§ Ms. CoffeyTo ask the Secretary of State for Education if he will reconsider his decision to withdraw the 60 per cent. funding for health education co-ordinators from local education authorities from March 1993; and if he will provide information about the numbers of school children who smoke.
§ Mr. ForthMy right hon. Friend's decision, which is now final, to discontinue the grant for education support and training programme for preventive health education at the end of the current financial year, was relayed to local education authorities through the Department's circular 10/92 which issued on 13 August.
A Health Education Authority/MORI survey undertaken in 1989 of nine to 15-year-olds in England, suggested that about 200,000 young people had become regular smokers by the age of 15.