Clause 3 - Exemptions
Health Bill
6:15 pm
Steve Webb (Shadow Secretary of State for Health, Health; Northavon, Liberal Democrat)
I am grateful for that. I suppose that that raises issues of signage and knowing what the club rules are. One can see enforcement complexities if a club has a general exemption, but some parts of it are not exempt. That is potentially messy. I would prefer the rule to be more clear cut, and I am sure that those who will have to enforce the law would prefer that, too.
In another context the hon. Gentleman would argue that a private club is a private space and that members choose to be members; clearly nobody forces anyone to be a member of a Conservative club, for example. If they choose to be members, they choose whatever arrangements that the club has agreed. Accordingly, if parents choose to bring their children in, have they not done so knowingly in an act of free choice in what the hon. Gentleman regards as a private space?
Is it not inconsistent to say that there should be an exemption for private members' clubs, because they are private spaces that can define their own rules, but then say that when it comes to children, the fact that the parents could take their child elsewhere, to a club that does not allow smoking, is irrelevant and we will stop them from having that choice?
The hon. Gentleman seems to be saying that we should not be obliging people in private clubs to adopt one rule, because that is a matter of choice, but on this matter, he is saying that there should not be a choice, but an absolute rule. I do not object to the amendment, but it is inconsistent with his view that private clubs, as he frankly acknowledged, are a private space where different rules should apply.
Debate adjourned.—[Gillian Merron.]
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-eight minutes past six o'clock till Thursday 8 December at Nine o'clock.