Health Bill

The whole House will congratulate the hon. Member for Barnsley, East and Mexborough (Jeff Ennis) on pursuing an issue and seeing it through to the point where the public and the industry will be consulted and then the House can form a view through affirmative resolution. When we debated the programme motion, I said that it was an important issue that warranted a debate. As I predicted, we did not get it. Very few people in the House—the hon. Member for Barnsley, East and Mexborough was one of them—knew what was happening when the Speaker called for new clause 6 to be added to the Bill. Such an important issue should have got an airing so that we could think it through further. At least the House has a chance to come back to it once a consideration has been made. It is always a good day when a Liberal Democrat manifesto policy is implemented. Of the manifestos of the three major parties, only the Liberal Democrats’ contained a total ban on smoking, so my colleagues and I am delighted by the outcome of today’s vote. It goes further. Of the three Front-Bench speeches that opened our debate, only one—modesty forbids my saying which—unequivocally argued for a total ban, which is what the House overwhelmingly concluded, no doubt persuaded by the oratory. To sway the House, on a free vote, to a majority of more than 200 is one of my early parliamentary highlights but no doubt not the last. I congratulate the Committee members who assiduously went through the Bill. I was about to say some nice things about the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), but she has left. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) was uncharacteristically ungenerous in his remarks about her, because she dealt with all the smoking aspects of the Bill in Committee, although I am not sure that one praises someone for arguing for something that they do not wholly believe in. She was obviously committed throughout to a full ban, and it was poetic that she tabled the amendment that brought it in. That seems only right and proper. I agree with the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire that the Bill has not been well handled by the Government. In a sense, the Under-Secretary inherited a compromise. It is good that, through the evolution of the provisions, we have ended up with a clearer position. I was just discussing signage with my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Stephen Williams). Presumably we no longer need to put up signs saying that people cannot smoke in these places because it is now the law of the land that one cannot smoke in an enclosed public place, wherever it is. That is one example of how much cleaner, simpler and more effective is the total ban that the Bill now contains. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West, who served on his first health Bill Committee with me and made an important contribution to the debates. Although the debate was predominantly about smoking, we also heard about MRSA and related issues. My hope would be that, although we have yet another initiative or taskforce—a code of practice, in this case—it will have real teeth. The record so far is disappointing. The Minister of State, Department of Health, the right hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Jane Kennedy) said that the most recent set of figures on MRSA were disappointing in that they are no lower than they were 12 months ago. I join the Government in hoping, if not with a great deal of confidence, that the code of practice will bite and that we will see real changes. That is what we all want. In the event of a maverick vote—I do not know whether one is planned—I will, with great pleasure, encourage the serried ranks of my colleagues to support the Bill’s Third Reading.