Clause 3 - Exemptions
Health Bill
1:30 pm
Andrew Murrison (Shadow Minister, Health; Westbury, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 1, in clause 3, page 3, line 1, leave out paragraph (a).
The amendment is, appropriately, first on the list of amendments. It is important as far as the official Opposition are concerned and I am pleased that it bears not only my name and those of my hon. Friends, but also the name of the hon. Member for Northavon for the Liberal Democrats. Although I understand the hon. Gentleman about his wish to see a total ban, if I understood him correctly, he was mindful to support those measures that, at least in his eyes, made a bad Bill slightly better. I imagine that it is in that spirit that he supports our amendment.
Amendment No.1 is the food vs. non-food amendment. The removal of the relevant line would remove the distinction between pubs that serve food and those that do not. We have heard already, during the debates on Second Reading and in Committee, why that distinction is artificial.
I should like to underscore where I am coming from in this debate. Everything that I am speaking for has to do with the improvement of public health, but I also recognise that we are in the House of Commons to defend people’s liberties. Nothing is ever black and white. We are debating that area of grey that lies between the two—the dynamic that exists between a desire to outlaw tobacco altogether, for which a credible argument could be mounted, and a respect for an individual’s right to engage in a traditional activity.
We have to decide whether smoking in a pub that serves food will be dangerous because people are eating at the same time that they are smoking; if it is, we should by all means create that distinction, but if that is not so, it is an illogicality and the only way to justify it is if the Bill is being used to remove a nuisance and improve individuals’ enjoyment of their night out.
I respect the fact that people do not want to be exposed to second-hand tobacco smoke. I do not like going into a pub that is full of smoke; actually, I invariably vote with my feet. In any case, that is not a pleasant experience and it detracts from my enjoyment of the occasion.
We have to be careful when we are legislating on the basis of a nuisance, amenity or courtesy, which the guidance notes mention. I think that the Minister would accept that in the Government’s response to the consultation, not smoking in a restaurant or pub that serves food is to do with courtesy, rather than public health. I think that she accepts that, by using that form of words, there is no public health reason for having the distinction between food and non-food pubs.
An argument can be constructed, as other hon. Members and I have done, around the notion that making such a distinction could have an adverse public health effect, because it would create smoking dens and pubs that do not offer food, particularly in poorer areas of the country, will become worse. The sort of people who, if we are interested in public health, as I am, we would want to help first and foremost—the less well off—will be adversely affected by this distinction.
There are public health grounds for not having that distinction, quite apart from the illogicality of insisting on a ban in a pub that serves food but not in one that does not, given the direct effect that that will have on the individual smoking or taking on board second-hand smoke.
I find it extremely difficult to support this part of the Bill: first, because it is illogical and, secondly, because there could be a paradoxical adverse consequence for public health, particularly in areas that are least well-off.