Health Bill

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, for his congratulations on my ability still to continue in office. I am absolutely confident that the Prime Minister, in taking this decision, had uppermost in his mind the fact that he did not want to deprive me of the unadulterated pleasure of taking this Bill through Grand Committee. I shall not repeat all the arguments and evidence on second-hand smoke that we have heard at considerable length in responding to the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Walton, reminded us that in some places there will be risk from second-hand smoke due, for example, to the inevitable close grouping of people. Some of the examples which I set out previously, and which have been referred to today, as being possibly smoke-free are sports stadiums, but also shelters and entrances to public buildings or work places. I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, underestimated Henry VIII. I would not have thought that this was such a clause. My understanding of Henry VIII clauses is that they allow changes to be made to primary legislation through secondary legislation. I do not believe that Clause 4 does that. However, I want to make it clear that we are only talking about places where there is a significant harm from exposure to smoke. Nevertheless, I have listened carefully to and thought about the points made in our earlier debates on this matter, and I have listened carefully to the concerns raised by Members of the Committee today. I am minded to bring back an amendment on Report to make this clear in the Bill. In other words, it will be an amendment similar in purpose to those tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and the noble Lords, Lord Naseby, Lord Stoddart and Lord Skidelsky, which we discussed extensively during the last sitting of this Committee. It would raise the threshold for using the power which, as I understand from the points made by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, in particular, was his primary concern: that the threshold is not sufficiently high for activating the provisions of this clause. With that reassurance, together with the fact that any regulations made under Clause 4 are already subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, I hope that the Committee will be willing to let me bring back the amendment so that we can discuss these issues further at the next stage.