4.5 pm
Health Bill
Caroline Flint (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department of Health; Don Valley, Labour)
I understand what the hon. Gentleman says, but he should reflect on the fact that we are legislating for the first time to make it an offence, perhaps with a fixed penalty notice, for a person to smoke in a non-smoking environment. There are some real problems with people being able to say that they were not aware that it was a non-smoking establishment. As for splattering the country with signs, we are looking for a relatively light touch.
I take on board what the hon. Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison) said about listed buildings and so on, and the fact that we should be sensitive about signage. We should also be sensitive to the fact that many of the establishments that now operate voluntary no-smoking policies already have no-smoking or smoke-free signs; we want to be mindful of that and how any new system of signage builds on or links with it. We certainly are not looking to overburden establishments with no-smoking signs. As I said, we have a record of what other countries have done. Some of them have restrictions and have since gone for a total ban. Indeed, Ireland has gone for a total ban, but it still believes that is it right to have no-smoking signs.
The other aspect is the message that signage sends out. It is quite positive that adults and young people should see no-smoking signs in places where they are active, or visiting or working, rather than seeing smoking signs all over the place. The no-smoking sign sends out a visible message that is clearly understood. If we were to move to smoking signs, however, the question is where they should be placed. We have been speaking of places where people will be able to smoke. For instance, should we have signs outside every pub saying that you can smoke outside but not inside?
All sorts of issues will be raised if we clutter with signs those areas where people cannot smoke. I would ask hon. Members to pause for thought if they were thinking of moving to a regime of smoking signs, as a huge number of places would be cluttered with signs. If we did not have no-smoking signs, the reverse would be to have smoking signs.