Clause 21
Health Bill [Lords]
4:00 pm
John Pugh (Southport, Liberal Democrat)
I thoroughly appreciate the attitude taken by Conservative Front-Bench Members on how to deal with this issue. It is such a big topic for parties, and people within parties, that it is probably best discussed largely on the Floor of the House. Therefore, fewer amendments will be put to the vote during debates in Committee. In fact, there are variations within parties and even within health teams. One of the reasons I am on this Bill is that I reduced the variation that might otherwise have occurred if other personnel had been put on it.
When the ban on smoking in public places was introduced, the argument was largely about secondary or passive smoking, and the rights of people not to be affected by other people’s smoke, but I think that there was a sub-text to it. I was well aware of a definite attempt to marginalise smoking as an activity. That is what the legislation succeeded in doing, and I do not think that it was necessarily a bad thing, but it would be more honest when people are presenting their argument to do so in precisely those terms. The more that smoking is seen as a rather strange activity that people engage in in little huddles outside buildings on cold days, the less people will smoke, the better public health will be, and the less cost there will be for the NHS.
This clause and successive clauses largely set out the possibility of regulation that is justified by the suggestion that we can stop children smoking by altering displays, or that we can stop people who have given up smoking restarting. Evidence has been amassed to that effect, but, as the hon. Gentleman just said, there is evidence moving in both directions. Frankly, some of it looks a bit flaky; at any rate, it is inconclusive.
I do not think that one buys cigarettes on impulse. Someone might walk into a service station and suddenly buy a packet of crisps, a chocolate bar or a drink they had not expected to buy, but they would not suddenly come out with cigarettes, not having previously intended to go in there for that precise purpose. I think that the public health arguments are not as honestly or as plainly put here.
That being said, the definition of “requested display” as an entity in law is a little obscure to me. I share some of the reservations of Conservative Front-Bench Members about it and would support the amendment.