Health Bill

I am phlegmatically resigned to going through the arguments again at Report and probably at Third Reading. Members of the Committee will have the pleasure of hearing me recite the same evidence and arguments on both occasions. I actually managed to find what I said about hookah pipes in Hansard without the assistance of my officials. I said at our previous sitting:"““On the issue of pipes used for smoking, including those sometimes known as shisha and hookah pipes, the World Health Organisation has published research that suggests:""      ‘Using a waterpipe to smoke tobacco poses a serious potential health hazard to smokers and others to the smoke emitted’,""It also says that,""‘secondhand smoke from waterpipes is a mixture of tobacco smoke in addition to smoke from the fuel, and therefore poses a serious health risk for non-smokers’.—[Official Report,, 24/4/06; col. GC 24.]" That is what I said; and that is what I stand by today. The Muslim Health Network and the Federation of Small Businesses were consulted and, as I said at our previous sitting, we have received no representations on this issue.