Health Bill

Can we come back to the Bill? The noble Lord keeps asking for the sources. This is a Government Bill. I am offering to give the sources and information and to answer the questions. It might be more helpful and more profitable for the Committee to hear why the Government have introduced the Bill, whatever respect I have for my noble friend Lord Faulkner’s views. The sources and evidence have been asked for, which I am happy to give. I am also happy to give a response to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, about ONS. It might be helpful to the Committee if I do that. The Government’s independent scientific advice from the independent Scientific Committee on Tobacco and Health and the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer has raised, after reviewing all the evidence on the risks associated with second-hand smoke, the dangers of exposure to second-hand smoke. That is the basis for our Bill. I suggest that the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, and others who doubt that evidence should read it very carefully. I also draw their attention to the fact that the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control—the world’s first public health treaty—was adopted unanimously by 192 countries in May 2003. The convention entered force in February 2005. The UK was a signatory to that convention. The framework convention recognises that,"““scientific evidence has unequivocally established that exposure to tobacco smoke causes death, disease and disability””." I am very happy to send Members of the Committee all the chapter and verse that supports that. I strongly suggest that we cannot go on debating this issue as though there was no scientific evidence. There is scientific evidence and we are the signatories to an international agreement in this area, which is the basis for why the Government are bringing forward this Bill. People may not like that basis and may disagree with it, but that is the scientific basis on which we are operating. The Bill has been through the other place and has come to this House. That is not to say that we should not scrutinise the Bill, but we should not continually try, on a Second Reading basis, to reopen the scientific basis for it. We have laid it in the public arena; the House of Commons has voted on the issue and that is the Bill we are considering. The noble Lord, Lord Naseby, posed several questions. We share his respect for ONS. That is absolutely right. We put great value on the work of ONS. But that does not mean that we should ignore other sources of information. No responsible government should simply ignore other information that supplements the excellent work done by ONS, which is exactly what we have done. I draw the noble Lord’s attention specifically to ONS and to the point that I made earlier about the speed of change in opinion. This is conveyed and supported by ONS surveys: forget other surveys. The increase in support for restrictions on smoking in pubs increased more in the single year from 2003–04 than across the seven years from 1996-2003 cumulatively. That is taken from ONS surveys and I can let the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, have that information. I also draw his attention to another ONS source in the 2004 survey that he cited to the Committee. In another part of the report, there are figures that show that around only half of workers are in work places that are completely smoke free. It is a key part of this Bill that we are trying to rectify that exposure and to put matters right for the other 50 per cent of the workforce. They are a significant part of our citizenry and should be entitled to have the benefits that the other 50 per cent have already got.