COP10: WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control

I beg to move,

That this House has considered COP10 to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I thank the co-sponsors of today’s debate, the hon. Members for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma), and for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day). I also thank all colleagues who have requested to speak, and the Backbench Business Committee for giving this application the urgent consideration that was asked for. The fact that Members wished to contribute to this debate, and to many others on similar topics of late, demonstrates how important this issue is across our United Kingdom.

I am pleased to see my right hon. Friend the Minister in her place, and of course I welcome her back to Government. I say that with no small amount of friendly bias, as she and I are constituency neighbours in Northamptonshire and have known each other for a very long time. We look forward to hearing from her later. I also welcome the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth); I am keen for her to share her perspective on today’s proceedings. I state for the record that I have served as a vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for vaping.

I beg your indulgence, Mr Vickers, as I set the scene for why we are here today and outline the importance of what we are discussing. My co-sponsors and I were clear that this debate is not yet another opportunity to opine generally about smoking and vaping, or to merely rehash some of the well-known talking points that arise when we talk about these issues. Hopefully, it will not be a debate in which each side of the political divide claims to be cloaked in unique righteousness. I was pleased to have tripartite support for the debate application, and even more pleased that colleagues from a wide array of political parties, and from all four parts of the UK, have expressed a desire to speak in this and related debates.

It has been a stressful few days in Parliament. In some senses, the timing of this debate is very important, as it comes ahead of the 10th conference of the parties, but in other senses it is less fortunate, coming as it does straight after what we have been through over the past two or three days. Nevertheless, the debate is an opportunity for this mother of Parliaments to show our democracy at its best. We in the legislature can come together on a non-party basis to question the Executive and hold the Government to account. We should be conscious that many people from around the world will be watching these proceedings, given that the debate relates to international agreements and has a global perspective.

To the best of my knowledge, this debate is one of a kind. It is the only substantive discussion on next month’s meeting of the framework convention on tobacco control, COP10, taking place in any parliamentary democracy. It is my hope that we can shine a light on the World Health Organisation’s sometimes less than ideal proceedings.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for having secured the debate in this place on the WHO framework convention on tobacco control in March 2020. We all share a dislike, to put it mildly, of smoking. I pay tribute to the work that he and his colleagues do on the all-party parliamentary group on smoking and health to drive smoking cessation. Who in Parliament does not hate smoking? I do, and where we have differences, they are only on how best to drive it out. Since that debate nearly four years ago, we had one subsequent conference of the parties to the WHO: FCTC COP9, which took place in Geneva in November ’21. Today, of course, we are discussing COP10, which will be held in Panama in just over a fortnight.

We all know the term “COP”; it has become something of a household name, thanks to the United Nations climate change conference, which concluded its COP28 meeting in the United Arab Emirates last year, and which is heralded as a beacon of openness, transparency and engagement. The UK hosted COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021, which was expertly presided over by my right hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Sir Alok Sharma). Ministers from Governments from all over the world attend these meetings. Indeed, our own Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero, my right hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), was so enthusiastic about COP28 that he went to it twice. The conference sessions are open to the media, to civil society and to other interested stakeholders to participate in.

What a contrast that is with the FCTC and COP10. Despite smoking being one of the leading causes of death in the UK, killing about 80,000 people every year and causing one in four cancer deaths, there is likely to be no ministerial representation from the Government in Panama. It is unfortunate that such an important area of health policy is left to officials. Unlike the climate change COP, the FCTC COP meets and takes decisions behind closed doors, away from the scrutiny of Parliament and the press. The decisions taken in Panama next month will have wide-ranging influence over the UK Government’s approach to smoking cessation and the regulation of tobacco harm reduction products, which many smokers use to quit combustible tobacco.

