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Health Bill

My Lords, it will not surprise your Lordships to know that I oppose this amendment. I hope very much that the House will reject it. I should declare my interest as a trustee of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation. As many of your Lordships are aware, Roy Castle was a much loved and popular entertainer who contracted lung cancer from the effects, so he and his widow believed, of working in smoky pubs. He never smoked, but he contracted lung cancer and tragically died of it. When he set up the Lung Cancer Foundation, he was determined that as much as possible should be done not only to treat people who are diagnosed with lung cancer, but also to persuade people that others should not die in the same horrible way as he did. We are not talking about a small section of the British community—the private membership clubs. As my noble friend Lord Pendry pointed out, there are something like 20,000 of them. An estimate was given by a Conservative MP on 14 February that the number of employees who work in those clubs is 165,000 or more. That was not denied by the Secretary of State, so we can imagine that it is a realistic figure. Clubs are not run by one or two volunteers in country areas. They are serious places of employment. In many localities, they are run alongside the local pub, wine bar and restaurant. We must bear two things in mind. First, taking account of the debate that we had on the earlier amendment and the very decisive decision that your Lordships took about the risks of second-hand smoke and the undesirability of maintaining smoking in restaurants and pubs, as well as the provision for private areas for smokers, we must ask whether we have a right to say that that law does not apply to private members’ clubs. My noble friend Lord Rosser alluded to a number of examples where the law naturally applies to private members’ clubs. The House is indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, for pointing out the excellent work that he did to ensure that our race relations legislation applies equally to private members’ clubs. I only regret that the Private Member’s Bill that I introduced in your Lordships’ House to eliminate sex discrimination in private members’ clubs did not get passed in the other place. However, I remind noble Lords that it went through your Lordships’ House. The main issue is whether employees are entitled to protection. The special nature of clubs was the basis of a letter that I received from the secretary of a clubs trade association, which said that they are special places and deserve a special place in British society. Up to a point that may be so. However, is anyone suggesting that if a club is infested with asbestos, the club management can say to the people who work there, ““Don’t worry about this; you do this at your own risk and we will not allow the normal health and safety legislation to apply to you when we ask you to take it out””? Of course, we would not do that. Given that your Lordships are clearly of the view that second-hand smoke is dangerous, the protection of workers in clubs is also important. My noble friend Lord Pendry referred to the Labour Party election manifesto. At the end of last week, he was kind enough to write to us on these Benches drawing our attention to that letter. I suspect that some of my colleagues were a little surprised to discover on reading Friday’s Guardian that the organisation and circulation of that letter had been funded by the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association, which is not a body one normally associates with Labour Party policy. But, if we put that to one side for a moment, the party manifesto needs to be addressed. The noble Lord, Lord Pendry, was right to refer to it. The House must take account of what the Government did once they had been re-elected and once they had decided to embark on legislation on smoking and health. They had already given a commitment that they would consult on these provisions, and they consulted over the course of last summer. This test of public opinion, I would stress to your Lordships, is crucial. Fifty-seven thousand people responded to that consultation. According to the Department of Health, the vast majority of them—four-fifths—called for the proposed policy in the Labour Party manifesto to be changed to a complete ban on smoking in all enclosed public places and workplaces. The Department of Health added that the vast majority of those responding believed that, as membership clubs are workplaces, there should be no exemptions.