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Health Bill

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Warner for his kind comments and congratulate him on the skill, patience and good humour with which he has taken the Bill through the House. I think he would agree that his task would have been rather more difficult if the Bill had come to this place in exactly the same form in which it entered the House of Commons, with the exemptions it then contained. Now, though, we have a Bill which in my view, and, I think, in the view of the great majority of noble Lords, will do more for the public health of our country than almost any other measure since the introduction of the Clean Air Acts. I am delighted to support it. Because we are passing a Bill that contains comprehensive smoke-free provisions, I am able to tell the House that the private Bill I introduced on behalf of the city of Liverpool to make it smoke free will no longer be needed, and the formal steps to withdraw the Liverpool City Council (Prohibition of Smoking in Places of Work) Bill will be taken by the promoters’ parliamentary agents. I understand that formal Member approval is required first, and that that will be obtained later this month. The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth of Breckland, will make a similar statement in respect of the London Local Authorities Bill which she introduced. She and I and the promoters believe that these two Bills played some part in winning the debate for smoke-free provision, and we are grateful to all noble Lords who supported us at Second Reading on 20 July last year. I should also mention the third local authority private Bill on smoking, the Merseyside Local Authorities (Prohibition of Smoking in Places of Work) Bill, which was introduced into this House on 23 January. The promoters of that Bill also propose to withdraw it on the basis that the Government’s Health Bill achieves virtually all they hoped for from theirs. That Bill would have been the responsibility of the late Lord Chan, whose untimely and sudden death earlier this year was widely mourned in this House and across Merseyside. Lord Chan’s greatest legacy lay in developing child health in the developing world, and the work he started is being continued by the countless number of students he trained. He will be most remembered on Merseyside for his commitment to tackling health inequalities and helping those who suffered from deprivation. He saw the provision of smoke-free workplaces as an essential element in that. Lord Chan would have been as delighted as I am to see this Bill pass today.