Lord Young of Cookham (Con)

My Lord, I want to add a brief footnote to the speech made by my noble friend Lord Lansley asking for this independent expert panel on vaping. It seems to me, from looking back at history, that we used to have exactly such a panel because, when we had Public Health England, it published a series of reviews on vaping with precisely the terms of reference that my noble friend mentioned; Public Health England was replaced in 2021, I think, by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities. At that point, the series of reviews seemed to come to an end because, in September 2022, the OHID published “a final annual update in the current series of evidence reviews about health harms of vaping by leading independent tobacco experts”. However, if you look at that final report, it makes the case for what my noble friend has said. First, it refers to the limited evidence on flavourings, clearly implying that more research should be done there. The final point was in its overall conclusion, which was that “more standardised and consistent methodologies in future studies would improve interpretation of the evidence”. It is not quite clear to me who will actually do that. I note that, at the end of Second Reading, the Minister referred to some studies. She said that the Government had “already commissioned a 10-year study to investigate the long-term effects of vaping on the health of 100,000 young people”.—[Official Report, 23/4/25; col. 743.] I am not sure, however, that that is quite the same as what my noble friend asked for. There seems to be a gap now, in that we no longer have the PHE/OHID reviews. We may have to wait 10 years for the study I just mentioned. The case that my noble friend has made for an independent panel on vaping seems to fill that gap; I hope that the case he made will have support from the Minister.