Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help ensure that local authority trading standards bodies have sufficient (a) funding and (b) other resources to tackle (i) illicit vapes and (ii) underage sales.

The Government is concerned about the increase in the number of illicit vapes in the United Kingdom’s market, and the easy access and availability of these vapes to children. To strengthen our enforcement activity, we are providing an additional £30 million per year for enforcement agencies, including Trading Standards, to support work in tackling illicit and underage sales. We are working closely with Trading Standards to consider how the new funding can best support their programmes of local-level enforcement.

In April last year, we also provided £3 million of new funding for a new enforcement unit to tackle the illegal and underage sale of vapes, which has conducted targeted inspections in retail outlets and ports, upskilled Trading Standards officers, and piloted online underage test programmes.

The Government will also introduce fixed penalty notices (FPNs) for the underage sale of tobacco and vaping products. This will support Trading Standards in taking quicker and more proportionate enforcement action against the irresponsible retailers who allow underage sales. Enforcement authorities will retain all the proceeds from FPNs, to reinvest in the enforcement of tobacco and vaping product legislation.