Health Bill

The hon. Gentleman has made his point. If he will forgive me, I shall not respond to it in detail because there is not enough time. If the Government are serious about stopping people smoking, which I do not doubt, and if smoking is so bad for us, which I do not doubt either, why do they not ban smoking altogether? There is a one-word answer: tax. We have heard from a number of Members how much smokers cost the national health service. By means of a parliamentary question, I established that not much research is done on whether those admitted to hospital are smokers. Let us, however, accept what the Minister told me in a separate answer—that the estimated cost of smoking-related diseases to the NHS is £1.8 billion a year. That is a lot of money, but we should also bear in mind that smokers put £8.1 billion a year into the Exchequer—more than four times as much. That is why I cannot see the Bill as anything other than a load of confusion, and rather hypocritical.