Parliament’s Back

First to be announced, Karin Smyth was announced as the Minister of State for Health (Secondary Care) and Stephen Kinnock as the Minister of State for Care.

Back in 2021, both Smyth and Kinnock voted in favour of giving ministers powers to regulate the packaging and labelling of electronic cigarettes and other novel nicotine products including by requiring health warnings and prohibition of branding elements attractive to children in Division number 113.

Shortly after, Andrew Gwynne MP was announced as the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Public Health and Prevention – which means Gwynne is the new ‘Minister for Vaping’ (a title that doesn’t exist outside of this article).

Gwynne’s appointment was celebrated by the Deputy Chief Executive at Action on Smoking and Health, Hazel Cheeseman, who said: “Great to have Andrew Gwynne MP in this crucial brief. Improving the nation’s health will be crucial to delivering economic growth. Getting the Tobacco and Vapes Bill back into Parliament an important first step.”

Following Andrew Gwynne’s appointment, the Department of Health and Social Care Twitter/X account posted: “We are committed to creating a smoke-free country, so the next generation can never legally be sold tobacco. Protecting future generations from the harms of smoking will save thousands of lives. By building a healthier society, we will help to build a healthy economy.”

Pointing to his blog post, harm reduction expert Clive Bates responded: “The anti-smoking measures are pointless with no impact on health or the NHS until 2044 and even that relies on absurd assumptions. The anti-vaping measures will encourage more smoking, illicit trade and risky workarounds. It will do more harm than good.”

Then, within a day, Gwynne was off for a phot-op at a Stop Smoking centre in Tower Hamlets – again, celebrated by Hazel Cheeseman.

She said: “Hitting the ground running at a local stop smoking service. These incredible services have been the bedrock of our strategy to help smokers since they were first established under the last Labour Gov. They seem to be in good hands under this Government.”

For someone so dedicated to eradicating smoking, it’s a shame that Hazel supports legislation that threatens to ban vape flavours and make the most effective eliquids the most expensive.

And so to the first question for the minister.

Adam Jogee, Labour’s MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, asked the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care if he will make an estimate of the number of illegal vaping products that were sold in Staffordshire in each of the last five years.

Given that Labour have been asking this kind of question for at least the last four years, the answer was predictable.

Andrew Gwynne told him: “Data collection and analysis to understand the scale of illegal vaping products across the country is part of the work led by National Trading Standards, to enhance illicit vape enforcement. This work, funded through a £3 million grant across two years from the Department, has identified that the Central England Trading Standards Authorities (CEnTSA) seized 129,244 illicit vapes from 2022 to 2023. The CEnTSA brings together 14 Local Authority Trading Standards services across the West Midlands, including Staffordshire County Council Trading Standards. Data for Staffordshire alone and data prior to 2022/23 is not held by the Department.”

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.