Tobacco Control Plan — House of Commons, 2018-07-19
Topic: Health
Sharon Hodgson (Labour, Centre-left): With the leave of the House, I would like to start my closing remarks by thanking the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), the chair and vice-chair of the very influential and active all-party parliamentary group on smoking and health, for their excellent speeches today and their leadership on this issue. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Sir Kevin Barron). As we know, he has campaigned in this House for decades on this issue. I thank the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day), who speaks for the Scottish National party, and, last but by no means least, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). It has been an excellent debate I will begin by touching on e-cigarettes, which I mentioned in my opening remarks and several hon. Members mentioned in the debate. For the first time, e-cigarettes were mentioned in the updated tobacco control plan, with the aim of maximising the availability of safer alternatives to smoking. There has been a significant increase in e-cigarette usage since the publication of the previous 2011 strategy. There were 700,000 e-cigarette users in 2012. That figure rose to 2.8 million by 2016. In 2016, Office for National Statistics data found that 470,000 people were using e-cigarettes as an aid to stop smoking, while an estimated 2 million had used the products and had stopped smoking completely. I am therefore pleased that Public Health England’s Stoptober campaign now includes e-cigarettes as a smoking cessation aid and that e-cigarettes have been found to be about 95% less harmful than smoking. We should encourage people to use smoking cessation aids, such as e-cigarettes, to help them to stop smoking, while keeping a watchful eye on any negative health outcomes, if there are any Earlier this year, I joined the Minister, Action on Smoking and Health, Fresh North East and a host of NHS professionals to launch the NHS Smokefree Pledge. During my speech at the launch, I said that smoking cessation should become a central theme of healthcare staff’s engagement with patients, making every contact count to help people to quit smoking. Has the Minister made any assessment of the success of this pledge so far and will the Government make any further assessment of how many people have quit smoking because of the NHS Smokefree Pledge While the proportion of adults who have never smoked cigarettes has increased over the past 30 years, from 25% of men and 49% of women in 1974 to 56% and 63% respectively in 2016, we must ensure that that steady increase continues. However, the deaths attributable to smoking continue. Of the 115,000 lung disease deaths each year, up to 58,500 are attributable to smoking. This includes 86% of all lung cancer deaths and 77% of all chronic obstructive pulmonary disease deaths. The UK currently has one of the highest premature mortality rates from lung diseases in Europe. Smokers are almost twice as likely to have a heart attack compared with people who have never smoked and about half of all regular smokers will eventually be killed by their habit. This is unacceptable The Government have a duty to ensure that their citizens are healthy, which means properly funded public health services and implementing policies that encourage healthier lifestyles. Will the Minister tell the House if further funding will be granted to local authorities to deliver public health services such as smoking cessation? I truly believe that the ambitions in the tobacco control plan cannot be achieved without adequate funding. I know that like me, he is truly passionate about reducing smoking rates and rightly passionate about achieving a smoke-free generation, so I look forward to his response.