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Liverpool City Council (Prohibition of Smoking in Places of Work) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I strongly support the Bills, but I shall try to be extremely brief in explaining why they are important. The first reason is that the scientific knowledge of the damage to health caused by passive smoking or environmental tobacco smoke—ETS—is becoming increasingly clear. In fact, it is becoming crystal clear, as new peer-reviewed papers are published almost monthly. Many of them are cited in the report of the Royal College of Physicians mentioned by my noble friend Lord Turnberg. The studies that it describes are both epidemiological, measuring the effect on large populations, and laboratory-based, describing the pathological effects on individuals and their tissues. The list of unpleasant components of tobacco smoke includes, in the particulate phase, tar, which contains a number of carcinogens, as well as benzene, benzpyrene and nicotine. Perhaps that is why recent ex-smokers, when trying to give up their addiction, like   to sit near smokers—in their slipstream. In the gas   phase are found carbon monoxide, ammonia, formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide, acrolein and many others. As the noble Lord, Lord Chan, said, 40 of those components are suspected carcinogens, and many have irritant properties. It is small wonder that the immediate effects of contact with environmental tobacco smoke include eye irritation, headache, cough, sore throat, dizziness and nausea. As we heard in the eloquent speech by my noble friend Lord Simon, asthmatic attacks are often precipitated in people who are prone to asthma. So, I must disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and tell him that the overwhelming majority of the scientific community now accept the validity of the studies that I have outlined. While the scientific evidence against smoking in enclosed public spaces is   thus increasingly clear, certain members of the Government still hold the view that the public are not ready for a total ban. It is true that, although the great majority of the population are now non-smokers, many people have a lenient view towards smokers—many having been smokers themselves—and feel that the Government’s present approach of allowing smoking in pubs with no food should be the next step. Some would go further and allow smoking rooms in all pubs and restaurants, or they believe, erroneously, that extractor fans are effective. What people with those beliefs forget is that staff working where smoking is allowed are condemned to inhale tobacco smoke while they serve customers. The Bills are expressly designed to protect those staff, who may be unaware of the dangers to which they are exposed, quite apart from being unable to find another job in a smoke-free workplace, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, described. Since the Bills were first due to come before us in March, I have had the privilege of visiting Ireland in early April. The total ban introduced in May last year had been in force for nearly a year. It has been even more successful than its architects envisaged, and polls show that it is now more popular than when it was first introduced. A key reason for its success was that the Ministry of Health and the Irish Government, as a whole, had a consistent tobacco policy and introduced a series of control measures over the past decade. At all stages, there was a national debate with good scientific information forming the basis of the dialogue, making full use of the media. There is no evidence that the measures had any effect on the profitability of the hospitality trade, which was on a slight downswing before the measures were introduced. If anything, there has subsequently been a change for the better, as my noble friend Lord Faulkner pointed out. Certainly, the pubs that I visited in Dublin were doing a roaring trade, and there was no sign of the civil unrest feared by the noble Earl, Lord Liverpool. Outside one of those establishments were two men and a woman who were smoking cigarettes. I suggested to them that perhaps they might be a little fed up with a law that banished them to the outdoors if they wished to smoke. They strongly denied that and said that it was a good law and that having to smoke outside the pub meant that they smoked less and saved money. The woman said that the only problem was that reducing smoking had led her to put on weight. I hope that the Bills will receive strong support from the Government. They will allow Liverpool and London to act as pilot projects, in effect, for the similar national measures that should follow in their footsteps—I hope sooner rather than later.