Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when he plans to publish his Department's response to the potential funding options for programmes to reduce smoking uptake amongst young people in the Advancing our health: prevention in the 2020s consultation, which closed on 14 October 2019.

Reducing youth smoking rates is a key part of the current Tobacco Control Plan 2017-2022 for England which aims to see the smoking rate in 15 year olds reduced to 3% or less by the end of 2022. Youth smoking rates are continuing to decline. In 2018, 5.3% of 15 year olds were regular smokers. 2% of 11-15 year olds were regular smokers, and 16% had ever smoked.

The Government remains committed to its vision of smokefree 2030. We intend to publish the Government response to the Prevention Green Paper, ‘Advancing our health: prevention in the 2020s’ in due course and key steps and ambitions to deliver smokefree 2030 after this.