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Health Bill

My Lords, I would like to make a comment on each of the amendments. The first one, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, is troubling—there is no doubt about that. A person’s home is a person’s home. In English parlance, it is his castle. I am extremely worried that some people may consider it not as his home but as their place of work. It really will cause enormous difficulties if there are people, particularly old people, who have smoked all their lives and depend on a cigarette for comfort but need the attention of the social services or doctors. Unless they stop smoking, which may kill them—and it could kill them, make no mistake about it—they will not get the attention that they need. That is a serious point, which needs clearing up. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, will be able to clear it up, perhaps not at this stage, but later. The other point was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Monson. He makes the very reasonable point that we should be talking about people in the open air being exposed to significant risk of harm from smoke. If they are not at risk of harm from smoke, we are talking about something of a different order. I am pleased that the Minister has tabled this amendment, but I think that he could go a bit further. There has been mention of second-hand smoke being harmful in open-air situations, but I do not know of any study that says that a whiff of somebody else’s smoke out in the open air is dangerous. I wonder whether the noble Lord would look at this provision and put in the caveat that people have to be at risk of harm from other people’s smoke.