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Health Bill

My Lords, I shall not treat this debate as another Second Reading or Committee stage, but I shall reply very briefly to the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky. Those of us in medicine listen to statistics, and I shall quote David Cohen, who is a professor of health economics. He has developed a model that predicts the effects of eliminating exposure to environmental tobacco smoke in public places in Wales, which has a population of only 3 million. It estimates an annual reduction in deaths from lung cancer and coronary heart disease of 253, with a possible additional reduction of deaths from stroke and respiratory diseases of 153. Lung cancer is not an orphan cancer. The number of cases involved is not small, and it has one element that other cancers do not have: an appalling prognosis. If any noble Lord has lung cancer, I am sorry to have to tell him that his chances of survival are extremely bad. One of the problems that doctors see with patients who are exposed in the workplace and who have not been exposed at home is that, if they get lung cancer and die young, it is a tragedy for society and for the community. I was extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, for intervening in the debate on this amendment and saying more eloquently than I can what is on my mind. It would be in the interest of the tobacco industry to persuade pubs and all kinds of other places to become the type of membership club that already abounds in our city centres for young people at night. In them, a membership card comes with going through the door and buying the first drink, which is a little bit more expensive than all the other drinks that come later. One is then a member and has a card, which states on the back what one can and cannot do. The place fulfils all the regulations for being a club, but is not one in historic practice like the clubs with long histories that other noble Lords have alluded to. We saw that happen in Cardiff city centre. People wanted to make a place slightly more elite, and so it became a membership club, but it was a pseudo-membership club. It was a lovely place to go, but it did not fulfil any of the criteria of somewhere like the Garrick. This amendment would mean an enormous loophole in the legislation that would make it unworkable. I cannot support it.