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Health Bill

moved Amendment No. 1:"Page 2, line 11, at beginning insert ““Except as provided in section (Premises serving food),””" The noble Lord said: My Lords, the amendment that I am moving is essentially the same as that moved by my noble friend and colleague Lord Steel when the Committee met under the calculating eye of Moses on the wall. Unfortunately, my noble friend has a lunch engagement in Edinburgh, connected with cancer research, oddly enough, so I am standing in for him. I hope that he will be here later. The amendment must be read in conjunction with the new clause, in which there is a small change—the word ““adequate”” having been removed before the word ““ventilation””. While ““adequate”” is a word that is understood in common sense, it appears to have no clear legal definition. The amendment is about choice, which I regard as being fundamental to a liberal society. Having spent much of the weekend reading the Official Report of the Committee stage, I believe that the clear distinction between those who support my amendment and related later ones and those who do not is our wish to provide choice and the Government’s intention to deny it. The Government are, I am sad to say, supported by my own Front Bench, which in my 42 years in Parliament I have never previously opposed but now very firmly do so. This is not a divide between smokers and non-smokers; it is about the rights of both. I support many non-smokers who want to find a fair way forward. People like me who are equally aware of the more harmful effects of excessive drinking do not preach prohibition. It is one of the moral contradictions of previous and proposed legislation, as the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, has often pointed out, that at the same time as imposing draconian laws preventing smoking we are easing restrictions on drinking. The number of deaths from alcoholism is about the same as that from smoke-induced cancer, but the pain, misery and crime related to drinking exceeds that related to smoking by 100 per cent. In my opinion, the whole Government case rests on poorly substantiated arguments about the supposed dangers of passive smoking. Having looked at the evidence on display, I suspect that going into a room in which three or four people are smoking puts you at rather less risk than walking down Victoria Street. The noble Lord, Lord Harris of High Cross, has written an excellent pamphlet, Smoking out the Truth. I quote only the British Medical Journal’s publication of the work of the American Cancer Society, which tracked 118,000 Californians over 40 years and concluded that the results did not support the existence of a causal relationship between passive smoking and tobacco-related mortality. More recently, we have the report of our own Select Committee on Economic Affairs on responses to risk. It said that,"““evidence we received suggested that the health risks associated with passive smoking are relatively minor””." I mention passive smoking right at the beginning of our debate because the issue affects every aspect of the Government’s proposals and the Government’s case is clearly not scientifically substantiated. My amendment is nevertheless an attempt to compromise, suggesting a solution in which the risk of passive smoking—if risk there indeed be—is removed by the provision of physically separate smoking and non-smoking areas in restaurants. The amendment also stresses that the smoking areas should be well ventilated. A letter that I have received from AIR states:"““Sensibly constructed smoking rooms prevent any movement of smoke into adjoining non-smoking areas. This is reflected in the regulations implemented in Sweden and Italy. Hospital operating theatres and high-tech clean rooms rely on ventilation and filtration to stop contamination. The technologies used are equally effective against environmental tobacco smoke””." I question the view cited by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, who is not with us today, that there is no such thing as adequate ventilation. Effective ventilation basically means air displacement and replacement; therefore, there is such a thing. This amendment, if implemented, would in no way detract from the Government’s intentions to isolate smoking, even though I consider their argument ill founded. It would, however, protect freedom of choice and uphold the rights of smokers and non-smokers alike. I beg to move.