Disposable vapes ban: Call for Northern Ireland Executive to set smoke-free target
Speaking to BBC News NI, Mr Wilson said: "We would like the executive to push on from this with the momentum gained and perhaps look at creating smoke and vape-free places in Northern Ireland whether that's in our playgrounds, whether that's in schools or whether that's at our hospitals."He added that research shows there are "very real links with vaping to inflammation of your airways which will then exacerbate existing health conditions, whether you have asthma or COPD".
The Tobacco and Vapes Bill is UK-wide legislation that would ban tobacco products for anyone born after January 1, 2009.It would also bring in restrictions on the advertising and sale of vapes, as well as reviewing the packaging of e-cigarettes.Mr Wilson said that the Northern Ireland Executive should publicly state its target for a smoke-free Northern Ireland and bring "a bit of equity with the rest of the British Isles who have all done so".He also called for a new tobacco control strategy.
Environmental impact
In Northern Ireland, the legislation to ban disposable vapes was passed by the Department for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (Daera).Its minister, Andrew Muir, said the single-use vape ban is an important measure to help the environment.He said it would also help people's health and alleviate potential fire risks.
The minister said retailers are also obliged to take back disposable vapes for recycling once the ban comes in place.He added that he has been engaging with his counterpart in the Republic of Ireland who is progressing similar legislation.
What is a disposable vape?
They are single useThey are already filled and chargedThey are activated by inhalingThe battery only lasts a short while, sometimes only a day, so they are designed to be discardedThey are often small and fit in a pocketThey do not have a replaceable coil and cannot be recharged or refilled
Paul Lagan, who owns a chain of vape shops across Belfast, said the change would be better for the environment, but he has some concerns for the future."We're reducing waste - that's good as a business and as a vaping community," he said."One of the bigger concerns is the vaping tax that's going to be introduced next year where it's £2.20 on a 10ml bottle of liquid (for reusable vapes), effectively doubling the cost of many of these liquids."Mr Lagan said he thinks licensing vape shops could help prevent young people from accessing vapes as easily.He added that banning certain flavours could also create a black market for vapes rather than a preventative measure.
Darragh McKay said the ban is a "very good idea" as disposable vapes are "all bright colours" and "not like cigarettes" which have warnings on them."I don't think vapes should be banned entirely because not often you see young people smoking like refillable vapes, it's always disposable vapes," he said."Refillable vapes are good for like your mum getting off cigarettes."
Alison Nic Craith doesn't vape but thinks the new legislation is "great"."Particularly for kids, because there is so many 11 and 12-year-olds now that vape," she told BBC News NI."I think the shops should just be stricter and like checking IDs, I think that is the best way to go about it."
Auron Cull, who does vape but would like to quit, thinks the ban on disposable vapes is a good idea."Whenever I walk about town I just see all these school kids walking about with e-cigs and they go into the shops," he said."In some cases it helps people to get off cigarettes, but then they get off the cigarettes and they're onto the vapes for X amount of time."
John Watson doesn't vape but thinks the ban is a good idea because of the environmental impact the disposable vapes can have."I know quite a few people I work with are quite, not annoyed about it, but more kind of frustrated because of the handiness of going and getting one, they're not really wanting to have to go and buy cartridges to fill up," he said.He said he knows of people who are "stock-piling" disposable vapes.
Public Health Agency research found that 46% of year 14 school pupils surveyed currently vape, despite it being illegal to sell or supply vapes to under 18s.Strategic lead for tobacco control with the PHA, Colette Rogers, said the PHA is asking parents and carers to "to use it as an opportunity to discourage vaping among young people and take steps to stop vapes from falling into the hands of under 18s".
