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Health Bill

moved Amendment No. 7:"Page 2, line 25, leave out subsection (5)." The noble Earl said: In moving Amendment No. 7, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 9 and 103, which are grouped with it. As we discussed last week, premises and workplaces are to be smoke-free only in those areas that are enclosed or substantially enclosed, but Clause 2(5) leaves it to regulations to define what ““enclosed”” and ““substantially enclosed”” will mean. I do not believe that this is fair or satisfactory and I shall explain why. In essence, the pub trade needs to be able to plan ahead and to do so with complete certainty. A good many pubs may well wish to accommodate their smoking customers by constructing external smoking areas that do not fall foul of the definitions of what is ““enclosed”” or ““substantially enclosed””. Until those definitions are published, they cannot take the risk of applying for the necessary planning permissions to create such facilities. Even making educated assumptions about what the definitions will be carries with it a considerable commercial risk. Many pubs and clubs will not want to take that kind of risk, quite understandably. My suggestion is that the definitions of ““enclosed”” and ““substantially enclosed”” should be modelled on those being applied in Scotland; I have poached the wording direct from the relevant Scottish regulations. The lack of definitions would be less of a problem if it were not the Government’s intention to bring this part of the Bill into force so rapidly, but the uncertainty factor, combined with the tight timescale, is likely to result in considerable difficulties for businesses. If the process of approving the relevant definitions and regulations proves to be at all complicated, it may be impossible for pubs and clubs to submit any planning applications until the beginning of next year at the earliest. The planning process itself, as we all know, can be extremely slow. That is why I suggested earlier that the commencement for these provisions should be later than is currently proposed. I did so not because I am soft on smoking but because I do not think that it is right to come down so hard on the pub and club trade by allowing it so little time to make preparations. Until the middle of February, when the crucial vote was taken in the other place, a large number of pubs—and, indeed, all private membership clubs—believed that they would be exempt from the smoking ban. They were therefore making no preliminary plans whatever. They cannot be blamed for harbouring that belief because, until a few weeks ago, it was government policy to exempt them. This may be a health Bill and the primary concern of most of us taking part in the debate is public health, but I do not think that we can claim to be legislating responsibly on banning smoking in pubs and clubs if we do not also take account of the business case. With all due respect to the other place, this is not something that it did to any meaningful extent. Reducing the incidence of smoking and ill health may be a great crusade for many in both Houses of Parliament, but pubs and clubs are not the bad guys. We need to remind ourselves of that. They are innocent parties in all this, and there is no doubt that many of them will suffer acutely when the effect of this legislation hits them. I believe that we have a duty to listen very hard to the concerns that they are voicing about how their trade is likely to be affected by the ban on smoking, and that, as far as we reasonably can, we should make appropriate provision for them. The way to do that is to give the trade two things: certainty at the earliest possible opportunity about where they stand, and time to make appropriate preparations for protecting their businesses. I know that not all noble Lords will be sympathetic to the case that I have tried to make, but I hope that the Government will be. I therefore beg to move.