Tobacco and Vapes Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Trudy Harrison and Kirsten Oswald

Committee stage
Wednesday 1st May 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Trudy Harrison]

Q I am the very proud mum of four daughters, aged between 21 and 25. When I think back to them as teenagers, I do not think they would have found a unicorn, a cartoon character or a bubble gum flavour particularly trendy—when they were four or five, yes—so I do not buy the idea that teenagers are attracted to such things. I worry that whatever we manage to do to avoid cartoon characters or bubble gum flavours being prevalent just will not work. For example, cigarettes are still attracting many young people, which is why the Bill is needed. I think they taste absolutely revolting, but that is not putting children off. What are your thoughts on what needs to be done to prevent teenagers from finding vapes attractive?

Mr Lawson: I am not sure we can ever prevent any youth getting access to vapes—that is an impossibility. Youth are known to engage in risky behaviours, so they will drink alcohol under age and engage in risk-taking behaviour. What we can do is limit the drivers that bring youth to using vape products, such as flavours that are appealing or cartoons they are familiar with. These are small factors that play into the overall picture as to why somebody may pick up a vape when they did not previously smoke. That needs to be balanced with the question of adults quitting smoking. If you restrict flavours to only tobacco flavour, as we see in the US pretty much at the moment, adults are then limited to flavours that remind them of smoking, and that is probably less likely to reduce the smoking prevalence in the population.

[Kirsten Oswald]

Q To extend that conversation a bit, the issue of youth vaping is particularly concerning to me and obviously to many others around the table. You spoke to the Committee about how easy it is to buy products that are illegal but that may look to the unexpert eye as if they are legal products—even to the shopkeepers, one presumes. That must be much more difficult for children and young people—even people who are at the lower age of legally buying vapes—so I wonder what your thoughts are on how that might be acted upon. I also wonder whether you think that vape manufacturing is likely to be impacted by the measures in the Bill.

Mr Lawson: I can answer that anecdotally for you. Of my friends and peer groups who vape, despite what I do for a living, they do not listen to me that the products they are using are illegal, so I think the only way to prevent those products being used is to enforce action against them being on the market to begin with. I think there is a complete lack of awareness and knowledge of the current regulations among shopkeepers, and among the population. Many people may choose to buy an illegal product despite it being illegal, but many people might not have made that decision had they known otherwise.

What we are seeing more recently in that category of illegal products is that the safety of those products is less well known than for products that have gone through the MHRA’s notification process. We have done research into their metals content, for example, and we see elevated levels that you would not normally see in a product that has been notified to the MHRA. There are a few layers of this, but I think that if consumers are not aware of the safety of the products they are using—which they are not—that is a bigger concern. Whether youth use them or not is a separate thing to that.

Tobacco and Vapes Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Trudy Harrison and Kirsten Oswald

Committee stage
Tuesday 30th April 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Kirsten Oswald]

Q I do not know if others have had this experience, but I am aware that I am increasingly being advertised at online by products that, although I am not really sure what they are, are certainly connected or proximate to tobacco or vapes. That leads me to wonder whether there are any tobacco, vaping or other connected or related products that are not covered by this Bill, which you think perhaps should be.

Kate Pike: I think the Bill is really good at closing some of those loopholes. It will include an age restriction on 0% nicotine vapes, for example. There are other nicotine products, such as the little nicotine pouches. The popular term is, I think, snus, but we know that snus is already banned in this country. The enabling regulations to put a regulatory framework around products like that will be really helpful. These industries are very innovative, so we just need to make sure that we are keeping up with our regulation. I think that the enabling regulation powers will enable us to keep up with new products, but it is continually little steps, and regulation chasing after innovation. We would like it to be the other way round, really.

[Trudy Harrison]

Q You are both very effectively articulating the complexity of your programme of work within trading standards, but 2027 seems like a terribly long timeframe. Given what we know about nicotine addiction and the outcomes, is it the right timeframe, and what will you need to be doing in that timeframe to achieve the deadline?

John Herriman: I think this is all about strategic resourcing. As I have already articulated, the profession has had a significant cut in resources over the last decade or so. Actually, we now have to go into a phase where we are rebuilding the capacity. We can do this; we know that we can enforce regulations, because we have seen that we can do it successfully within the world of tobacco. It is now about what we are doing as a profession to start building back that capacity. We are taking some new steps: for example, there are now apprenticeship schemes running in England, both at level 6 and level 4, and we are supporting the level 4 apprenticeships in Scotland and Wales.

One of the things that I think is really good about the Bill, and the work that DHSC and other Departments have been doing, is the taking of a strategic view. We have to build this capacity gradually—fairly swiftly, actually—into trading standards, but we also have to be clear on expectations with businesses, so that they know what is coming and we can therefore make sure that we are moving at the same sort of pace. By taking that strategic approach, it allows us to build the capacity at the right level and make sure we have trading standards officers who are qualified—it can sometimes take two to three years to train somebody as a fully-qualified trading standards officer. That way, we have a sustainable platform to make sure that the legislation can be enforced. Essentially, that is what we are seeing here. We have not seen this level of strategic approach to resourcing and tackling a problem in many other areas, so it is quite welcome.