For nearly a year, I have been asking the Department of Health and Social Care who will be in the UK’s delegation to COP10 in Panama. I have been asking what positions that delegation will take, and whether we will continue to stand up for Britain’s world-leading and evidence-based approach to tobacco control and smoking cessation. I know that a great many Members from across the House have made similar representations to the DHSC. Despite repeated oral and written parliamentary questions on the subject, Ministers have not yet set out the UK Government’s approach to COP10 in any detail. Clearly, none of us wants our Government to be as opaque as the World Health Organisation is on this and many other issues.

My first request of the Minister is that she asks my right hon. Friend the Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero to give serious consideration to attending COP10 in Panama next month. Members may ask why that is so important. The UK is one of the largest financial contributors to the FCTC, with millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money being shipped off to the WHO in recent years to support this agenda. That is whole streets-worth of residents of my constituency’s total contribution to the Exchequer. Every penny of tax that street after street of them pay goes to funding the WHO. We have an obligation to our constituents to ensure that the money is well spent, so we need to know who will be standing up in Panama on their behalf, and what policy positions will be supported or opposed.

What we do know is that the WHO takes a highly sceptical view of tobacco harm reduction products, including vapes, heated tobacco and oral nicotine pouches, arguing that they pose a risk to health. As I have mentioned, that is in direct contrast to the UK’s world-leading approach to tobacco control. It really is world leading, and we should be proud of what we have accomplished in recent years in driving down smoking rates and saving lives. Public Health England, which is now the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, has been clear that vaping is at least 95% less harmful than smoking, and that heated tobacco products are considerably less harmful than conventional combusted tobacco cigarettes. That is independent, peer-reviewed evidence from a glittering array of public health experts, clinicians and scientists, not funded by players in the tobacco industry. Not only has it formed the bedrock of the UK Government’s approach to smoking cessation in recent years, but our model has been heralded by public health experts in countries and universities across the world as a beacon to follow. I therefore pay tribute to the Minister’s predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O'Brien), for the groundbreaking “swap to stop” scheme, which he announced early last year. For many of my constituents, vaping is a vital alternative that helps them to curb their smoking habits and quit, and the “swap to stop” scheme, which offers free vape starter kits to smokers, is a welcome tool in the arsenal.

When the Minister unveils her legislation later this year, we will have the opportunity to debate some of the fundamentals, including ensuring that children do not access nicotine products, and giving trading standards the enforcement powers that they need to tackle rogue traders who sell to minors or sell illegal products. However, we must not throw the baby out with the bathwater by introducing draconian measures that discourage adult smokers, whether deliberately or not, from making the switch to vaping. That is a fundamental point. Over-regulation and blanket bans are not the safe option; they could cost lives.

I agree with the Minister’s remarks in the debate last week that we must clamp down on packaging with cartoon characters, and vapes shaped like toys, but I discourage the misconception that flavoured vapes are not designed for 60-year-old smokers. There is very clear research on this: in a 2003 opinion poll by OnePoll, 83% of smokers stated that flavours helped them to quit smoking, and there is a definitive and widely available study on this matter by the University of Pennsylvania. Constituents tell me that it is precisely the availability of a wide range of non-tobacco flavours that enables them to make the switch away from harmful cigarettes. I oppose the suggestion from the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) that adults are not interested in fruit-flavoured vapes. Why should adult smokers be discouraged from switching away from smoking, which will cost them their life, by a vaping market that is reduced to tobacco-only flavours that constantly remind them of smoking, and trigger their desire to smoke a cigarette?

There is also a danger that over-regulation will exacerbate the black market. In fact, as colleagues pointed out in the Westminster Hall debate on illegal vapes on Tuesday, the black market has flourished in recent years. Between 2020 and 2023, more than 2.5 million illicit vapes were seized by trading standards across 125 local authorities, and the enforcement agency warns that that is just the tip of the iceberg. Do we want to grow that iceberg, or reduce it as much as possible?

