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Health Bill

My Lords, I, too, agree with everything the noble Earl, Lord Howe, said and essentially with everything the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, said, which is why I added my name to Amendment No. 11. I must make one correction, however. The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, said that the Deputy Prime Minister had said that 20,000 people a year die from exposure to traffic fumes. The Deputy Prime Minister said it six years ago, backed up by his department. Actually, 24,000 people a year die prematurely from exposure to traffic fumes and industrial pollution. That vastly exceeds the most exaggerated estimate of the number of people who die each year from passive smoking. I should like to give an example of how illogical the clause is. Let us take two small plumbing firms. The first is a one-man band, and the one man in question is a smoker. He will be allowed to smoke wherever and whenever he wants in his white man—or a van sprayed any colour of the rainbow. The rival firm is a two-man partnership, but both partners are smokers. They both smoke, let us say, roughly 20 a day. However, they are not allowed to smoke in the firm’s van, white or otherwise, even if they are not travelling together, unless the Government are prepared to accept the noble Earl’s amendment. For example, if the arrangement is that Bill goes out on calls on even-numbered days of the month leaving Jack to take care of the office, the telephone and so forth and the position is reversed on odd-numbered days of the month, it would still be theoretically illegal, although of course totally unenforceable since the Government appear to be claiming that tobacco smoke is so deadly—it is not only tobacco smoke because, as we learnt in Grand Committee, herbal cigarettes are now deemed by the Government to be almost as deadly—that it would poison the car for days afterwards rather like sarin in the Tokyo underground system. If that were really so, one would have to ban smoking in hire cars. Firms which rent out cars may request their clients not to smoke, and some do, but most do not. However, they would have to ban smoking in those cars and even in hotel rooms, because hotel rooms are much less well ventilated than cars. As the noble Earl said, cars are automatically ventilated when people open the doors and windows. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, talked about the necessity of workable and credible legislation. The utterly disproportionate overkill represented by the clause as it stands brings the law into ridicule and contempt, which cannot be desirable from anyone’s point of view.