Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential impact of vaping on fertility.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government has not yet assessed in detail the potential impact of vaping on fertility. A recent study reported in the media analysed blood samples from more than 8,000 women but this was not published in a medical journal and no other details of the research have been shared.
Our health advice will continue to advise all women planning to get pregnant, or who are pregnant, to stop smoking for their general health.
Overall, studies on the effects of vaping have so far shown that vapes are less harmful than smoking and can help people quit, although the long-term risks are unknown. We are exploring future opportunities with the United Kingdom research councils to examine the potential long-term harms from vaping.
To help pregnant smokers quit smoking, the Government is providing up to £10 million of investment over 2023/24 and 2024/25 via a financial incentives scheme. This evidence-based intervention, supported by behavioural support, will encourage pregnant women and their partners to quit smoking, and remain smokefree throughout pregnancy and beyond, helping to improve the health and wellbeing of both mother and baby.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions she has had with community pharmacists on supporting people with (a) smoking and (b) vaping (i) addiction and (ii) dependency.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Quitting smoking is the best thing a smoker can do for their health and smokers are three times as likely to succeed with stop smoking services (SSS) when compared to an unsupported quit attempt. As announced in Stopping the start: our new plan to create a smokefree generation, published in October 2023, the Government is investing an additional £70 million per year for five years to support local authority-led SSS, around doubling current spend and supporting 360,000 people to set a quit date each year. Local authorities commission a variety of settings, including community pharmacy, to deliver SSS. In 2022/23, 12,165 of the 176,566 quit dates set through SSS were in a pharmacy setting. Since March 2022, hospitals have been referring patients to community pharmacy to continue the stop smoking journey they started in hospital as part of the NHS Smoking Cessation Service in community pharmacies agreed by the Department, NHS England and Community Pharmacy England. Across the country, 4841 community pharmacies have signed up to deliver the service.
In addition, we are establishing a financial incentives scheme to help pregnant smokers and their partners to quit smoking, with smoking cessation support. This evidence-based intervention will encourage pregnant women to give up smoking, and remain smokefree throughout pregnancy and beyond, helping to improve the health and wellbeing of both mother and baby.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she is taking steps to ensure that family hubs provide advice on smoking and vaping harm reduction.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Smoking is the number one entirely preventable cause of ill-health, disability, and death in this country. It is responsible for 80,000 yearly deaths in the United Kingdom, and one in four of all UK cancer deaths. It costs our country £17 billion a year, £14 billion of which is through lost productivity alone. It puts a huge pressure on the National Health Service and social care, costing over £3 billion a year.
The Government is investing an additional £300 million to improve support for families, though the joint Department of Health and Social Care and Department for Education Family Hubs and Start for Life programme. The Family Hubs and Start for Life programme guide sets out minimum expectations that local authorities receiving programme funding should deliver by March 2025. With regards to smoking support, the programme guide sets out that staff in a family hub are expected to be trained in delivering Very Brief Advice on smoking to parents identified as smokers, and some family hubs may provide smoking cessation support on-site, for example through drop-ins.
Staff in family hubs know what stop smoking services (SSS) are provided locally, and connect families to these services. Smokers are three times as likely to succeed with SSS, when compared to an unsupported quit attempt. As announced in Stopping the start: our new plan to create a smokefree generation, published in October 2023, the Government is investing an additional £70 million per year, for five years, to support local authority led SSS, almost doubling current spend and supporting 360,000 people to set a quit date each year.
In addition, we are establishing a financial incentives scheme to help pregnant smokers and their partners to quit smoking, with smoking cessation support. This evidence-based intervention will encourage pregnant women to give up smoking, and remain smokefree throughout pregnancy and beyond, helping to improve the health and wellbeing of both mother and baby.
