Preet Kaur Gill’s Parliamentary Questions

Preet Kaur Gill asked the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care what steps are being taken to tackle the sale of illegal vapes on the black market.

Andrea Leadsom, The Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health, told her that the Government is concerned about the worrying rise in vaping among children (not answering the question), with youth vaping tripling in the last three years (not answering the question), and one-in-five children having now used a vape (and still not answering the question). 

“Underage sales and illicit vapes are undermining the work the Government is doing to protect our children's health,” Leadsom said, finally getting to the point. “To address this, in April 2023, the Government announced a £3 million investment over two years to enhance work on illicit vape enforcement. Led by National Trading Standards, this builds on existing work by local trading standards officers across the country to ensure that vapes sold in the United Kingdom comply with The Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016, as well as other relevant legislation that applies to vaping products. Activities include data collection and analysis to understand the scale of illegal products and sales, and market surveillance work. Through this work, they identified that 2.1 million illicit vapes were seized across England by trading standards from 2022 to 2023.

“To strengthen our enforcement activity, the Government will also provide an additional £30 million of funding per year for enforcement agencies, including trading standards. This increase in investment will help to stamp out criminal activity by boosting the enforcement of illicit tobacco and vapes.”

TLDR: someone has written a report to say how big the black market might be in their opinion and, err…that’s it.

Gill then asked the Secretary of State what estimate has been made of the number of vaping products that have been seized by trading standards and of those, the number that were non-compliant with UK regulations and have gone through the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency notification process.

Get ready for another TLDR masterpiece from Leadsom.

“The underage and illicit sale of tobacco, and more recently vapes, undermines the work the Government is doing to regulate the industry and protect public health. The Government is increasing investment for our enforcement agencies by £30 million per year. In addition, the Government also announced £3 million of investment to a new illicit vapes enforcement unit, led by National Trading Standards, building on existing work by trading standards officers across the country. They identified that 2.1 million illicit vapes were seized across England by trading standards in 2022 to 2023. These vapes often contain unknown ingredients, higher levels of nicotine, and are often made easily available through markets that target children. The Department does not hold data on the total number of vaping products seized by Trading Standards that have successfully gone through the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s notification process.”

TLDR: Did you skip the response, I hope so. Leadsom repeated unrelated things she’d already said and then completed failed to address the question because she doesn’t know the answer.

You have to admire Preet Gill’s tenacity given the non-answers received so far, asking the Secretary of State whether trading standards officers are required to share information on seized non-compliant tobacco and vaping products with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.

Instead of Leadsom, this was fielded by Andrew Stephenson, Minister of State for the Department of Health and Social Care. He told her: “The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency works in collaboration with a number of enforcement and regulatory agencies to share intelligence, support strategic planning, produce guidance, and review emerging issues. There is no legal requirement for Trading Standards to share seizure data with the MHRA, however this data is shared in cases where the MHRA can provide evidence to support ongoing compliance and enforcement investigations.”

Erm, didn’t Leadsom say they didn’t keep data to share? Surely she wasn’t lying?

Finally, Preet Kaur Gill asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many full time equivalent staff are dedicated to the work of the Illicit Tobacco Taskforce; how often the taskforce will meet; has the taskforce met to date; whether illicit vaping products will be included as part of its remit; and what recent estimate has he made of losses in tax revenue from the illicit trade in (a) tobacco and (b) vaping products in each of the last 10 years.

Speaking on behalf of the Chancellor, Gareth Davies, the Exchequer Secretary, said: “We plan to establish the taskforce during 2024/25. We are not yet able to give details on meeting frequency or staff numbers.”

TLDR: They’ve done nothing and will be out of office by the time the target deadline comes around.

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Dave Cross

Journalist at POTV

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Dave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.