Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she is taking steps to ensure that family hubs provide advice on smoking and vaping harm reduction.

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

The Government is investing an additional £300 million to improve support for families, though the joint Department of Health and Social Care and Department for Education Family Hubs and Start for Life programme. The Family Hubs and Start for Life programme guide sets out minimum expectations that local authorities receiving programme funding should deliver by March 2025. With regards to smoking support, the programme guide sets out that staff in a family hub are expected to be trained in delivering Very Brief Advice on smoking to parents identified as smokers, and some family hubs may provide smoking cessation support on-site, for example through drop-ins.

Staff in family hubs know what stop smoking services (SSS) are provided locally, and connect families to these services. Smokers are three times as likely to succeed with SSS, when compared to an unsupported quit attempt. As announced in Stopping the start: our new plan to create a smokefree generation, published in October 2023, the Government is investing an additional £70 million per year, for five years, to support local authority led SSS, almost doubling current spend and supporting 360,000 people to set a quit date each year.

In addition, we are establishing a financial incentives scheme to help pregnant smokers and their partners to quit smoking, with smoking cessation support. This evidence-based intervention will encourage pregnant women to give up smoking, and remain smokefree throughout pregnancy and beyond, helping to improve the health and wellbeing of both mother and baby.

Whilst anyone smoking should focus on giving up cigarettes before giving up vaping, giving up vaping is an important step in overcoming nicotine dependence. We are working with the NHS Better Health website to provide advice for people who want to quit vaping. The National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training has produced guidance for local SSS staff, on how best to support vapers to quit. We are also exploring further ways to support people to quit vaping, as part of the national Swap to Stop programme.