Whilst anyone smoking should focus on giving up cigarettes before giving up vaping, giving up vaping is an important step in overcoming nicotine dependence. We are working with the NHS Better Health website to provide advice for people who want to quit vaping. The National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training has produced guidance for local SSS staff, on how best to support vapers to quit. We are also exploring further ways to support people to quit vaping, as part of the national Swap to Stop programme.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she is taking steps to (a) commission and (b) access scientific studies on the (i) physical and (ii) psychological impact of vaping (A) non nicotine and (B) nicotine products.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The health advice is clear, if you don’t smoke, don’t vape, and children should never vape. Vaping can play a role in helping adult smokers to quit, but the Government is concerned about the worrying rise in vaping among children, with youth vaping tripling in the last three years and one in five children having now used a vape.
Using the best available evidence is central to the development of regulations and requirements regarding vapes. This includes evidence on the health harms from vaping, both nicotine and non-nicotine vapes, in the short, medium, and long term. We monitor and assess the emerging international research, as can be seen in Public Health England’s Nicotine Vaping in England reports, and work closely with the academic and scientific community to interrogate the data on the physical and psychological effects of vaping and smoking.
We are also keen to ensure that we play an active role in driving forward the knowledge around longer-term health harms. As part of this, we are actively exploring options to partner with research bodies and commission research. We will provide more detail in due course.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
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 to help improve patient access to primary care services.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Our Delivery plan for recovering access to primary care has two central ambitions to improve access to general practice (GP): tackling the 8:00am rush and reducing the number of people struggling to contact their practice; and for patients to know on the day they contact their practice, how their request will be managed.
We are doing this by modernising telephone systems, backed by £240 million in retargeted funding, and by building the capacity to deliver more appointments. As a result, we have now delivered on our manifesto commitment for 50 million more GP appointments per year, with 370.7 million booked across the last 12 months.
There is an increasing number of clinical services that are being delivered in community pharmacy, including the New Medicines Service, Contraception Service, Blood Pressure Check Service, Stop Smoking Service, and most recently the new Pharmacy First service. These services help take the pressure off GPs, and make it quicker and easier for patients to access care.
Furthermore, our plan to recover and reform NHS dentistry will fund approximately 2.5 million additional appointments. The plan sets out our actions to address the challenges facing National Health Service dentistry, and to improve dental access for patients across the country. A new patient premium is supporting dentists to take on new patients, and a new marketing campaign will help everyone who needs an NHS dentist in finding one. We have further supported dentists by raising the minimum Units of Dental Activity rate to £28 this year, making NHS work more attractive and sustainable.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of harm reduction approaches for people using tobacco and vaping products to end their dependencies.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Smoking is responsible for approximately 80,000 deaths a year in the United Kingdom, and causes around one in four cancer deaths in the UK. It also costs our country £17 billion a year, and puts a huge burden on the National Health Service. Smoking is an addiction and there is no liberty in addiction. It causes harm to not only to the smoker but to the whole of society. That is why we have introduced the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, to create the first smokefree generation and enable us to further crack down on youth vaping. In addition, we are investing an additional £70 million per year, over five years, to support local authority commissioned stop smoking services. The Tobacco and Vapes Bill is available at the following link:
https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3703.
