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.
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, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of a full advertising ban on companies promoting vaping 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. Advertising of vapes is already restricted by existing regulations. This includes a ban on advertising on television and radio, and through internet advertising, or commercial email. However, products can still be promoted elsewhere, such as on digital billboards.
Whilst we are not currently planning on making any further changes to the rules regarding vape advertising, we are taking action to protect children from the harms of vaping by taking new regulation making powers that can be used to limit vape flavours, how vapes are packaged, and where and how they can be displayed in retail settings. Collectively, these actions will reduce the appeal and accessibility of vapes to children, whilst ensuring vapes remain an effective smoking cessation tool for adult smokers.
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 has made an assessment of the risk of people moving from non-nicotine to nicotine vapes.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Our health advice regarding vapes covers both non-nicotine as well as nicotine vapes, that while vaping can play a useful role in helping adult smokers to quit, non-smokers and children should never vape. The long-term health impacts of vaping are unknown, and the nicotine contained within nicotine vapes can be highly addictive.
We recognise the risk of non-nicotine vapes being used as a gateway to nicotine vapes by children. That is why the Tobacco and Vapes Bill includes new regulation making powers that will cover all vapes, nicotine as well as non-nicotine, to reduce their appeal and availability to children and non-smokers.
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, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of banning the use of vapes in (a) public spaces, (b) bars and (c) vehicles with child passengers.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Vaping can be an effective tool for adult smokers to quit smoking. However, the health advice is clear, if you don’t smoke, don’t vape, and children should never vape. This is why the Tobacco and Vapes Bill will give us powers to crack down on child friendly flavours and packaging, and to change the way vapes are displayed in shops, measures on which we will shortly consult.
Inhaling anything other than fresh air may have long term health effects. Evidence on the harm from exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke is well established and because of its carcinogenic content there is no safe level of exposure. Breathing in other people’s tobacco smoke is known to cause a range of health issues. However, there is currently no evidence to suggest that second-hand vapour causes wider health harms in the way tobacco smoke does. Therefore, the Government has no plans to introduce restrictions on where people can vape.
However, many public venues and spaces have their own policies on vaping. For example, most hospitals and public transport have banned vaping. Employers or operators of indoor spaces would be within their rights to implement policies banning the use of vapes in their premises and many do so.
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 has made an assessment of the implications for her policies of research by Professor Martin Schwendler and Dr Chiara Herzog on changes to epithelial cells caused by vaping.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
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.
As stated by Cancer Research UK, this study contributes to our understanding of e-cigarettes, also known as vapes, but does not show that e-cigarettes cause cancer. Decades of research has proven the link between smoking and cancer, and studies have so far shown that e-cigarettes are far less harmful than smoking, and can help people quit. This paper does, however, highlight that vapes are not risk-free, and so we need additional studies to uncover their potential longer-term impacts on human health.
Asked by: Adam Afriyie (Conservative - Windsor)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the potential impact on the environment of non-compliant vapes.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
As confirmed by the Government response to the consultation on Creating a Smokefree Generation and Tackling Youth Vaping consultation, Defra is leading on implementing a ban on disposable or single-use vapes due to the environmental harm caused by these devices. On 11 March draft regulations were published along with an impact assessment, which set out the main environmental concerns. Single-use vapes are an inefficient use of finite raw materials, they are inherently difficult to recycle and are often discarded incorrectly. When littered they pose a risk to soil, water and biodiversity and are a fire risk when thrown into residual waste. A report published by Defra earlier this year provides a broader assessment of the environmental impacts of single-use vapes and can be found online here: Analysis of the market for vapes: exploring the environmental impacts of single-use vapes - EV0157 (defra.gov.uk).
Defra has not made any environmental assessment of current non-compliant vapes.
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 plans to develop vaping cessation programmes.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Vaping can be an effective tool for adult smokers to quit smoking. However, the health advice is clear, if you don’t smoke, don’t vape, and children should never vape. We are 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.
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 Stop Smoking Service 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: Adam Afriyie (Conservative - Windsor)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans her Department has to assess the impact of regulation of vape (a) flavours, (b) packaging and product presentation and (c) point of sale displays on (i) quit rates of smokers and (ii) relapse rates of smokers who have switched to vaping.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The health advice on vaping is clear, if you don’t smoke, don’t vape, and children should never vape. However, youth vaping has tripled in the last three years, and one in five children have now used a vape.
The Tobacco and Vapes Bill will crack down on youth vaping by providing powers to regulate flavours, displays, and packaging for vapes and nicotine pouches. It will ban free vape samples being given to children, and introduce an age of sale for non-nicotine vapes.
In doing this, we must strike the right balance between reducing the appeal of vapes to children while ensuring vapes remain attractive and available to adult smokers as a quit aid. This will be carefully considered in the development of any specific restrictions, and further consultation will take place before introducing any regulations. As stated in Parliament during the second reading of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, we intend to hold the consultation on the regulations before the end of this Parliament, if practicable. We will also undertake an impact assessment to consider the potential impact of these regulations on smokers as well as other groups.