Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if his Department will make a comparative assessment of prevalence of oral cancer amongst (a) South Asian women and (b) the adult population; and if his Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of creating a product standard for chewed tobacco products as recommended in the 2006 study entitled Levels of toxins in oral tobacco products in the UK published in the journal Tobacco Control, volume 15, issue 1.

‘Oral cancer in England’, published in May 2020, compared the incidence of oral cancer in Asian/Asian British people with other ethnic groups in the adult population, although it made no specific assessment of prevalence in South Asian women. We have no plans to make such an assessment.

No assessment of creating a product standard has been made. Products standards for tobacco are contained in The Tobacco and Related Products (Amendment) Regulations 2016. The Department is due to publish its post implementation review of the Regulations shortly.