Clause 3 - Exemptions
Health Bill
12:00 pm
Stephen Williams (Shadow Minister, Health; Bristol West, Liberal Democrat)
I certainly recognise that we need a package of measures, and this package would be a complete package if it included a full ban, rather than a ban that is run through with many exemptions.
The Minister said that people smoke in the home. I have said that many people resolve to give up smoking, perhaps on new year's day or on another anniversary—we have already had that discussion—but their resolution often falls at the first hurdle when they are in a social environment. If the social environment for smoking were taken away, the overall incidence of smoking would fall and therefore the incidence of smoking in the home and in front of children and non-smoking family members would obviously fall as well. That is an incidental benefit of a full ban, but none the less it is a benefit.
The health inequalities in this country suggest that high levels of taxation—in effect, a cigarette tax is a tax on the poor—and endless health warnings and adverts have not had the impact that we would like and that we need to consider firmer legislation, such as for a full ban, to help people in the relevant communities. My hon. Friend the Member for Northavon said that the consequence of not having a full ban would be lost lives. Perhaps at some future point residents of England will have the same protection as residents of Falkirk and other parts of Scotland, but for the time being they will not. Health inequalities will be perpetuated in the short term and there is a risk that they will be widened in the long term.
I asked the Minister—I am sure that she and her colleagues have been asked this many times—to tell us why she thinks that someone's having food in front of them alters the impact that smoke has on them. She could not give us a good public health reason.