There is a tendency for us politicians to pass legislation or produce guidance from Whitehall so that we can say that we are taking robust action on an issue, without having regard to how it might be implemented. The UK already has stringent restrictions in place via the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act 2002, so much of the issue is really about enforcing the many existing laws, rather than a need for new ones. Speaking as a long-standing local government man—and I am still vice president of the Local Government Association—underpinning this issue is the new burdens doctrine, which this Government have signed up to and adhered to for many years. That doctrine states that all new burdens on local authorities must be fully assessed and funded. It is a cornerstone of Whitehall Departments’ preparatory work before they pass responsibilities on to local authorities, and I urge the Minister and her officials to keep that broader point in mind for discussions at the conference.

The real risk is that at COP10, the WHO will, as is expected, call for regulatory equivalence for tobacco harm reduction products, so that they are treated in exactly the same way as combustible tobacco products. That is not only counter to the UK Government’s position; if successful, it will significantly harm public health goals, not just in this country but across the world. Some countries have already banned vapes but not cigarettes, and that will cost huge numbers of their citizens’ lives.

Additionally, why bother to “swap to stop” at all if cigarettes and vapes are taxed in the same way and there is no price differential or flavour incentive to quit? That said, I am conscious that the Minister is still compiling her response to the recent consultation on smoking and vaping ahead of new legislation, which we await with interest.

There is one occasionally repeated fallacy that must be nailed and not repeated, given its harmful potential. It is not nicotine that causes lung cancer, and nor does nicotine itself kill its long-term users; rather, it is the constituent chemicals inherent in the combustion of tobacco within cigarettes that causes harm. Nicotine vapes, oral nicotine pouches, and indeed heated tobacco products—which are sometimes known as “heat not burn”, given that there is no combustion involved—are all essential in giving adult smokers a range of solutions for their smoking cessation journey. For the avoidance of doubt, I quote Cancer Research UK, which says that nicotine

“is not responsible for the harmful effects of smoking, and nicotine does not cause cancer.”

Tackling misinformation is at the heart of this debate, as we consider some of the measures that the WHO is proposing to enact at next month’s COP10 meeting, and the harmful effects they will have on public policy here at home.

As ever, the devil is in the detail, so I ask colleagues to forgive me if I take a few minutes to speak to some of the specific policies under consideration in Panama, and why the UK delegation must stand firm against them. The words of the Chief Medical Officer for England are ringing in my ears:

“If you smoke, vaping is much safer; if you don’t smoke, don’t vape”.

We need to consider how our public health bodies can effectively communicate that to adults who currently smoke.

One of the most worrisome proposals being put forward by the WHO is item 6.2 on the agenda, which covers tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship. It is widely understood that the WHO will push for an expansion of article 13 of the FCTC to include reduced-risk products—vapes, “heat not burn”, and oral nicotine pouches —within the restrictions on advertising, as if they were the same as combustible tobacco, when, as I hope I have already illustrated, they are not.

Like everyone else in this room—I cannot stress the importance of this enough—we have to ensure that children are not targeted by nicotine products, but successful uptake by adult smokers of these reduced-risk products as part of the UK Government’s strategy of tobacco harm reduction relies on the ability of responsible manufacturers and retailers to provide important and accurate information about the products’ health benefits when set against traditional combustible cigarettes. There are still 6.4 million smokers in the UK, and they are our constituents, our neighbours, our families, and—I am very sorry to say—for many of us, our friends.

Misinformation on this issue is not only dangerous; it is lethal. The best must not be the enemy of the good. The extent of misinformation is such that, according to Action on Smoking and Health, four in 10 smokers believe that vaping is as harmful or more harmful than smoking. That figure increased by a third last year. A recent YouGov poll also found that over 50% of people thought that vaping was more harmful or as harmful as smoking. Whenever there is an online newspaper article about this subject, to which I have obviously been paying particular attention in the last week or so, I am amazed by the extreme, contradictory and occasionally potentially dangerous views expressed.

The proposals under discussion at COP10 would limit the ability to tackle misinformation on relative harms, while simultaneously restricting the promotion of reduced-risk products to adult smokers. As I alluded to earlier, the UK delegation must challenge any attempt to bring about regulatory equivalence between combustible tobacco and reduced-risk products—in particular “heat not burn” products, which the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities has made clear are substantially less harmful than smoking.

