Vaping is 'not necessarily harmless' cancer survivor Cabinet minister says

E-cigarettes are "not necessarily harmless", cancer survivor and Cabinet minister James Brokenshire has warned amid calls for relaxed rules around their use.

The Housing Secretary urged caution over the unknown long-term impacts of vaping after a parliamentary committee backed less regulation of e-cigarettes.

Mr Brokenshire, 50, was diagnosed with lung cancer in December last year before he underwent life-threatening surgery in January to remove a third of his right lung.

The MP for Bexley, a non-smoker, said it was important to “see how the evidence works” after calls by the science and technology committee to relax rules around how vaping products are licensed, prescribed and advertised.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions? programme: “If vaping can help people quit smoking, absolutely, that’s a really important part of what we need to do to change the approach and change people’s lifestyles in some way.

“But I just want to be cautious about what the long-term impacts of this are and how... it is less harmful, but it's not necessarily harmless.”

The committee released its report this week but some of its members were criticised over their links to the vaping industry. It emerged the chairman and former health minister, Norman Lamb, spoke at the UK Vaping Industry Association’s conference in April before inviting the group to address the committee.

Mr Brokenshire said: “Whilst I do understand the public health desire to get more people to stop smoking, how this may be a route to do so, I think we need to be cautious about the issue of substitutions and see how the evidence works through.”

He added: “What I don't want to see is that with, I think, good intent from the committee in provoking this debate and actually highlighting some of these issues, we don't end up taking ourselves backwards in some way and undo some of the really good things I think we have seen on stopping people from smoking.”

Mr Lamb, who also appeared on the programme, said the committee looked at a “wealth of evidence” from organisations including Cancer Research UK, the British Heart Foundation and British Medical Council.

He said: “They were all, and many more of them, saying very clearly, that on the evidence we have, vaping is significantly less harmful than smoking.”