Health committee  The current benefits are massive because lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and cardiovascular disease are the three biggest killers from cigarette smoking. Those conditions are, so far as any of us knows, caused almost entirely by constituents of tobacco smoke other than nicotine.

Health committee  Thank you. It's not my rolling survey. It's carried out by Professor Robert West at the University College London. It's available online if you search under Smoking in England and the latest electronic cigarettes statistics. What he shows is that over the last two or three years there has been a progressive increase in use by smokers, both occasional and regular use.

Health committee  Thank you to you and the committee for the invitation here to give evidence. I do so as professor of epidemiology at the University of Nottingham. I'm director of the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, a research network based in the U.K. for alcohol policy and practice, and I chair the Royal College of Physicians' tobacco advisory group.