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Health Bill

My Lords, having tabled a similar amendment at previous stages of the Bill, and having argued at some length in favour of it, I am more than happy to give this amendment my support for the reasons so eloquently expressed by other noble Lords. The root premise of the Bill is that prolonged and substantial exposure to environmental tobacco smoke carries with it unacceptable risks to health. To say that the cab of a lorry in which a single driver has previously been smoking presents an unacceptable health risk to anyone subsequently getting into it seems absurd. No arguments have been advanced by the Government to persuade me that we should take that proposition seriously. Indeed, it seems to me that in this matter the Minister has relied much more on assertion and arbitrary demarcation lines than on sound science. We have said before, and it is worth saying again, that this is not a Bill to protect the public from any quantity of environmental tobacco smoke, no matter how tiny. It is a Bill that attempts to address what one might call the larger picture. We are at risk of taking the Bill to unworkable extremes if we insist that a farm worker on his own in the cab of a tractor, or a company executive driving alone in a pool car, may not have a cigarette. The Government have made it clear that work vehicles that are only ever used by one person will not have to be smoke-free. How it will be possible in all cases for enforcement officers to distinguish that situation from the kind that I have just mentioned is not at all clear. I, for one, would argue that for the law to seek to make that distinction is pointless.