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Health Bill

I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution, and I am pleased to be able to give her a detailed answer. I have travelled a lot on GNER services, and that company spent hundreds of thousands of pounds creating segregated smoking areas. The doors did work, and the smoking area was ventilated. Indeed, it was so well ventilated that people complained that it was too cold. All the air was sucked out of the non-smoking area; no air went back there. Why, after all that expense, the company then decided to stop smoking altogether, I do not know; it was not because the system was ineffective or inefficient. The system worked, and I shall never know the answer to that question. The real answer to my hon. Friend’s point is that I suspect that train operating companies, like some companies that operate bars, just do not want to spend the money. They will give all sorts of reasons why something cannot be done, but it all comes down to the simple answer that they do not want to make that investment. For example, Eurostar trains had a separate coach for smoking, and no smoke went out of that into other coaches—but Eurostar stopped it, because it could get more passengers and more flexibility if that coach was turned into a non-smoking one. A lot of myths circulate about such matters, and all that business about needing 10,000 changes of air an hour to clear a place out is utter palpable nonsense.