Under-age Vaping

Debate between Steve Brine and Kirsten Oswald

Wednesday 12th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

As the Chair of said Committee, I am very conscious of the importance of these issues, and I am pleased to see them debated in the House. I welcome the debate, but anywhere I have seen this issue debated, including in my cross-party Select Committee—many of its members are here—I do not see an awful lot of politics in it. I have a lot of time for the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), but I thought that he was uncharacteristically partisan in his remarks—a Labour Government this and a Tory Government that. I thought that that was misplaced, but maybe that’s just me.

Our Committee heard from the chief medical officer back in February at the start of our major inquiry on prevention. Professor Whitty highlighted then what he called “an appalling situation” whereby vaping, which he described as

“an addictive product with…unknown consequences for developing minds”,

is being marketed to children. I absolutely agree with him that that is totally unacceptable and out of control. As a parent of secondary school-age children, I see, hear and read letters home about the subject in a way that I never imagined I would only a couple of years ago, let alone when I started in this House 13 years ago.

Professor Whitty noted that

“rates of vaping have doubled in the last couple of years among children”,

which is consistent with what we are all hearing as constituency MPs. That situation cannot be allowed to continue, which is why I agree with the part of the Opposition’s motion that calls for plain packaging for vaping. The record will show that I most certainly did not vote against new clause 4 to the Health and Care Act, tabled by the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), in November 2021. I support that part of the motion—it is consistent and in line with what happens for cigarettes. I do not think anybody would argue that we should go back to the days of the Marlboro Man and branding on cigarette packets, so I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to take that point away.

[Kirsten Oswald]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way as he is getting into the meat of his speech. Does he share my concerns about the impact that advertising on sports kits could have on any attempts to bring down the number of children vaping?

[Steve Brine]

Yes, I do. I suspect that point may be raised later in the debate by one of my fellow Committee members, if she catches your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Blackburn Rovers issue has been raised, and it is not a historical sports deal, either: some may think that it was something that happened last season, but they have renewed it for the new season, which in my opinion is the opposite of “totally wicked”. I have young children who use that expression, and I can see why that would be attractive to a company wishing for Blackburn Rovers to carry its advertising on their shirts—I can only think that is the company’s motivation. I would ask Blackburn Rovers to look themselves in the mirror about that deal as much as the company that is doing the advertising, because it takes two to tango. Yes, I am concerned about that.

A couple of weeks ago, the Health Committee held one of our topical oral evidence sessions on youth vaping. We did so because we are very concerned about increasing media reports of children taking up vaping, as well as what we are hearing in the House and from our own constituents. During that evidence session, we heard from representatives from the health policy world and the medical and education sectors about the impact of the rising trend in child vaping. As was mentioned by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish, we heard directly from a headteacher from the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson)—a fellow Committee member—about the disruption that vaping is causing in her school. She did indeed talk about the impact on education of students vaping in the toilets and setting off the fire alarms.

We heard about the cost associated with putting heat sensors on top of fire alarm sensors—teachers have got enough to be doing! We heard about the disruption, which has an impact on education. During exam season recently, there were examples of exams being impacted by alarms being set off. As the headteacher told us,

“I became really concerned about interruptions to the exam season, so I had to change the smoke sensors to heat sensors really quickly to prevent us being in and out while students were sitting GCSEs and A-levels.”

That beggars belief. Young people have suffered enough in the past few years, their education has been disrupted enough, and now this—an epidemic of vaping that we are allowing to happen.

I raised the same point with the children’s doctor who gave evidence to the Select Committee. The issue of toileting in schools has wider impacts than just the disruption of education: children do not want to use the toilets, because they do not want to walk into an environment where people are vaping. They are worried about that, so toilets have become off-limits places. There is a much wider issue around toileting in schools and schools closing toilets. There is a very good charity called ERIC that works in the area of children’s bowel and bladder health, and without getting into too much detail, there is an impact on the retentiveness of children who do not use the toilet when they are at school. That can have serious medical implications, so once again, it beggars belief that we find ourselves in this situation because of vaping.