There is a risk through item 6.3 on COP10’s agenda that the WHO will seek to do just that: to push Governments around the world to regulate vapes and other reduced-risk products in the same way as combustible cigarettes, leading to the concern that that could extend to proposals on taxation and price points. If the WHO is successful, any financial incentive to switch away from cigarettes will be removed. That point has been made by many colleagues on many occasions, and I know from our work together on the APPG for vaping that the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon)—my colleague and co-author of an article on the issue—has spoken passionately about it and her own personal experiences. Such measures would send the wrong message, and would only perpetuate the dangerous myth, believed by 40% of smokers, that vaping is as harmful as smoking, and would therefore obviously discourage them from switching in the first place.

Will the Minister undertake to confirm that the UK delegation will block any measures to restrict the ability to effectively communicate with adult smokers on the health benefits of switching away from combustible cigarettes? Will the UK delegation oppose any move towards regulatory equivalence, including on taxation and price points?

I am conscious that other colleagues wish to speak. Thank you, Mr Vickers, for indulging me in setting the scene more generally and outlining some of the concerns as the Government head into COP10.

My hon. Friend is making a brilliant speech, and I am grateful to him. Can he explain why we would be required to follow any recommendations that come out of COP10? As a sovereign country, surely we would be able to decide whether we wished to accept the recommendations.

I will develop my hon. Friend’s point in my closing remark.

If the UK delegation attends COP10 and goes along with international agreements, even if they are not legally binding, there will be a mood music and atmosphere, as we have heard in recent days, that because we are a signatory and have agreed to go along with them, we therefore need to follow along. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), possibly more than anyone else, has been robust about the limitations of international bodies with respect to this Parliament and this country. However, as we discovered this week, their prevailing influence is great, and not standing up to proposals at such events therefore leads inexorably to their proposals being absorbed into British policy and lawmaking.

It would be hugely beneficial if the Minister attended COP10 in Panama and flew the flag for our world-leading public health strategies for smoking cessation. She is someone who passionately championed, when she stood astride that Wembley stage back in 2016, Britain’s great future as an independent, free-trading and outward-looking nation, having taken back control of our laws, borders and money. I do not believe for one moment that she wishes to see responsibility for our public health policy abrogated to another supernatural—sorry, supernational: a Freudian moment there—unelected body of bureaucrats. To assist in setting out the UK position, perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), in his capacity as Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, might have the UK delegation appear before him and his colleagues to answer questions before COP10 gets away on 5 February, as well as afterwards.

Our constituents, many of whom have written to us about this in recent days, have the right to know what the UK delegation will or will not be doing on their behalf, let alone who is in it. I am sure that I speak for many Members when I say that we would welcome clarity on that point. I am grateful to the Minister for coming to respond to the debate. I am sure that she will use the opportunity to provide us with some of the answers we seek, and will undertake to keep the House and colleagues fully informed. I hope she will make a statement from the Dispatch Box at her earliest convenience after the conclusion of COP10 to update us on the outcomes from Panama.

I look forward to the contributions of colleagues from all parts of the House, and to the response from the shadow Minister, the SNP, and the Minister, who I know shares my passion for ensuring that our Parliament retains its status as the sovereign decision-making body.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate on international tobacco control, and to the hon. Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) for securing it.

In a mere few years, in this country at least, we have paved the way for our children and grandchildren to live healthier, fitter and longer lives. As a result of the hard work of doctors, nurses, charities, researchers and activists, we are on the edge of creating a future free from the shackles of smoking. Around the world, this pattern is being repeated, and along with many, I welcome global co-operation on ending smoking. The World Health Organisation’s framework convention on tobacco control will be discussed at the 10th conference of the parties, COP10, between 5 and 10 February in Panama. That is a great step towards our goal.

