Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the consultation on Creating a smokefree generation and tackling youth vaping, updated by her Department on 20 October 2023, if she will publish an Impact Assessment of the proposals in that consultation.

Smoking is responsible for around 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.

Vaping is rightly used by adults as a tool to quit smoking. They are substantially less harmful than cigarettes. However, the Government is concerned about the worrying rise in vaping among children, with youth vaping tripling in the last three years and one in five children having now used a vape.

This is why the Government is planning to create a smokefree generation by bringing forward legislation so that children turning 14 years old or younger this year will never be legally sold tobacco products, and further crack down on youth vaping by consulting on measures to reduce the appeal and availability of vapes to children.

We will publish our Impact Assessment shortly.