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Health Bill

My Lords, the noble Lord may just have to contain himself until I complete my peroration on this subject, in which I will try to cover some of the circumstances to which he has alluded. I will answer his question if he can wait patiently until I explain the structure of the legislation. The approach that we have adopted is, as I have said, consistent with the example of an exemption from the requirement to be smoke-free given in Clause 3(2). The example in the Bill refers to enclosed work and public premises being exempt where they are a person’s home, or a place where a person is living permanently or temporarily. Furthermore, the power in Clause 4 to designate additional smoke-free places will be tightly regulated and subject to the affirmative resolution procedure. The provision in Clause 3 deals with a range of areas where people may be living permanently or temporarily but which are regarded as their home. A good example of this might be a pub or shop where a person lives in a flat above. In those circumstances, the shop is an enclosed public place and the flat above is a domestic residence, exempt from the provisions of Clause 3. In cases where people are, effectively, regularly conducting a business from their premises, that is regarded as business premises, but it will be up to people to make their own arrangements and to make these decisions. The noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, raised a number of more common experiences as well as a more titillating experience, down which path he tried to tempt me. I say to the noble Lord—and to other noble Lords fascinated by such subjects—that we are not legislating for every conceivable set of circumstances. We are certainly not legislating for carers going into a person’s home where they will be exposed to smoke. The noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, has mentioned his own experience in that area. I have no direct experience of some of the other circumstances to which he alluded. We cannot prescribe for all possible sets of circumstances in this legislation. I am not sure that the enforcement officers of the legislation will be so encouraged to move into some of those premises to carry out their public duties. As I said, we cannot legislate for every possible circumstance and it will be a matter for case-by-case agreement and common sense between the people involved. However, I acknowledge the concerns raised in Grand Committee about the broad power in Clause 4 to make additional places smoke-free and the desire to strengthen the constraints on the Government’s use of the power. That is why I have tabled Amendment No. 9, which raises the threshold for the exercise of this power to cases where, and I think it worth quoting,"““in the authority’s opinion””," —the Secretary of State in the case of England and the National Assembly for Wales in the case of Wales—"““there is a significantrisk that, without a designation, persons present there would be exposed to significant quantities of smoke””." We think that that wording makes it absolutely clear that the power cannot be used in cases where the exposure to second-hand smoke is unlikely or only very limited. I hope that that provides noble Lords with the reassurance that we are limiting our ability to use this provision under Clause 4 in the way that I have indicated. I cannot say that we are tempted to go further down the path urged by the noble Lord, Lord Monson. We have taken a lot of advice on this from parliamentary counsel and we think that this is the right way of framing the restraint on our powers under Clause 4.