal cigarettes or tobacco to those aged 18 or less.
Let me first put on record that I worked in respiratory medicine for 20 years before coming to this place, and every single patient I treated regretted being where he or she was. Let me also put on record my thanks to Javed Khan for his excellent report. It is important for us to follow the science and the facts in this debate, and to ensure that we take the harm reduction approach that is so necessary.
The Bill is both bold and the right thing to do. Smoking kills one person every five minutes in the UK, and kills 7.69 million people globally every year. It is a leading cause of preventable death and disability and is responsible for one in four cancer deaths, alongside heart and circulatory diseases and strokes. We must do everything we can to prevent the tobacco industry from exploiting another generation to max out its profits, leaving people financially impoverished and in poor physical health.
Public health teams need the resources that are necessary to support adults into a smoke-free future, and I echo what the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mark Eastwood) said: we need a focus on resourcing to achieve that. In my constituency 9,100 people continue to smoke, and they deserve better. We need a targeted approach, because passive smoking is still costly to people’s lives. We know that smoking in pregnancy is harmful to the unborn; we also know that it targets the very poorest in our society, driving greater health inequalities, and affecting people with mental health conditions as well. It is urgent, indeed imperative, for the Government to turn their attention to addressing the inequalities that are seen in all areas of healthcare.
Let me now turn to the issue of vaping. York’s schools survey showed that 19 % of children had tried vaping, while 5% in the city vaped regularly. Schools are battling to stamp out the practice. While much of the detail in the Bill will be set out in secondary legislation, I urge the Government to go toe to toe with the approach taken on tobacco products: plain packaging, health warnings, and no designer products, attractive flavours, descriptions or colours. When it comes to sales, the approach should be no less stringent, putting products out of sight and out of mind. The aim must be to create a vape-free generation too. I urge Ministers to address the reasons why Gen Z have turned to vaping on a large scale, to develop the interventions that are needed to help them make better choices, and to expose the blatant exploitation by vape companies that profit from the creation of a new generation of addicts. We are yet to know the extent of the translation of non-nicotine vaping to nicotine-based products, but researchers are examining the relationship between vaping and moving on to tobacco products, and it is extremely worrying. Clearly, the industry has worked out the correlation. To profit, it needs the next generation to be addicted to its goods—to nicotine—so non-nicotine vapes must be seen as the first step for those moving into forms of nicotine addiction.
Where I believe the Bill falls short is in its approach to adults taking up vaping. As the Minister recognises, vapes are seen as an important public health measure to stop smoking, so there must be greater ambition to prevent people over 18, as well as those under 18, from starting vaping, yet the Bill is silent on that. We know that vapes are not harm free, and I urge the Minister to broaden her ambition for a nicotine-free generation by instituting vaping cessation programmes through a public health model.
Where people are allowed to vape should be no different from where they can smoke. Indeed, people who already have poor respiratory health are impacted by vaping. Therefore, let us make things simple by introducing one set of rules for public places such as bars and so on, and for private vehicles where they are children..
May I urge the Minister to look again at the enforcement proposals? I support investment in strengthening local authorities’ trading standards teams. The team in York have just seized 1,000 vapes, worth £13,000. They need funding and the tools to do their work. I question the paucity of the fixed penalty notice, which is just £100. This is not a sufficient deterrent for illegal traders, and I urge the Government to increase the amount and review it annually. Placing that in secondary legislation would enable more flexibility.
That takes me to my last point about where I believe the legislation falls short. A vaping company came before the Health and Social Care Committee. It promoted its products through a relationship with Blackburn Rovers. The arguments it used for doing so mirrored those that the tobacco industry has propagated for decades. We saw right through them—we tested their reasoning and they failed at every turn. There must be an outright ban on all forms of vaping advertising for nicotine and non-nicotine products, and it should be no less stringent than the ban on tobacco advertising. We must legislate for a complete advertising ban, and I trust that the Minister will look at that when bringing the Bill into Committee.
The reason why I sound the warning bells is that the limitation on the available science does not mean that there is none. The Health and Social Care Committee has met academics at the University of London who have undertaken a study of 3,500 samples of tissue to show that vaping can cause changes in epithelial cells in the oral cavity. They want to look at lung tissue, but access is available only via a bronchoscopy. They observed DNA methylation changes, which provide a very early indication that cells will grow more quickly and are biomarkers for early identification of the onset of disease, such as cancer. In researching the impact of smoking on tobacco users, the researchers have also demonstrated the impact of vaping. This powerful, peer-reviewed research is the first of its kind. I urge the Minister to read the paper by Professor Martin Weschwendler and Dr Chiara Herzog.
Smoking kills, and while vaping may be less harmful than smoking, it is not without significant risk. We cannot use ignorance—the excuse used by past Governments—as a reason for getting this wrong. We must follow the science, be on our guard and recognise that where people are being exploited, it is the duty of this Parliament to protect them. This industry is driven by a profit motive—one of exploitation. It is our job to protect our constituents.
(5 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberI have had a number of meetings with my hon. Friend and know that he is determined to resolve some of these long-standing issues in his constituency. I have assured him that ICBs have the freedom to increase capital for primary care in their region, so long as their plans remain within their overall capital allocation. I will certainly be happy to meet him again to talk about what more measures we can take to support his constituents.
I am very surprised and disappointed to hear the hon. Lady say that. We are delivering 2.5 million more appointments through the new patient premium, which started last Friday. We will have information within a month to see which dentists have taken up this generous new patient premium to ensure that many more people get access to dentistry. Not only that, but we have golden hellos to attract dentists to areas that are underserved, mobile dental vans and, importantly, a new focus on Smile4life. That is going to ensure that all babies and young children have that fabulous smile for life.