Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 20 January 2017 to Question 60244, what assessment he has made of the capacity of Public Health England to independently verify the existing scientific findings concerning heated tobacco.

It is for Public Health England (PHE) to make any necessary arrangements to conduct such work.

The Government has asked the Committee on Toxicology to look at the data submitted by companies under the notification system and to give an opinion based on this research on the absolute and relative risk of the products concerned, and to indicate the strength of the evidence on which their opinion is based. PHE will consider this opinion and the results of their wider work on novel tobacco products in providing advice to the Government on this issue.