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** 27 April 2022
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** UK
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** Every health system to face real-terms funding cut in 2022-23 (#1)
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** UK health agency to cut 800 jobs and halt routine COVID-19 testing (#2)
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** Goole shop masked illicit tobacco smell with onions, say police (#3)
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** International
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** Zimbabwe's tobacco market rebounds amid concerns over health and labour abuses (#4)
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** Pilot’s cockpit cigarette sparked fire that brought down jet and killed 66 (#5)
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** Parliamentary Activity
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** Parliamentary questions (#6)
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** UK
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Every health system has seen their core recurrent funding reduce in real terms in 2022-23, according to analysis by the Health Service Journal. Public sector inflation is officially forecast to be 4% this year, which wipes out the 3.3% cash increase in the funding allocated to Integrated Care Systems (ICSs). Funding envelopes for ICSs were published earlier this month, amid increasing concern around the extent to which local organisations will need to find cost savings. Economists have also warned that inflation is likely to end up being higher than forecast, exacerbating pressures.

Sally Gainsbury, senior analyst at the Nuffield Trust, said the NHS is currently spending around £6bn more on core services than was envisaged under the 2019 NHS Long Term Plan, she added: “The real-terms cuts to core ICS budgets planned for the next few years represent NHS England’s attempt to claw that cash back to essentially return annual funding plans to what they were before the pandemic.” Gainsbury warned that NHS organisations would struggle to recruit and retain staff as a result.

Richard Murray, chief executive of The King’s Fund think tank, said: “Before covid struck, the NHS was trying to stop a system where impossible financial targets led many into recurrent deficits and spiralling debts, and the centre held back billions to balance the national books. Coming out of covid, while the plans should be challenging, they also need to be deliverable and fair. Without a degree of pragmatism, the NHS is going to find itself back in the cycle of missed objectives and emergency support that can only undermine the long-term financial planning it needs to recover from covid.”

Last month NHS England’s chief finance officer Julian Kelly warned rising prices could cost the health service around £1bn, telling the NHSE board: “we’re going to have to look at what that means for our ability to deliver NHS goals in the round”. Discussions to finalise financial plans for the year are still ongoing. Systems have been told they must break even, despite many submitting draft financial plans containing deficits of £100m or more.

Source: Health Service Journal, 26 April 2022
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** According to The Guardian, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is in a state of disarray, with morale at rock bottom and a belief that the pubic health body, set up to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, is no longer equipped to deal with a COVID-19 resurgence.
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The 2,000 strong workforce will be reduced by 40%, equivalent to a loss of 800 jobs. One insider said people were being given two weeks’ notice that their contracts were being ended early, with the circumstances compared to the “recent situation at P&O”. After the Treasury slashed its budget for addressing COVID-19, UKHSA is also proposing that it suspend regular asymptomatic testing in hospitals and care homes from May to save money before a potential winter spike in cases. Sources in the organisation said funding for asymptomatic testing in high risk settings is only enough to cover six months in a year, and senior officials believe it would be better saved for later in the year.

Public health experts warned that cuts to testing and health protection staff were “irresponsible”, shortsighted, and risked a resurgence of COVID-19, especially among health and social care workers. Prof Maggie Rae, president of the Faculty of Public Health, said: “If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us one thing, it is the importance of having a properly funded public health system that is able to prepare for, and respond to, threats to our health. Government has consistently underfunded public health services which are there to protect and improve health for all. To not only fail to bolster the public health system, but to continue to cut it so deeply, is irresponsible and threatens the health of all in society, particularly the most vulnerable.”

Dr Jyotsna Vohra, director of policy and public affairs at the Royal Society for Public Health, said: “It is deeply concerning to hear about cuts to the UKHSA workforce when we are still in a pandemic. Strong, consistent health protection messaging and activities are vital at this time. [...] At a time when infection rates are still high, this feels like we are saving pennies at the cost of pounds, or worse, lives.”
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Source: The Guardian, 26 April 2022
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** Shop staff tried to hide the smell of illicit tobacco by putting onions in front of thousands of hidden cigarettes, police say. Police and Trading Standards officers found 15,000 illicit cigarettes at a shop in Goole, Yorkshire in March.

Humberside Police have asked for the shop's licence to be reviewed. East Riding councillors could change the terms of the shop's licence or revoke it entirely. In an application to the council's licensing committee, police licensing officer Dawn Adamson said the illicit tobacco was found secreted behind some stairs. She added: "A bag of onions was also found within the concealment. This is commonly seen and shows the intent to deter the scent for tobacco dogs."
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Source: BBC, 26 April 2022
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** International
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Zimbabwe, Africa’s biggest tobacco grower, has opened its selling season for the crop amid pledges to fight deforestation and child labour practises in response to pressure from rights groups, environmentalists and international buyers. Tobacco is one of Zimbabwe's biggest exports, earning the nation $1.2 billion last year. The government aims to grow domestic tobacco production and export “into a $5 billion industry by 2025” through local funding provision to farmers.