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Times
26 minutes ago
- Times
HMRC made a mistake — but won't give us our £15k back
My mother died last year and I have been settling her estate with help from my brother-in-law. It was relatively simple: she had some investments and a mortgage-free house. But it has been time-consuming. Filling in all the paperwork took us an entire day, and we are professionals (he is an accountant and I am a retired judge). Even then we had problems because HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) gave us different information about what tax we should pay. After probate was granted in October, we spoke to two estate agents who estimated that the house was worth £550,000. We told HMRC this was the probate value and we also put it up for sale at that price. Several months later we ended up selling the house for £627,000. We sent a form to HMRC to correct the probate value to the sold price. We then calculated the inheritance tax (IHT) due as roughly £27,800 and immediately paid HMRC to avoid any interest charges. But then HMRC wrote to us to say that we should pay capital gains tax (CGT) instead. We were convinced that this advice was wrong, so we each called HMRC separately, but were both told that we should pay CGT. HMRC then sent a CGT calculation saying we owed £14,965, which we paid. We then asked HMRC to return the IHT payment. Twice we were told that the refund was in progress but that was weeks ago and we still don't have it. After chasing HMRC for a third time we were told that we should have paid IHT after all. It said an IHT calculation would be sent, but we are still waiting for that. We are so confused. We just want to pay the correct tax and get a refund on the other and address supplied I was so sorry to hear how painstaking the probate process had been for your family. It sounded emotionally and practically difficult enough without HMRC adding to your burden by giving you conflicting information. An estate is exempt from IHT on the first £325,000, which increases to £500,000 if the person who has died passes on their main home to children or grandchildren. Married couples and civil partners can leave assets to each other free of tax, and also inherit each other's tax-free allowances. Your father died in March 1990 when the IHT allowance was £118,000. But he had left this amount to you and your sisters on his death, which meant that his tax-free allowance had already been used up and could not be inherited by your mother. The good news is that even though he died before the residence allowance was introduced in 2017, your family could claim this extra £175,000 allowance from his estate because his wife had died after this date (yet another example of how complex the rules are). This meant that up to £675,000 of your mother's estate was free of tax. When her house was sold for £627,000 and combined with other taxable assets in her estate of nearly £117,000, she was put over the tax-free threshold by more than £69,000. IHT is charged at a rate of up to 40 per cent, leaving £27,800 to pay. If a property is sold for a lot more than the estimated value when you inherited it, HMRC might ask questions and expect you to pay extra tax. I spoke to Stefanie Tremain from the accountancy firm Blick Rothenberg who said that HMRC will usually get the district valuer, which is a government service, to review property valuations in an IHT return. • Will my partner pay tax on the property he inherits from me? Tremain said: 'If the value in the IHT return is accepted, a future sale value should not be queried or cause HMRC to revise the probate value.' But you had applied for a correction, essentially changing the estimated valuation to the price that the property was actually sold for. This meant that technically there had been no increase in the value of the property since you inherited it because you had corrected the value that should be used for the IHT calculation. CGT is charged if you make a profit when you sell a property that isn't your main home. When you inherit a property there is no CGT to pay. It is only when you sell the property at a later date, and it has increased in value since you inherited it, that CGT would be owed. When you changed the value of the property, HMRC was under the impression that the property had increased in value by £77,000 between you inheriting and selling it. After the tax-free allowance of £3,000 and other exemptions, such as estate agent and solicitor fees to sell the property, were deducted, CGT was charged at a rate of 24 per cent on the rest of the gain. Tremain said: 'If you have corrected the IHT return to increase the probate value of the house then you have increased the estate's IHT liability. But as a result you have effectively wiped out the CGT liability.' So in other words, CGT didn't apply to you. It sounds as though there was some confusion during those conversations with HMRC that caused it to believe that you needed to pay CGT rather than IHT, which wasn't right. The fact that even HMRC manages to get things like this wrong tells you everything you need to know about how complicated our tax system is. After my involvement HMRC spoke to you to apologise for giving you incorrect advice and has finally refunded the CGT payment of £14,965, plus £63 interest. It also finally sent an IHT calculation showing that you had actually overpaid by £52, which has also been refunded. HMRC said: 'We have apologised and confirmed that CGT was not due.' You said: 'We never thought the problem was a particularly difficult one, but we were getting nowhere and would no doubt still be in limbo without your help.' • How to gift property — your questions answered In March last year my husband and I went on the holiday of a lifetime to Chile. We booked several internal flights through All was going well until we tried to check in for our flight from Patagonia to Santiago. It looked like our flight didn't exist. After logging into the airline's website, we discovered that the flight had been rescheduled and we had been reallocated to a flight for the previous day, so we had unknowingly missed it. There was no way we could have caught that flight as we had been hiking in a remote location. told me that it had sent me an email about the change but I have searched my inbox, including my junk folder, and I can't find any evidence that it contacted me about this. We were incredibly stressed when we found out. We were in a remote part of Chile where transport options are limited, so we felt pretty stranded. also wasn't particularly helpful in finding us alternative arrangements, so we requested a refund of £377.91 for the flight we missed. We managed to book a flight for the next day with a different airline for £583.80. Given that failed to tell us about the flight change, we think it should reimburse us for our more expensive replacement flight. But a year on, we now