Tobacco Control Plan

Virendra Sharma Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab) [V]]

Thank you for calling me to speak in this important discussion, Mrs Miller. It is a pleasure to speak here under such a distinguished Chair. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) and the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who secured this important debate.

I should declare an interest as a member of the all-party parliamentary group on smoking and health. We have made fantastic strides in this country to reduce smoking, but black and minority ethnic communities are being left behind. Rates of smoking among Asians are declining more slowly than the national average, so I want to see more done to empower them to choose to go smoke-free. One size fits all does not work anywhere. When I chaired the health scrutiny taskforce on smoking cessation as a councillor in 2003, we knew that differential outcomes were inescapable while we did not offer a range of options. Now, nearly 20 years on, we have gone backwards. Government money for cessation services has dried up.

The report that our APPG launched yesterday says that polluters should pay. That is a principle we all recognise, and I agree with it. Some tobacco companies have been clear that they will fund smoking cessation services for local authorities at this time of massive pressure on local health budgets. I assume that that would be welcome. The real costs of losing smoking cessation services are the years of good health lost, and there is a range of lower-risk options out there right now. Any of them is better than smoking.

I come from a family of smokers, although I do not smoke and have never done so. Personally, I do not see the appeal, but clearly people are addicted, and addiction needs treatment, not moralising. Three million people now vape, and nearly all of them are former smokers. That is 3 million fewer people choosing a less harmful option. This is good news, but BAME communities, and people with manual jobs and without university degrees, are about two and a half times more likely to smoke than their white, office-working and university-educated colleagues. That has to be addressed, and it has to be part of our future plan to support everyone we can to be smoke-free.

Emerging opportunities, such as tobacco-free nicotine pouches and “heat not burn” products, still present a health risk, but it is less than that of cigarettes. I want my constituents, and anyone who wants to smoke less, to know about the opportunities to improve their health. A range of options make it easier to quit eventually, as we noted in the health scrutiny taskforce on smoking cessation. We need an ambitious tobacco control plan that recognises the opportunities and legislates for new products. “Heat not burn” products and tobacco-free nicotine pouches will play a role, just as vaping has persuaded more people to quit smoking or to move to less harmful alternatives.

In Asian communities, we need to offer alternatives to chewing tobacco and betel. There are terrible statistics about the rates of oral cancers, and anything that reduces those rates will save lives. Pretending that millions of people will give up smoking just because we hope they will do so will get us nowhere, but working to move people down a ladder of lower-risk products really would save lives.

Thank you, Mrs Miller, for giving me the opportunity to contribute my few thoughts.