Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what funding the Government plans to provide to (a) regional and (b) local government in England to help deliver the Government’s smokefree 2030 policy objective.

Smoking rates are the lowest on record at 13.9% for England and we are not complacent. We laid out our ambition to make England smokefree by 2030 in our Prevention Green Paper, ‘Advancing Our Health: Prevention in the 2020s’ consultation last year. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the response to this consultation has been put on hold. The response and plans for achieving our smokefree objectives will be published at a later date.

Decisions on the future funding of local government health improvement functions will be taken as part of the Spending Review.

The Department has not made an assessment of introducing a levy on tobacco industry profits. However, HM Treasury has previously carried out a consultation and published its response in September 2015. It is available at the following link:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/464795/PU1814_Tobacco_Levy_final_v3.pdf