have a six-week-old baby but still no refund. We have contacted many times over the past year but are repeatedly told that it won't refund us until they receive it from the airline. While we have been told the matter has been escalated, we have seen no evidence of address supplied A year is a long time and much can happen, so much so that you had welcomed a new family member, and yet there was no sign of your refund. has a partnership with the travel agent Gotogate which arranges flights. When I spoke to Gotogate's parent company, Etraveli Group, it claimed it had emailed you on February 20 last year to tell you that your flight was leaving a day earlier than planned. I couldn't get to the bottom of why you didn't get that message. Etraveli Group said: 'While we acknowledge the customer's claim that she did not see this message, and understand the stress and consequences this situation caused, the communication was sent and delivered correctly from our end.' • Cancelled flight fiasco on has cost me £3,600 While it did request a refund from the airline, usually when a customer misses a flight the ticket is seen as 'used'. I suspected this was why a refund from the airline wasn't forthcoming. But thankfully after I explained the situation to the airline, it sent a refund of £346.99 to which it then passed on to you. It was odd that you were missing the remaining £30.92 which you had paid for checked-in bags, and it was only after I chased all three companies that you got this payment. said: 'We can see that the airline made a schedule change which is not uncommon in the aviation industry. Our partner, Etraveli Group, informed the customer of the change and provided options to accept the new flight or request a full refund.' As a gesture of goodwill, has given you £189 travel credit to make up for the extra cost of the replacement flight. While this left a shortfall of nearly £17, you were satisfied with this. • £1,495,607 — the amount Your Money Matters has saved readers so far this year If you have a money problem you would like Katherine Denham to investigate, email yourmoneymatters@ Please include a phone number
The Independent
27 minutes ago
- The Independent
NHS cancelled thousands of appointments during resident doctor strikes
Thousands of patients had their NHS appointments cancelled during the five-day resident doctors' s trike last month. However early data also shows the NHS maintained care for an estimated 10,000 more patients during the latest doctors' strike compared with last year's industrial action, the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) said. The number of resident doctors who walked during the recent strike was also down by 1,243 - 7.5 per cent, the DHSC said. During the five-day strike in June and July 2024, 61,989 inpatient and outpatient appointments were rescheduled, and 23,001 staff were absent from work due to strikes at the peak of the action. However, the DHSC has claimed that during the most recent dispute, the NHS saw less disruption this time around. NHS chief executive Sir James Mackey noted that care was still disrupted for thousands of people. He said: 'While this is really good news for the vast majority of patients whose treatment went ahead, we should still acknowledge that there were thousands whose care was disrupted. 'NHS staff will continue to work hard to ensure patients can get their rescheduled care as soon as possible, but for those patients – and for all our staff who had to work extra shifts or with different responsibilities – a repeat of this action will be unacceptable. 'So, I would urge the Resident Doctors Committee to get back to the negotiating table and work with us and the Government on the meaningful improvements we can make to resident doctors' working lives.' The full data on cancellations is yet to be released; however, NHS England and the DHSC have released an 'early' analysis. The impact on A&E waiting times is not clear. Health and Social Care Secretary, Wes Streeting, said: 'Due to the dedication of NHS staff and a different operational approach from previous strikes, we have managed to significantly reduce disruption to patients, with early indications showing that 10,000 extra patients are receiving care compared to previous strike action. 'Despite the huge effort made to keep as much planned care as possible going, let's be clear – these damaging strikes still come at a cost to patients, other staff and the NHS.' He added: 'I want to end this unnecessary dispute and I will be urging the BMA to work with the government in good faith in our shared endeavour to improve the working lives of resident doctors, rather than pursuing more reckless strike action.' The DHSC claims the drop in cancellations was due to a change in the NHS's approach, which aimed to maintain planned care rather than cancel it as happened during previous rounds. The government has claimed it maintained 93 per cent of planned appointments, procedures and operations. The claims come as the DHSC faces winter disruption from nurses and other healthcare workers after their unions warned members had rejected the 3.6 per cent pay award given to them for 2025-26. Across the strikes in 2023 and 2024, which also included nurses and ambulance workers, around 1.5 million planned appointments were cancelled across England. Resident doctors, represented by the British Medical Association, staged strike action over a pay dispute in which the union is calling for a 29 per cent pay rise. It says this is to address a 22 per cent decrease in real terms pay since 2008. Following the strikes, the BMA opened a new dispute with the government over specialist training posts, claiming tens of thousands of resident doctors face not having specialist jobs at the end of the summer. The government has repeatedly said it will not move to increase pay. According to the DHSC and NHS England, some trusts managed to maintain more than 90 per cent of planned care, including West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust which maintained 98 per cent and University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which maintained 95 per cent. A BMA spokesperson said:'We recognise that for any patient to receive care – urgent or planned – during the period of strike action is of course beneficial for them and we recognise the efforts senior doctors, along with other healthcare workers, will have made to provide that care.' The BMA added: 'Even with NHS England's determination to carry on as if the strikes were not happening, we know that operations will have been postponed, and clinics rescheduled. But all of that could have been avoided if the Health Secretary had been serious in his intent to find a negotiated settlement with us. The strike could have been averted, as could any future ones, if Mr Streeting had come, and will come, to the table with a credible offer that resident doctors in England can accept.'