In my opinion, the industry has not gone anywhere near far enough in ensuring that its products do not appeal to the young demographic, and it is disingenuous for it to claim otherwise. Shops are able to display wide ranges of vapes in colourful, flavoured varieties and in locations that do not usually sell similar products: for example, we heard about vapes being sold in chicken shops and pound shops. That is in sharp contrast to tobacco products, which must be locked away and packaged in standardised plain packaging containing health warnings.

Evidence given to us by ASH from its surveys shows that flavour is a reason but not the main reason why young people who have never smoked start vaping. The most common reason for trying vaping among young never smokers is “just to give it a try”, at 54%, followed by “other people use them so I join in”, at 18%, and then there is “I like the flavours”, at just 12%. It is worth putting that statistic on the record, because there was a bit of a debate earlier between those on the Front Benches about flavours.

I have a few other points. Vapes are an age-controlled product; it is not legal for people under the age of 18 to buy them. There are a number of ways that young people obtain vapes anyway—for example, through the lack of age verification in shops or by buying them from other sellers who are often older teenagers who buy in bulk to sell them on, sometimes in school settings. I know schools take a very tough line on that, and rightly so, but teachers have better things to do than play trading standards officers on campus. We are particularly concerned in the Select Committee about online ordering, which is an area I think would benefit from more Government attention in order to avoid the law being circumvented. Overall, there is a need for much better enforcement of the law on not selling the products to under-18s. It is crucial that trading standards officers tackle non-compliant vendors, and of course are resourced to do so. I know the Minister is seized of that, and he rightly put that in his recent tobacco plan. I say tobacco plan, but I mean the tobacco strategy; as someone who has written a tobacco control plan, I was careful about using that word.

Price is another important issue, particularly the price of disposable vapes, as others have mentioned. They are much cheaper than tobacco products—much cheaper—in part because they are not subject to the same levels of excise duty. I understand that that is clearly not a matter for the Minister on the Front Bench, but maybe he could take that up with his Treasury colleagues. ASH told us that there is evidence that children are highly price-sensitive when it comes to buying these products, and that adding an excise charge of £5 on the battery, which is what we have often heard about, would act as a significant deterrent.

There are a lot of young people in the Gallery, and I wonder what they are thinking listening to this debate. I would urge right hon. and hon. Members to talk to young people, as I am sure we all do, either in their own homes or in the schools in our constituencies, and to ask them their motivation for vaping and what story they know about vaping, because their stories are interesting. I dropped into a vape shop in my constituency just the other day. I made a full disclosure: I told them who I was and that I chair the Health and Social Care Committee. High street vape shops are often very responsible in what they do, and this shop was very clear about how it approaches young people who come in. It told me about a product that basically looked like a bag of Skittles—other nice sweets are available. Skittles took the producer to court and the producer then had to withdraw that product. It does not take a genius to understand why someone might want to brand a vape to look like a bag of Skittles. Popping into vape shops and talking to them about how they do their business is time well spent on a constituency Friday.

To conclude, I have so many serious concerns about disposable vapes and the way they are marketed to children. However, I have to say that I do not support a total ban because, as ASH told the Select Committee in evidence, they can play an important part in helping people to quit smoking. We have to be very careful about a broad-brush ban, but the Government need to step forward even more than they already have, and this debate may help the Minister to form his views. I know he is personally very seized of this issue; he has spoken to me about it on a number of occasions.

The Government need to stay on this issue as an urgent case. A number of friends who also have children at secondary school have asked me, “What are the Government doing about this?” because they know what I do. The concern out there in parent land is growing by the day, and we parents are concerned—very concerned—about this. We on the Select Committee are also very concerned about it, and we will be writing to the Minister and the Secretary of State off the back of our session a couple of weeks ago to set out some of our concerns and some of the recommendations we may make. I hope the Government will take that on board, and come back to us promptly as part of the ongoing consultation the Minister has told us about.

I agree with some of the interventions that have been made. The Khan review was commissioned by the Government and it is a robust piece of work containing with lots of evidence. There is an awful lot to be seized of. I appreciate that it is challenging to get grid slots and get stuff through No.10, but the Prime Minister has personally identified himself with this issue and is concerned about it. I therefore say to the Minister that in that regard he would be pushing at an open door if he banged on a black door with a No.10 on it.