Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment the Government has made of the merits of a regulatory environment in which (a) advertising rules, (b) taxes and (c) other regulations reflect the relative health impacts of (i) e-cigarettes, (ii) heat-not-burn tobacco and (iii) other reduced harm smoking products.

The Government seeks to ensure that the regulatory and environment reflects the relative harms of different tobacco and nicotine products. The European Union Tobacco Products Directive 2014 placed limits on the sale and merchandising of tobacco and tobacco related products. This was transposed in to United Kingdom law through the Tobacco and Related Products Regulations (TRPR) 2016 and forms part of comprehensive regulatory framework to reduce public health harms caused by smoking. This framework acknowledges e-cigarettes are not tobacco products and has fewer restrictions than them.

To reduce the affordability of tobacco, HM Treasury continue to apply the Tobacco Duty Escalator to cigarettes at 2% above inflation as outlined in the Budget 2018, with hand rolling tobacco increasing by an additional 1%.

The Government has a statutory obligation to conduct a Post Implementation Review of the TRPR by May 2021. The Government will review where the UK’s exit from the EU offers opportunities to re-appraise current regulation to ensure this continues to protect the nation’s health.