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 implications for her policies of the Tenth session of the Conference of the Parties to the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which concluded on 10 February 2024.

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 huge pressure on the National Health Service and social care, costing over £3 billion a year.

This is why the Government is committed to creating the first smokefree generation, ensuring no child born after 1 January 2009 will ever legally be sold tobacco. The tenth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP10) to the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control was an opportunity for the UK to showcase this international leadership on tobacco control. The decisions agreed at COP10 will not impact our smokefree generation policies or our plans to tackle youth vaping.