My Lords, I strongly support the remarks just now by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner. We have, as he said, been here before when, last summer, the Government launched the “Eat out to help out” campaign. At that time, as the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, said, my noble friend Lady Northover moved, with all-party support, to tie the extension of eating on the pavement to non-smoking areas. This was rejected by the Government because they did not wish to hinder the development of the initiative at short notice. This year, the same excuse will not be an acceptable reason for inaction, because a year has elapsed, but the Government prefer to listen not to local authorities or the Local Government
Association, which has to make the permits work, in very many areas, including my own, in Oxfordshire, but instead to the voices of big business, brewers and the tobacco industry. They do not listen, necessarily, to the small shopkeepers and restauranteurs owners but to the very big interests behind them.
Does the Minister recognise that, during the pandemic, many smokers have quit, but it is very easy for such people to resume smoking? Then there is the effect of passive smoking on those around, on the staff and on children. Can we afford to inflict a rise in the number of smokers on our population already cursed by Covid? The proposed regulations, with their ambivalent attitude to smoking, will make the difficulties that local authorities have with enforcement worse, and will be mightily unpopular with the majority of actual users.
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