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Health Bill

As the question was addressed directly to me, perhaps I may say to the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, that there is proportion in these matters, as there is on the question of how much smoke we may or may not inhale. In the years that I have been in the theatre, smoking has become less and less frequent an activity, both on and off the stage. A large number of actors do not smoke—and do not want to smoke—but there are circumstances, many of which we have heard about today, in which it is very difficult to find a viable alternative for the authentic representation of a habit which we may all reprehend but which nevertheless was extremely common until recently. One viable alternative was the use of non-tobacco materials, such as herbal cigarettes, but a problem that we have already discussed in this Committee is the fact that, as presently drafted, the Bill would not allow that. So there are alternatives but they are alternative methods of smoking and not something entirely different. As I mentioned in connection with a much earlier Bill on this subject that came before the House last summer, on occasion there is a necessity for the real thing to happen in front of an audience and not an illusion. Illusion is, indeed, the stuff of theatre and sometimes it is what makes theatre powerful, but if someone on stage had a twopenny stick of sugar in his mouth, like the pretend cigarettes that we all used to have as kids, the audience would almost certainly laugh and it would not add to the dramatic weight of the event. The intention of most practitioners now is to limit the use of materials that have to be smoked to the absolute minimum necessary in order authentically to portray what needs to be portrayed, but there are occasions when that has to happen.