COP10 will present amazing opportunities, but also grave challenges. In the UK, we are clear that there is no silver bullet in the fight against smoking. Any strategy must accommodate an integrated approach—an approach that understands that targeted social support works with Government regulation, and that combines powerful new tools to help smokers quit with measures to prevent our young people from ever beginning this terrible habit.

Stopping people smoking is not cheap. After years of calls for a smoke-free future, only 67% of local authorities have enough funding to provide targeted specialist services. The evidence shows that without such services, people have low motivation to quit, and are more likely to relapse if they try to. That means that deprived areas, in which we should be most active with our efforts, are being left behind in the fight against smoking. It is no surprise that when we reduce funding for targeted social support, the siren call proves stronger than our critical messaging. We cannot afford to wait and treat only the symptoms; we have to treat the cause.

As things stand, we will miss our own targets. Without further action to encourage people to never start smoking in the first place, Britain will miss its Smokefree 2030 targets by seven years, with the poorest areas missing the target by at least 14. Modelling is clear, and is a lesson for countries around the world: the poorest areas will be the first to miss out. My concern is that the WHO and the FCTC are getting this wrong; they are putting the cart before the horse, and pretending that “abstinence only” works.

There is a strong link between illegal sales and under-age smoking, so tackling the problem at its source is by far the best approach. In the UK, we have missed opportunities to do that. I see it in my own constituency; illegal and counterfeit tobacco products are under-policed. Communities need a strengthened trading standards, able to impose the fines that His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs can. That was a missed opportunity in the middle of last year. Trading standards can only pass evidence to HMRC. The lack of action provides a safe harbour for criminal gangs and organised crime to generate cash.

May I say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers? I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) and the hon. Members for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) and for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) for securing the debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for facilitating it. At the outset, I declare an interest as an honorary life governor of Cancer Research UK.

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South that the stance the UK adopts at COP10 next month will be crucial to the future of tobacco harm reduction in this country. To their great credit, the Government have pursued a distinctive and very successful UK-made policy on smoking that has significantly reduced its prevalence in this country. Nevertheless, as we heard from my hon. Friend, 6.4 million people still smoke—around 12.9% of the UK’s adult population.

To help reduce smoking rates, the UK is taking a world-leading approach, supporting the principle of tobacco harm reduction. In particular, the UK takes the view that vapes can have an important role in reducing the prevalence of cigarette smoking. The Government have allowed vaping to develop on a market basis, and that has gradually taken 1.5 million people off smoking altogether.

As we have heard, the smoke produced by combustible tobacco represents the greatest threat to the health of smokers. The UK has therefore been keen to point smokers to alternatives to combustible cigarettes. As we heard from my hon. Friend, in April the Department of Health and Social Care announced that a pioneering “swap to stop” strategy would be rolled out across England, providing a million smokers with a vape starter kit, alongside behavioural support to help them quit. That approach has a history of success. The largest such programme to date was conducted in Salford in 2018, and it resulted in over 60% of participants being smoke-free after just four weeks.

Is that not exactly what has happened in China? China is regulating vapes in the same way as tobacco, and we know that the WHO is controlled by Chinese interests. Should that not make us really alarmed?

Yes, it certainly should, and it is another reason why the United Kingdom, which has significant influence within the WHO, should actually exert that influence, and I propose to discuss that a little later in this speech.

Misinformation about vaping is already an important and worrying issue. According to Action on Smoking and Health, four in 10 smokers in the UK now believe that vaping is as risky as, or riskier than, smoking. That is the consequence of the misinformation, and the WHO’s position simply compounds the misinformation.

