Ms Averil Power:

The Public Health England position is very much a minority one and is not shared by the World Health Organization or other leading global health bodies. In fact The Lancetcriticised the research on which Public Health England based its position and said: "The reliance by PHE on work that the authors themselves accept as methodologically weak", and along with the declared conflict of interests surrounding its funding "raises serious questions not only about the conclusions of the PHE report, but also about the quality of the agency's peer review process". That is quite a strong view from The Lancet, which is a respected international medical journal.

The Irish Cancer Society, as am I sure does the Irish Heart Foundation, constantly monitor emerging evidence in this area. We always check our positions against new and emerging research. Our view, having looked at the body of international research, is that vaping cannot be recommended as a smoking cessation tool. Recently the HRB carried out an extensive systematic review for the Irish Government and the board also reached the same view as us. As I mentioned in my opening statement, Dr. Jean Long from the HRB, having reviewed the international evidence stated that "Children and adolescents require the same protection from e-cigarettes as conventional tobacco". There may be a harm reduction argument for long-term adult smokers, who have tried everything else but cannot stop smoking, to vape. However, we need to make sure that we protect children and young people from ever taking up vaping and then moving on to smoking.

The percentage produced by PHE is constantly rolled out by industry as a means to claim that research has found vaping to be safer and an effective cessation tool. Mr. Gordon can quote all the different surveys that we have reviewed in our own work but so many international studies have found otherwise.