Labour will “come down like a ton of bricks” on the vaping industry if Rishi Sunak does not “pull his finger out” and introduce regulations, Wes Streeting has said.
The shadow health secretary attacked the prime minister, saying he had been leading a government that had been “asleep at the wheel” as a generation of children become addicted to nicotine.
Interviewed by the Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, at the Labour party’s annual conference in Liverpool, Streeting shared stories from teachers concerned about pupils who were battling withdrawal symptoms in lessons.
“The vaping industry, which presented itself as the angel of stop smoking services with this lovely new gadget that you can breathe in that’s much less harmful, they thought they were doing us a favour. And to an extent they were until they started marketing their vapes in brightly coloured packaging … and in doing so they addicted a generation of children to nicotine.
“We will not forgive or forget because what I hear from teachers … [is that] they are having to lock toilets in schools because kids are going off and vaping.”
In a warning to the industry, Streeting said: “[Labour] will ban the marketing, promotion and the sale of vapes to children and if this government doesn’t pull its finger out and get on with it ahead of the general election we will come down on the vaping industry like a tonne of bricks.”
Streeting also said plans by Rishi Sunak to stop the next generation smoking were announced without crediting the New Zealand Labour party, which first implemented the policy.
Speaking about the state of the NHS, Streeting repeated that the health service was “not the envy of the world”. Asked if Labour would be able to improve it, he said he had tried to shake off some of the “rose-tinted sentimentality” around the health service because he wanted to be realistic.
“It’s the paradox of the NHS. It’s one of the greatest institutions this country has ever built. It is the closest thing we have – sorry to the leader of my church, the archbishop of Canterbury – but the closest thing we have to a national religion.”
But he said health services in other countries achieved better outcomes because they picked up illnesses earlier, had more equipment, and ran a preventative health service, not a sickness service, which was what he said the NHS had become.
His comments come after Keir Starmer said that doctors would sign up to his plan for extra weekend appointments to bring down England’s NHS waiting lists despite being able to earn more doing private work.
The Labour leader’s overtime plan promises to enable the NHS to provide an extra 2m operations, scans and appointments in the first year. An extra £1.1bn will provide NHS staff overtime to work evening and weekend shifts so more procedures can be carried out.
The measure forms part of Labour’s NHS proposals – also including extra scanners and dental reforms – worth about £1.6bn.
Starmer told the BBC that doctors “will probably get more [money] in the private sector” but he believed they would do overtime for the NHS “because they want to bring down the waiting list as well”.
“They [NHS staff] want to do this just as much as we do and it is desperately needed. We need growth in our economy, we need to raise living standards across the country. We will never do that with the mess that this government has made of the NHS.”
The Royal College of Nursing’s director of nursing, Prof Nicola Ranger, said: “Nursing staff work so much overtime that is never paid – staying behind an hour or two after 12-hour shifts to keep patients safe – so a change in this culture is needed.”