Zimbabwe's tobacco production plummeted from a peak of 260 million kilograms (290,000 tons) in 1998 to less than 50 million kilograms (60,000 tons) a decade later following the eviction of several thousand white farmers who accounted for the majority of growers. In recent years Zimbabwe has rapidly increased the size of its crop, regaining its spot as one of the world’s top five exporters of tobacco. The bulk of Zimbabwe’s tobacco crop now comes from more than 100,000 small-scale Black-owned farms, many resettled on formerly white-owned farms. Production is now a largely family-run operation which often relies on child labour, according to rights activists. Growth in tobacco production has also led to a surge in deforestation, with wood burned to cure tobacco leaves. Under international pressure, Zimbabwe’s tobacco industry is trying to reduce these problems, Meanwell Gudu, CEO of Zimbabwe's tobacco marketing board, told The Associated Press.

Most of Zimbabwe’s tobacco is exported to Asia, with China the largest single buyer. China has been integral to Zimbabwe’s tobacco boom by establishing a grower contract system run by the state-owned China National Tobacco Corporation, the world’s biggest cigarette producer. Under the system, the firm loans seeds, fertilizers, food, and money for labor and wood to farmers, who in turn are obligated and bound to sell their crop to the firm or its agents.

Source: The Independent, 27 April 2022
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** A plane crash over the Mediterranean that killed 66 people was caused by a pilot smoking a cigarette in the cockpit, it has emerged. EgyptAir flight MS804 was travelling from France to Egypt in May 2016 when it crashed into the sea south of Crete, killing everyone on board the Airbus A320 airplane.

The Egyptian authorities claimed at the time that the plane was brought down by a terrorist attack, despite no group ever claiming responsibility. However, an official investigation has concluded that it was caused by a cigarette being smoked in the cockpit that inadvertently ignited oxygen leaking from an emergency gas mask.

Egyptian pilots habitually smoked in the cockpit and the practice was not prohibited at the time of the crash in 2016, according to a 134-page report produced by aviation experts that has been obtained by an Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera. For reasons that have not been determined, the setting on the oxygen mask had been switched by a maintenance engineer from normal to emergency, causing it to emit oxygen.

Source: The Telegraph, 26 April 2022
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** Parliamentary Activity
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** PQ1: Electronic Cigarettes: Recycling

Asked by Emma Hardy MP, Labour, Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make an assessment of the potential for single-use vaping pens to be recycled including (a) plastic body, (b) circuit board, and (c) battery components; if he will make an estimate of the number of those devices sent to landfill; and if he will make an assessment of the (i) effect on the environment of those devices and (ii) the potential merits of a ban on their sale.

Answered by Jo Churchill MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Household electrical equipment, including vape pens, containing plastics, circuit boards and batteries can be recycled. A national electricals recycling locator has been established by Material Focus to guide householders to their nearest electrical recycling point.

No specific assessment has been made of the numbers of vape pens that go to landfill, however, the government plans to consult on reforms to the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations later this year. Those reforms will seek to address the estimated 155,000 tonnes of small electricals discarded annually in residual waste.

Source: Hansard, 25 April 2022 ([link removed])

PQ2: Tobacco, EU Law

Asked by Daniel Kawczynski MP, Conservative, Shrewsbury and Atcham
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of diverging from the European Union’s Tobacco Products Directive in favour of progressive tobacco harm reduction policies that support the Government's levelling up agenda.

Answered by Jacob Rees-Mogg MP, Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency
No formal assessment has been made but I have received correspondence on this matter from members of the public in response to my requests to readers of the Sun and the Sunday Express. It is for the Secretary of State for the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to consider any changes to the policy. As set out in the ‘Benefits of Brexit’ paper, published on 31 January, DHSC will set out proposals for regulatory reforms in a new Tobacco Control Plan due to be published later this year.

Source: Hansard, 26 April 2022 ([link removed])

PQ3: Smoking, Brexit

Asked by Daniel Kawczynski MP, Conservative, Shrewsbury and Atcham
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to reduce smoking prevalence following the UK leaving the European Union.

Answered by Maggie Throup, Public Health Minister
Since the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union in 2020, we have continued to support people to quit smoking by investing in local stop smoking services, delivering targeted public health campaigns and enforcing a strong regulatory framework. We have also commissioned an Independent Review into Tobacco Control, which will make recommendations to support the ambition for England to be smoke-free by 2030. The Review will be published shortly.

Source:Hansard, 26 April 2022 ([link removed])
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ASH Daily News is a digest of published news on smoking-related topics. ASH is not responsible for the content of external websites. ASH does not necessarily endorse the material contained in this bulletin.

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