Health Bill

My Lords, although I have an interest in several areas of the Bill, I intend to concentrate at Second Reading on smoke-free public places. I am still trying to work out which of the gods placed me after the noble Lords, Lord Skidelsky and Lord Geddes. In no way will I try to tackle the statistical analysis, although there were moments when I thought that the noble Lord made my point for me. I am grateful that he made more suggestions about how we can reduce smoking. This House has already demonstrated that it puts the health of the community first by voting for the London and Liverpool Bills, which await the outcome of this legislation. Noble Lords also voted for smoke-free areas in virtually all parts of this House, showing that they care for their own staff—that is the issue about private clubs—as well as their own health. I had the privilege of taking a leading part on both those Bills and now speak in support of this Bill, so that the legislation can be enacted at the earliest opportunity in 2007 to ensure that all workers have the same level of protection. Although the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, is not in her place, I would join her in trying to ensure that the whole of the Palace becomes smoke-free. The BMA has written expressing its delight that Members of the other place opted to put the lives and health of their constituents first and vote for a total ban. Although there were moments when the leadership on the issue looked a little shaky, we were all delighted when the ban went through. That showed that we have a listening government that can look at the facts and change their mind. Whatever is in the manifesto, I thought that listening meant that you were capable of changing your mind during the course of a Parliament. For that I am grateful—after all, you may change your mind about other things, too. A partial ban on smoking in public places would have brought nothing but unworkable chaos and the most disadvantaged in our society would have continued to be at the greatest risk. Therefore, I hope that Members of this House will not try to introduce amendments to raise sectional interests—although I understand now that they will. I have no sympathy for the arguments on behalf of private clubs. I have talked to workers who work in private places. Of course they say, ““Yes, I think it’s alright””, until you ask them privately. They say it is alright because they know that they will lose their jobs if they say that it is not alright. I have examples. It would be inappropriate for me to repeat the vast array of evidence that we outlined in the London and Liverpool Bills, but some facts bear repeating. The research published by the British Medical Journal last year—and I hope that these are the right statistics—showed that second-hand smoke at work is likely to be responsible for the deaths of more than two employed people in the United Kingdom every working day. That is 617 deaths a year. If you start to divide that up into tiny proportions of hours and days it may seem small compared with the whole population. But I thought that in areas such as this we worked on the precautionary principle—that we care about our community. It is, I hope, the same attitude that we took in relation to BSE and vCJD. Certainly, there are not thousands of people dying from vCJD, but I hope that we continue the precautionary principle to ensure that people do not die from that terrible death any more than from the terrible deaths I have seen from diseases such as cancer that have resulted from smoking and, I believe, secondary smoking. Professor Vivienne Nathan, director of professional activities at the BMA, wrote me a telling letter. She stated:"““The health evidence that second hand smoke kills is beyond dispute””—" that is the view of the BMA—"““but doctors’ knowledge does not just come from scientific papers—we see the evidence in the lives of our patients and their families. We see that the least affluent patients bear the heaviest burden of the disease from smoking and second hand smoke, and know that this suffering is preventable””." I know that the positive effect on bar sales has already been mentioned, and maybe some of us have views about alcohol in relation to that, but it shows that business has not been particularly affected by a ban. What about compliance? In the debate on the London Bill, noble Lords said that no one would do any thing about it. People will not comply, they said. However, in March 2005, a report, Smoke-Free Workplaces in Ireland, A One-Year Review, contained the following key findings. Compliance with the smoke-free workplace legislation was very high—94 per cent of all workplaces inspected under the National Tobacco Control Inspection Programme were smoke-free; 92 per cent of all workplaces inspected by the Health and Safety Authority were smoke-free; 93 per cent of all hospitality workplaces were smoke-free. There is in Ireland overwhelming support for the law, with 98 per cent of people believing that workplaces are healthier and 96 per cent of people considering that the smoke-free law is a success. In addition, air quality in pubs has improved dramatically and more people like to go to them. I know that the issue of ventilation has been raised and I was not going to speak about that, as I talked about it in the debate on the London Bill. However, I have to tell the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, that an atmospheric physicist, James Repace, looked at the need for ventilation in smoke-filled rooms and what recycling that smoke would require. He said that it would take an air recycling rate of tornado-like force to remove all the effects of secondary smoking. I thought that it might be worth the expense of watching some people try to light up in that situation. But that is what the physicist said—and we are talking about physics, not chemistry, anyway.