Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when she plans to publish a response to her Department's consultation on Mandating quit information messages inside tobacco packs, which closed on 10 October 2023.

Smoking is responsible for approximately 80,000 deaths a year in the United Kingdom, and causes around one in four cancer deaths in the UK. It also costs our country £17 billion a year, and puts a huge burden on the National Health Service. Alongside creating the first smokefree generation in the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, we are also scaling up our efforts to support existing smokers in quitting. We have provided an additional £70 million per year to local authority led stop smoking services, and we are investing in a new incentives programme to support pregnant women to quit. We are also providing £15 million a year to fund anti-smoking campaigns.

The Government ran a consultation on mandating informative messages about quitting smoking inside tobacco packs, which was open from 14 August 2023 to 10 October 2023. This included proposed inserts on a number of themes related to stopping smoking, such as benefits to physical and mental health, financial benefits, and how to access stop-smoking aids. We will aim to publish the response to this consultation in this parliamentary session.