---

Health Bill

I will speak to Amendment No. 8, which goes further than that of the noble Earl. As he said, Chapter 1 of Part 1 makes provisions for the prohibition of smoking in certain places, premises and vehicles. The problem is that the Bill does not define ““premises””. Premises are to be smoke-free only in those areas that are enclosed or substantially enclosed. The meanings of ““enclosed”” and ““substantially enclosed”” are to be specified in the regulations. As the noble Earl has said, until those meanings are made available, the situation is not just difficult, but impossible. No property owner or operator can be absolutely confident about being able to do or commence work to provide facilities for smokers that fall outside those meanings. I speak from some experience: until relatively recently I was a non-executive director of a construction company. There is no way that any client of ours would go ahead on the basis of what they thought might be in regulations. That is a crazy way forward. So nothing can happen until those regulations set out the specifications. One might hope for some guidance from the Department of Health. There was a public consultation document last June, as the Minister informed us on other amendments: Consultation on the Smokefree Elements of the Health Improvement and Protection Bill. In paragraphs 11 to 13, the document said:"““It is proposed to put the definition of enclosed on the face of the Bill, and to provide a power so that the definition may be modified by regulations. After reviewing a range of definitions used in other jurisdictions, it is proposed to use the following:""a place is to be regarded as ‘enclosed’ if it is fully enclosed (completely enclosed on all sides by solid floor-to-ceiling walls, windows, or solid floor-to-ceiling partitions with an exception for doors and passageways), or is substantially enclosed, that is at least partially covered by a roof and has walls such that the total area of the roof and wall surfaces exceeds 70 per cent of the total notional roof and wall area.""It is proposed that both ‘roof’ and ‘wall’ will include any structure, whether fixed or movable, permanent or temporary.""It is proposed that the ‘total notional roof and wall area’ will be the sum of what would be the total area of the wall surfaces if the walls were continuous (any gap in the walls being filled by a surface of the minimum area required for the purpose) and the walls were of a uniform height equal to the lowest height of the roof””." If I were to examine noble Lords on the detailed interpretation of that in about five minutes’ time, I suspect that none of them would be able to give the correct answers. The point that I am making is that this is extremely complicated, and not simply something that your average rural publican is the least bit capable of doing. It would have required professional advice, as it stood at that stage. But when the Health Bill was published in December 2005, the definitions of ““enclosed”” and ““substantially enclosed”” were not in the Bill, as we know; instead, they were left to be defined in regulations. But then, in Standing Committee, the Minister in another place indicated that the Government had again changed their minds and that they were leaning towards defining ““substantially enclosed”” as being when openings in the walls had an area less than half the area that constituted the perimeter. I say to the Committee that a definition of 50 per cent of the perimeter wall area is unnecessarily restrictive. It would make such places entirely inhospitable and useless for a large part of the year. Both our amendment and that in the name of my noble friend would permit the definitions to be modified by regulations, as originally intended by the Department of Health. This is an important point, in that not a single licensed premise can do any planning. In contrast to what the Minister suggested on Thursday, no one can do any planning until this matter is clearly settled and people know exactly what they are about. Of the two amendments, I prefer the one in our name, but certainly the one in the name of my noble friend Lord Howe has merit, and I hope very much that they will find sympathy with the Minister when he replies.