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Health Bill

Circumstances prevented me from attending Committee last Thursday. Indeed, I must confess to Members of the Committee that I have never attended Committee before. As one of my colleagues in the Church of England once remarked to an incoming vicar, ““The agnostics here are pretty terrible””. I am referring to the sound, of course, rather than to the religious attitude, but I was still able to hear a large part of what the previous speaker said. I place on record quite firmly, as someone who has been a liberal for half a century, my view that this is a profoundly illiberal measure and interferes in an unjustified way with the rights of the individual. My noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood said on Thursday:"““The ethics behind the Bill are those of the nanny state rather than anything else. I find that quite offensive””.—[Official Report, 20/04/06; col. GC587.]" I find it deeply offensive. This is a country that prides itself on its tolerance, but the attitudes displayed by the advocates of the Bill have been those of the zealot, from which, in my experience, no fair legislation flows. Coupled with the zealotry, there has been an awful smugness as, inevitably, they get their way. What right has the state to tell individuals what to do in private? As a liberal, to me the state has no right. Of course, it may advise; it may cajole; it may do all sorts of things. But it may not dictate. No, it must not dictate. At the root of the Bill is the denial of choice. For a liberal, that is deeply unacceptable. Of course, I do not deny the right of non-smokers to claim completely smoke-free areas, however you define them, as we have talked about during discussion of the previous amendments. My noble friend Lord Steel spoke of separate provision. Like the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, I think that the evidence on passive smoking is thin and poorly substantiated, but I shall not go into that. I do not want to make a long speech anyway. I simply wanted on clause stand part—despite the fact that, I am told, we do not vote on these matters—to register my position and to state that this is the wrong way to go forward and is not fair.