Quitting smoking completely, immediately, and permanently is the best thing a smoker can do for their health, and smokers are three times as likely to succeed with stop smoking services (SSS) when compared to an unsupported quit attempt. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has published recommendations on supporting people who do not want, or are not ready, to stop smoking in one go, to reduce the harm from smoking. The NICE’s guidance advises that the health benefits from reducing smoking are unclear, but if smokers reduce their smoking now, they are more likely to stop smoking in the future.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
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 lobbying by the tobacco industry does not undermine future public health policies aimed at reducing smoking rates.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Smoking is responsible for approximately 80,000 deaths a year in the United Kingdom, and causes around one in four cancer deaths in the UK. It also costs our country £17 billion a year, and puts a huge burden on the National Health Service. Smoking is an addiction, and there is no liberty in addiction. It causes harm to not only the smoker, but to society as a whole. That is why we have introduced the Tobacco and Vapes Bill to create the first smokefree generation, and enable us to further crack down on youth vaping. The Tobacco and Vapes Bill is available at the following link:
https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3703
The UK is a party to the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, and under Article 5.3 has an obligation to protect the development of public health policy from the vested interests of the tobacco industry. As a world leader in tobacco control, the Government takes this commitment very seriously. In 2023, the Department published guidance for Government engagement with the tobacco industry, which is available at the following link:
The Department regularly publishes correspondence from, or to, those with links to the tobacco industry, and it is available at the following link:
https://khub.net/web/phe-national/public-library/-/document_library/v2WsRK3ZlEig/view/394794557
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of vaping on the health of pregnant women; and whether she plans to take steps to encourage pregnant women to stop vaping.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Our health advice on vaping is clear, if you smoke, it is better to vape, but if you don’t smoke, you should never vape. Evidence to date suggests vaping is less harmful than smoking. Research funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research finds that pregnant women who vaped, when compared to women who used Nicotine Replacement Therapy, were twice as likely to quit, and that both approaches were safer than smoking. Further information is available at the following link:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01808-0
To help pregnant smokers quit smoking, the Government is providing up to £10 million of investment over 2023/24 and 2024/25 via a financial incentives scheme. This evidence-based intervention, supported by behavioural support, will encourage pregnant women to quit smoking, and remain smokefree throughout pregnancy and beyond, helping to improve the health and wellbeing of both mother and baby.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
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 to encourage pregnant women to undertake smoking cessation programmes.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Smoking is the number one entirely preventable cause of ill-health, disability, and death in this country. It is responsible for 80,000 yearly deaths in the United Kingdom, and one in four of all UK cancer deaths. Smoking in pregnancy increases the risk of stillbirth, miscarriage, and sudden infant death.
As set out in Stopping the Start: our new plan to create a smokefree generation, we are establishing a financially incentivised scheme to help pregnant smokers and their partners to quit smoking, with smoking cessation support. This evidence-based intervention will encourage pregnant women to give up smoking, and remain smokefree throughout pregnancy and beyond, helping to improve the health and wellbeing of both mother and baby.
The objective is to have all maternity trusts that wish to participate in the scheme signed up by the end of 2024, so that all pregnant women who smoke in participating areas will be offered the opportunity to join the incentive scheme by December 2024.
This financial incentive scheme builds upon the NHS Long Term Plan’s ambition to ensure that all pregnant smokers can access behavioural support to quit from within maternity services, as well as additional funding for mass marketing campaigns on stopping smoking.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
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 to help increase the number of people participating in smoking cessation programmes.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Smoking is the number one entirely preventable cause of ill-health, disability and death in this country. It is responsible for 80,000 yearly deaths in the United Kingdom and one in four of all UK cancer deaths. It costs our country £17 billion a year, £14 billion of which is through lost productivity alone. It puts a huge pressure on the National Health Service and social care, costing over £3 billion a year. Quitting smoking is the best thing a smoker can do for their health and smokers are three times as likely to succeed with stop smoking services (SSS) when compared to an unsupported quit attempt.
As announced in Stopping the start: our new plan to create a smokefree generation, published in October 2023, the Government is investing an additional £70 million per year for five years to support local authority-led SSS, around doubling current spend and supporting 360,000 people to set a quit date each year. To support engagement with SSS, and increase motivation to quit, we are spending an additional £15 million per year to fund national anti-smoking campaigns. We are also investing up to £45 million over two years to roll out our national ‘Swap to Stop’ scheme and establishing a financial incentives scheme to help pregnant smokers and their partners quit smoking with smoking cessation support.
Vaping is never recommended for children, and carries the potential harms of future addiction while their lungs and brains are still developing. The health advice is clear, vapes can be an effective tool to help smokers quit, but young people and those who have never smoked should not vape, or be encouraged to vape.