Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lord, I want to add a brief footnote to the speech made by my noble friend Lord Lansley asking for this independent expert panel on vaping.

It seems to me, from looking back at history, that we used to have exactly such a panel because, when we had Public Health England, it published a series of reviews on vaping with precisely the terms of reference that my noble friend mentioned; Public Health England was replaced in 2021, I think, by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities. At that point, the series of reviews seemed to come to an end because, in September 2022, the OHID published

“a final annual update in the current series of evidence reviews about health harms of vaping by leading independent tobacco experts”.

However, if you look at that final report, it makes the case for what my noble friend has said.

First, it refers to the limited evidence on flavourings, clearly implying that more research should be done there. The final point was in its overall conclusion, which was that

“more standardised and consistent methodologies in future studies would improve interpretation of the evidence”.

It is not quite clear to me who will actually do that.

I note that, at the end of Second Reading, the Minister referred to some studies. She said that the Government had

“already commissioned a 10-year study to investigate the long-term effects of vaping on the health of 100,000 young people”.—[Official Report, 23/4/25; col. 743.]

I am not sure, however, that that is quite the same as what my noble friend asked for.

There seems to be a gap now, in that we no longer have the PHE/OHID reviews. We may have to wait 10 years for the study I just mentioned. The case that my noble friend has made for an independent panel on vaping seems to fill that gap; I hope that the case he made will have support from the Minister.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I add my support for this amendment, which seems very sensible. When we have an amendment in the names of both the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, we should all be looking at it very seriously indeed.

I have never smoked and never vaped but I remember, when vaping started, being absolutely delighted because it got rid of the smell of smoke whenever you went to places. There was a general feeling that vaping was better than smoking. I still feel that very strongly, but I accept that there is no evidence to tell us what is going to happen in the long term. I also think that things change; there is more research going on in all sorts of areas to do with vaping, and it just seems sensible that we have some form of expert panel.

I very much accept what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, said about the word “experts”. We need to look carefully at who would be the experts on this but, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said, this might be something on which there could be discussion before Report so that there is agreement on the kinds of expert that we want. What we do not want is for them all to come from the same aspect of research in a particular academic area. As we come to the end of this Bill, I really do think that the Minister should see this as something that she could accept and which would be very sensible.