Health Bill

I do not agree with that argument. There are very few people, if any, who are clinically unable to give up smoking. I entirely accept that it is difficult, but the right hon. Gentleman needs to be careful of that argument. He is in danger of saying that the people of whom he spoke, in low-income and disadvantaged groups, are unable to make on their own behalf decisions which, from the level of tobacco consumption, one can see that better off people have made. That is not true and it is a patronising argument for us even tacitly to endorse. The next argument is closely allied to the argument that a ban will help people give up smoking. It is the argument behind public health targets related to tobacco consumption. As Secretary of State for Health, I was always uneasy about public health targets that could be delivered not as a result of Government action, not as a result of collective action, but only as a result of private decisions by private citizens. It is not a proper basis for public policy to introduce a measure that I find objectionable for the reasons that I am describing, in order to deliver some public health objective about reducing tobacco consumption, which can be delivered only by private citizens making a private choice about their own private behaviour. The job of the public health Minister is to use resources in a way that is targeted at health need, but always to understand that private citizens should be free to make their own decisions about the way they lead their lives. The third argument that is advanced is that we should introduce a smoking ban in order to create a more pleasant environment for people like me who do not like going into smoky pubs—again, not a good guide for public policy, and not a reason for compulsion, though a very strong reason for individual publicans and restaurateurs to introduce no-smoking policies in their establishments, which attract people like me and presumably do not attract those who want to go in and be able to smoke. On the final argument, it was interesting that the hon. Member for Northavon rested his argument in favour of a smoking ban almost exclusively on the safer working environment argument. All around the country, employers and employees have for a generation been agreeing no-smoking policies in their establishments, without the assistance of the Government. I applaud that. In my own business we operate a no-smoking policy because that is the decision that the individuals on the sites have collectively reached. I do not believe that a ban should be imposed from here, because individual employers and employees should be free to decide the matter for themselves. In addition to the public health driver that explicitly informs smoking bans, there is also a strong whiff of political correctness—we know the scientific facts and what is good for the people who send us here. Our righteousness is reinforced when we present that argument, because we can quote scientific evidence to support our assertions of what is good for people. We then make the fatal leap—this is where I part company from the prevailing majority—that because we know how people could better lead their lives from a health point of view, we should use our available powers to lead them to do things that they would not choose to do for themselves. The Prime Minister is fond of talking about respect, and he is dead right when he says that we should learn better to respect each other. We should understand, for example, that two adult citizens in a free society—this is almost the definition of a free society—can look at the same set of facts, come to two diametrically opposite conclusions and both be right. We will have learned the real meaning of respect when we respect the conclusions that other people reach when they are presented with the same facts as us, but reach opposite conclusions.