In the teeth of this hostility on the part of the WHO, the Government should confirm what policy positions the UK delegation to COP10 will take, especially on the agenda items that I just mentioned. I hope my right hon. Friend the Minister, in her winding-up speech, will be able to assure us that the Government will challenge the WHO on the science head-on. Will she say, as my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South has asked, whether a Minister will attend COP? I believe that a Minister should be there—I think she should take a slow boat to Panama. We need ministerial involvement at this conference. Will my right hon. Friend also say what policy positions she will be instructing officials to take, and will she undertake to provide a further statement to the House on the key outcomes—particularly where there may be an impact on health policy and smoking cessation strategies—after the closure of the conference? Critically, will she confirm that the UK delegation will oppose, and if necessary veto, any proposals that would impact on the UK’s world-leading and evidence-based approach to tobacco control through the successful use of reduced-risk products?

I repeat that we are a major funder of this organisation. If we are to meet our goal of being smoke-free by 2030, the Government, working with devolved Administrations, must ensure that adult smokers are provided with a wide range of reduced-risk products to help them to quit, such as vapes, including single-use vapes; heat-not-burn and heated tobacco products; and oral nicotine pouches. Different solutions will work better for different people. Japan, with heated tobacco, and Sweden, with snus, the organic form of nicotine pouches, have had even more success in reducing smoking than the UK, so vapes should not be the only solution. Indeed, these products have been even more successful in their home markets than vapes have been here. We should be learning from other countries’ experiences.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I had not expected to speak in this debate, but I think it is worth re-emphasising the point that the WHO is controlled by China in very dubious circumstances. The chairman and director general of the WHO were appointed under Chinese influence. We have debated several times in Westminster Hall the influence of China when it comes to other areas of activity with the World Health Organisation. Here we have a specific example of how Chinese leadership is trying to persuade this WHO body to introduce the same policies and regulations that it has already introduced in China.

We should be the world leaders in this. We should be out there explaining why tobacco harm reduction products are really well suited to the consumer and the battle against the harms caused by smoking, but we do not seem to be in a leadership role. I urge my right hon. Friend the Minister to show that leadership by leading the UK delegation in Panama. Otherwise it will seem as though we are diffident. There is even a danger that what we believe in this country and the pioneering work that has been done, to which reference has already been made, will count for nothing when it comes to the debates in Panama.

We know the extent of Chinese influence across the world. The next stage may well be that what is advisory for this WHO body will become mandatory. That is the Chinese agenda. They are trying to take over the these international bodies and get their way. What should we be doing? We should be fighting back robustly. We should not be naive about this. I fear that we are far too diffident.

I am disappointed that despite the number of constituents who have written to me and on whose behalf I have written to the Government, we have still not had clear answers about exactly what our position will be when the discussion takes place in February. My right hon. Friend the Minister has always been a champion of national sovereignty, but I urge her to demonstrate that by leading the way and telling the Whips that we can manage without her for a few days, while she raises the flag in Panama on behalf of the United Kingdom and all we are doing to improve our public health and reduce the harm that comes from smoking.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I am grateful to my cross-party colleagues, the hon. Members for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) and for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma), for securing this debate. I should put it on the record that although I was an initial sponsor of the debate, I removed my name in order to sum up for the SNP. I agree with a lot of the points that my colleagues made; I take a different view on some of them, but one thing we are united in is our desire to know what the Government’s position will be at COP10.

Health is a devolved matter to the Scottish Parliament. Smoking is a significant public health issue in Scotland and a leading cause of preventable ill health, premature death and disability. However, international treaties, including those with World Health Organisation involvement, are reserved issues determined by this Parliament. Personally, I wish that it were otherwise and that Scotland could determine all matters for itself, but until then we need Ministers here to tell us what they are doing on our behalf.

Today’s debate is very timely, because the 10th session of the conference of the parties to the World Health Organisation framework convention on tobacco control, COP10, will take place from 5 to 10 February in Panama, having been postponed from November. I look forward to hearing the view that UK Ministers will be taking on our behalf when those decisions take place.