The Independent
27 minutes ago
- The Independent
Hundreds of sick children from Gaza to be evacuated to UK for critical NHS treatment
Hundreds of seriously ill children from Gaza will be evacuated to the UK for treatment by the NHS, as part of a new plan due to be announced within weeks, according to a report. Up to 300 young people will enter the UK for free medical care, a scheme which will run in parallel with another similar operation run by the Project Pure Hope group, a senior Whitehall source told The Times. Since the war began in October 2023, only three children from Gaza have been issued medical visas for the UK, under the Project Pure Hope scheme - which is funded entirely by private donations. The news comes amid a crisis of starvation in the ravaged Gaza strip, where partial and complete Israeli blockades on aid have been behind more than 160 malnutrition-related deaths including 92 children, health authorities in Gaza say. Ted Chaiban, Unicef's deputy executive director for humanitarian action and supply operations, said on Friday that more than 320,000 young children are at risk of acute malnutrition, after a recent trip to Israel, Gaza and the occupied West Bank. The malnutrition indicator in Gaza has 'exceeded the famine threshold', Mr Chaiban said in a statement. Last month, prime minister Sir Keir Starmer promised to evacuate badly injured children. He wrote in The Mirror: 'I know the British people are sickened by what is happening. The images of starvation and desperation in Gaza are utterly horrifying. 'We are urgently accelerating efforts to evacuate children from Gaza who need critical medical assistance — bringing more Palestinian children to the UK for specialist medical treatment.' More than 100 MPs have signed a letter calling for the government to fast-track the scheme, The Times reports. Labour backbench MP Stella Creasy said: 'The commitment we all share to help these children remains absolute and urgent — with every day, more are harmed or die, making the need to overcome any barriers to increasing the support we give them imperative. 'We stand ready to support whatever it takes to make this happen and ask for your urgent response.' Israel denies there is widespread starvation and says that where there is significant hunger in the strip it is a result of the theft of aid by Palestinian militant group Hamas, and of failure by the UN to successfully deliver aid. But Unrwa, which was once the largest provider of humanitarian assistance for Palestinians in Gaza, says it has been entirely sidelined. Secretary-general Philippe Lazzarini said on Friday that the group has 6,000 trucks loaded with aid stuck waiting outside Gaza Israel to give it the green light to enter. Earlier on Saturday, witnesses and medics said Israeli forces killed 10 people after opening fire near two aid distribution sites run by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as crowds of hungry Palestinians again sought food. The violence came a day after US officials visited a GHF site and the US ambassador called the troubled system "an incredible feat'. The GHF denies accusations by UN officials that the killings are partly a result of its aid distribution practices, and says no Palestinians have been killed on its sites. Another 19 people were shot dead as they crowded near the Zikim crossing from Israel in the hope of obtaining aid, said Fares Awad, head of the Gaza health ministry's ambulance and emergency service. Hamas said on Saturday it will carry on fighting until an independent Palestinian state is established in a fresh rebuke to a key Israeli demand to end the war in Gaza. The militants said Hamas would not stop 'armed resistance' until an 'independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital" is recognised. Israel considers the disarmament of Hamas a key condition for any deal to end the conflict, but Hamas has repeatedly said it is not willing to lay down its weapons.
