Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the proportion of people diagnosed with lung cancer over the past five years who have never smoked.

No assessment has been made on this issue, as smoking data is not routinely collected, except for specific circumstances such as data on access to stop smoking services. A difficulty in collecting and using data on smoking is that ‘never’ smoked can be interpreted in different ways and can result in under-estimation of smoking.