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Health Bill

After studying both amendments, I decided to add my name to that of the noble Earl, Lord Howe, rather than that of the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, because I thought it was more unambiguous and to the point. As the noble Earl has said, Clause 4 is extremely wide and dangerous: it could easily be used to ban smoking in the street. If people think that that is unlikely, they have only to think of California; in one town there, people are banned not only from smoking in the street but on the porches of their own houses. On Second Reading, the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, who is very sensitive to smoke, as she has often told me over the years, complained about Ireland nowadays. She thought it would be paradise to go back there because smoking is banned in pubs; however, in walking through the garden of a pub to get to the front door of the pub itself, she found herself overcome by the smoke in the garden, which caused her enormous distress. There are people like that, and if there were enough people like the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, we could easily find that there was a smoking ban in the street or in other open spaces.