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Health Bill

I do not propose to make a lengthy speech because we are in serious danger of, as we did last Thursday, embarking upon a Second Reading debate instead of, as a Committee, looking at the amendments before us. When I was in the Army in the 1940s, as second-in-command of a hospital ship, I used to buy a 50-can of Senior Service every couple of days and get through it in two days—it cost 1/8d for 50 cigarettes. I smoked steadily for some years. I then began to read the evidence relating to the effects of smoking, not only on the lungs but on the cardiovascular system, and as that evidence accumulated I gave up smoking cigarettes. I then went on to smoking a pipe because I believed that it was safer, but then the information began to emerge about pipe smoking. I hope that I will be forgiven for saying so, but what the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, has said, frankly, does not hold water. The amount of money that the Government have put into support for organisations such as ASH simply does not compare with the amount of money that the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association has put into the propaganda supporting smoking. For years it refused to admit that there were any ill effects from smoking. Eventually, and with the greatest possible reluctance, it came to the conclusion that perhaps smoking might cause lung cancer and might have an adverse effect on the cardiovascular system. The evidence is totally incontrovertible: smoking is the greatest health hazard of our age. Cigarette smoke at a high temperature includes a substantial component of carcinogenic hydrocarbons, which have been shown by experimental work to produce cancer in animals and so on. I could go on and on to try to convince the noble Lord that the evidence against smoking as a health hazard is enormous and continues to grow—not only in respect of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease but in respect of cancer of the bladder and cancer of many other organs. The statistics are absolutely clear cut: in people who smoke, the incidence of these conditions has been hugely increased. Quite contrary to what the noble Lords, Lord Naseby and Lord Stoddart, have said, there have now been published some 71 convincing pieces of research indicating the risks of passive smoking. I do not want to go into great detail except to say—as I said last Thursday—that I would defend to the ultimate the right of any individual to smoke if he or she so wishes, recognising the devastating effect that it can have on their personal health and well-being. But I would totally disagree with the possibility of allowing an individual who smokes to have the effect, through the smoke that he or she produces, of causing damage to the health of another individual. That is why I support the Bill, which is so clearly designed to protect human health. I do not believe that it would be right for the Committee to modify the Bill that has come to us from another place. Obviously, the Bill should be debated, but the fact remains that convincing evidence in favour of the health risks of passive smoking is now, in my view, growing steadily. It has become so convincing that I think it right that this Bill should proceed.