Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of whether vaping shops are fulfilling their legal requirements to verify age and not sell to children.

E-cigarettes in the United Kingdom are tightly regulated by the Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016 (TRPR) and the Nicotine Inhaling Products (Age of Sale and Proxy Purchasing) Regulations 2015 (NIP). These regulations include preventing sale to under 18s, restrictions on mainstream TV and radio advertising, and limit both tank sizes and nicotine content.

Local trading standards have powers for enforcement of both regulations. The Government has also funded the Chartered Trading Standards Institute to undertake a review of compliance of nicotine vaping products. The latest report, ‘The Tobacco Control Survey for England 2018/19: A Report of Trading Standards Service Activity’ reports that 34 councils were able to report the number of visits with volunteer young people where sales had occurred. 90 test purchase attempts resulted in an underage sale being made. This results in a 40% test-purchase-to-sale rate.

We are monitoring youth use closely and will take action, if necessary, to ensure that regular use among children and young people does not increase, and that e-cigarettes do not become a gateway to tobacco use. We continue to keep the evidence base on e-cigarettes under review and the next Public Health England annual review is due to be published next month.