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Health Bill

As we are on the subject of statistics, I have before me the following. According to the most recent data produced by the Office for National Statistics in 2004, for 92 per cent of people, smoking in the workplace was either banned or permitted only in designated places. This left only 8 per cent, down from 13 per cent in 1997, working with others in places where there were no formal restrictions on smoking. How does that square with a figure of 10 million exposed to smoking in the workplace, as cited by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones? The fact is that statistics are bandied around so freely and with so little investigation that it is very difficult to establish the facts of the case. But here is a clear discrepancy: the figures given by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, point very much towards the thinking behind the Bill, whereas the figures that I quoted point in a different direction. Obviously everything depends on what one means by ““exposure to””. Again, that is a very imprecise concept. Is it a very strong exposure or a very mild exposure? On that depends the degree of harm to health. All I can say is that—and this supports the cases that I will be putting forward—the evidence is very tenuous, very inconclusive and cannot be quantified with any precision at all. Anyone who thinks that that can be done is deceiving himself or herself and is deceiving others in the process.