Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the potential savings to the public purse from the health service encouraging the uptake of e-cigarettes among smokers.

The potential financial impacts of e-cigarettes on the public purse are not yet fully understood. The evidence base is still evolving on these products, largely because vaping is still relatively new and the health effects may be very long term. Significant savings to the public purse are likely to arise only if smokers switch completely from smoked tobacco. The Government’s Tobacco Control Plan, published in July 2017, estimates that the National Health Service currently spends £2.5 billion on treating smoking-related diseases and Public Health England assess e-cigarettes to be at least 95% less harmful than smoked tobacco. Reduced harm may not translate exactly into proportional costs savings, but superficially this implies that vaping, as an alternative to smoking, may contribute to significant savings.