The framework convention on tobacco control is the first treaty negotiated under the auspices of the World Health Organisation. It came into force on 27 February 2005 and was one of the quickest-ratified treaties in UN history. It was developed in response to the globalisation of the tobacco epidemic. It is a supranational agreement that seeks to protect present and future generations from the devastating health, social, environmental and economic consequences of tobacco consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke by enacting a set of universal standards stating the dangers of tobacco and limiting its use in all forms worldwide. I support those aims. The treaty’s provisions include rules that govern the production, sale, distribution, advertisement and taxation of tobacco. Importantly, FCTC standards are minimum requirements; signatories are encouraged to be even more stringent in their regulation of tobacco than the treaty requires.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Vickers. I understand that this is the third debate this week about tobacco and vaping, so the subject is getting a good airing. I confess that I was not expecting to have a debate about sovereignty and taking back control this Thursday when talking about smoking, but one always has to be prepared to be taken back, as the Minister says. Like colleagues, I thank the hon. Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) for securing this debate, and I thank the right hon. Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones), my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) and the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) for their contributions and the work they do in this area.

As we have heard, the convention on tobacco control was adopted in 2003 and came into force in 2005. It has since become one of the most rapidly and widely embraced treaties in UN history. It was developed in response to the globalisation of the tobacco epidemic, and a quick glance at the statistics tells us why. Tobacco kills up to half its long-term users. It is responsible globally for an estimated 8 million deaths per year, 1.2 million of which are of non-smokers exposed to second-hand smoke, yet the global market is still worth more than £800 billion a year. Tobacco remains the largest cause of health inequalities, accounting for as much as half the difference in amenable mortality between the most and least deprived communities in the country.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall highlighted the work that he has done, particularly on reducing smoking among minority and ethnic communities. In my constituency, the tobacco industry has historically employed many thousands of people and there is a long legacy of tobacco, which can be seen in the higher rates of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other smoking-related conditions in Bristol South. Tobacco costs the taxpayer tens of billions every year, putting increased pressure on the NHS and care system, as well as contributing to the productivity crisis through lost earnings, unemployment and, sadly, early deaths.

Could the hon. Lady say what measures she proposes to put in place to tackle the issue of youth vaping?

I am sure the right hon. Gentleman took great notice of the Labour party conference, where we announced a ban on targeting, and advertising and marketing to, young people. We think that where there is a will, there is a way. The ban on smoking, which I remember very well from when I was part of an NHS trust, was an incredibly difficult thing to do and enforce. But when the Government make clear that the targeting of young people is completely unacceptable, the market will react. We want to work with companies to make sure that happens. That is our plan for doing that and for getting the NHS back on its feet and making it fit for the future.

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Vickers. I thank all colleagues who have taken part in this Backbench debate, especially my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) for his leadership in organising it. It has been very interesting, and I can absolutely assure colleagues that I have learned some new things myself today.

To tackle the very first question, I do not intend to go to Panama for COP10. That is because I am preparing flat out for our smoke-free generation Bill, including the response to the consultation and the measures. I just do not think it would be a good use of my time to travel on 5 February. However, the Government will be represented by our excellent colleague from the civil service, Dr Jeanelle de Gruchy, who has done fantastic work representing the UK’s position.

I will give a rough overview of the UK’s position. There will be discussion about global progress on tobacco control. Of course, the UK is an outlier on the topic of vapes, and we will be putting forward our position that vapes are a very important tool for helping adults to quit. There will be some discussion on advertising and sponsorship. The UK has no plans to implement further restrictions on advertising and sponsorship, particularly in the COP’s desire to see further restrictions implemented. On novel and emerging tobacco products, different parties take different approaches. At the moment, the UK is still looking at issues around heated tobacco, so the UK delegation will be in listening mode. In terms of parties going further on tobacco control, certainly the UK Government would welcome other parties going further to protect people, but we will be monitoring the negotiations to ensure that nothing becomes mandatory. Finally, there will be discussions on whether there should be an increase in assessed contributions. The UK intends to press for contributions to stay where they are now. I am very happy to provide a statement to the House after COP10, giving feedback on exactly what happened. I think that covers a lot of the issues raised by colleagues. I hope that was clear, and I would like to again thank everyone for attending.