Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what his policy is on e-cigarettes as a potential gateway to smoking.

The Government has set a regulatory framework in place that aims to prevent the take up of e-cigarettes by children and non-smokers whilst making them freely available to smokers who wish to use them to quit tobacco use. Gateway effect is difficult to prove or disprove but to date, in the United Kingdom, we have not seen any significant use of e-cigarettes outside of existing smokers and ex-smokers.