Clause 2 - Smoke-free premises
Health Bill
12:00 pm
Andrew Murrison (Shadow Minister, Health; Westbury, Conservative)
There was a great deal of sense in the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. I am not usually kind to the Liberal Democrats—he has probably noted that—but on this occasion he has made a useful contribution and opened up an important debate. It is a debate on which the Minister has failed. We are considering a workplace. In general we are concerned, with respect to workplaces, about occupational exposure standards, airborne contaminants and the levels of those that are regarded as safe, and the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations. I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) is keen on that issue and he will return to it in his amendments.
We are dealing with a workplace that appears to be poorly regulated in comparison with other workplaces, and it is appropriate for us to consider that and decide how we might improve the occupational health of the people who work there. I declare an interest in that before I was elected to this place I was a consultant occupational physician. As I read the Bill, I was staggered by the lack of consideration that the Minister has given to what would be regarded, in an occupational setting, as frankly minimal standards in the matter of what it is or is not reasonable to expose workers to.
We have heard nothing from the Minister about COSHH or about occupational exposure standards. The debate about segregation—physical segregation and segregation by time of exposure, distance and ventilation—seems not to have been considered by the Minister at all; or, if it has, that has been merely en passant. In particular I am concerned that the Minister has not adequately explored the question of ventilation and that perhaps it has not been considered among the possible exemptions of which she gives examples. She might consider ventilation for clubs, for example, that might be exempted under the regulations. Perhaps we might also have occupational exposure standards for tobacco smoke to protect workers in those places.
I am alarmed by the poverty of imagination and the Minister’s ability to ignore, in the Bill, normal occupational hygiene measures and language. It is almost as if the Minister is telling us that we are dealing with a workplace, but that it is not quite a workplace in the normally accepted way of thinking. If she went to any industrial complex she would find occupational hygienists measuring air flow, airborne contamination and the rest of it to the nth degree, yet there is no reference to those practices in the Bill.
I urge the Minister to think seriously about bars and clubs as workplaces rather than just giving us polemic about protecting workers’ rights. I urge her to consider how proper workplace standards might be applied to people who work in those pubs and clubs. If she did that, she would, I think, come up with a very different Bill, which would, for example, mention such things as the Health and Safety Executive, COSHH and occupational exposure standards. There is nothing in the Bill about them and no reference, even in the guidance notes, to any of them, although they are the weft and warp of normal occupational hygiene. She has ignored them and all that we have are illogicalities. No serious thought is given to how to separate workers from a potentially noxious substance. There is the 1 m from the bar rule, but we know—the Minister has admitted—that it has no basis in fact. There is no evidence base for it. It has been plucked out of the air.
There is a reference to smoking at the bar. I suppose that we can understand that someone who does not smoke and who is serving behind the bar might find that offensive so, anecdotally, there is a reason for specifying smoking at the bar in the Bill or the guidance, but there is no evidence. No one has gone out and done any serious measurements relating to exposure to tobacco smoke which would inform the Bill; everything is anecdotal. We should not be legislating on the back of anecdote. We need to legislate on the basis of evidence, but there is a poverty of evidence in the Bill so I hope very much that the Minister will take a more serious look at the issue. Perhaps we could have rather less polemic and rather more evidence. If she provides that, we will end up with a Bill that is considerably better than the current one.