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Health Bill

I appreciate that the Minister has been very patient but he is not by any means wearing us down. It is important that if we want to say something, we should say it. I am very impressed by the trust that the Minister puts in public opinion polls. He has cited several times the figure of 72 per cent of people being in favour of a total ban. Although we were given the question, I do not know how the poll was taken. I do not trust public opinion polls very much. I have fought too many elections to trust them. I remember that in 1959, when I was fighting the Newbury constituency, Labour was on course to win. The public opinion polls said that it was absolutely marvellous that the Labour Party was going to win. But when election day came, Harold Macmillan had a majority of 100 seats and I was defeated in Newbury by 10,500 votes. So I do not really put too much trust in public opinion polls. I was a great believer in the abolition of capital punishment but I rather fear that if we were to put that to the people in a public opinion poll—particularly at the present time—and asked them whether they wished to bring back the death penalty, at least 72 per cent would say ““Yes please”” tomorrow. So we should not put too much reliance on the Minister’s figure, particularly as people clearly do not know what it means. The members of the club to which I belong in Henley quite clearly did not understand at the last AGM that they might be faced with this problem of having to ban smoking throughout the club premises. The other fearsome thing is this: people have been frightened into believing that if they have a whiff of somebody else’s smoke—just a whiff—it will put their health at risk. Great scientists and doctors have said that there is a great risk; I do not believe them. Nevertheless, if doctors tell the public that, they are likely to believe them, even though it is complete nonsense. I remind people who put their complete trust in doctors that there are 5,000 deaths in hospitals through medical negligence. I do not think the Minister should take too much notice of public opinion polls, particularly when the public are being whipped up into hysteria about the health risk to them of having a whiff of someone else’s smoke.