Clause 22
Health Bill [Lords]
4:30 pm
Michael Penning (Shadow Minister, Health; Hemel Hempstead, Conservative)
I have seen the video and think that the British Heart Foundation is doing some effective lobbying. I did not need to see it, however, because I have seen that happen in real life.
Two aspects of the hon. Gentleman’s comments must be addressed. First, it is a criminal offence to allow that to happen. If people are allowing children to purchase cigarettes, we should check whether they are also allowing them to drink, because they probably are. Such people should not have licences and should be dealt with by existing legislation, rather than by passing more legislation. Secondly, the vending machine, or a smaller version, could be behind the bar. That way, checks would have to be made. Rather than saying, “Slap! Bang! You’re out of business,” we should look at measures that were not available when most European bans came in.
We know that people do not want to ban tobacco sales altogether—we should be honest about that. I agree with the Liberal Democrat spokesman that we did not have an honest debate on the legislation on smoking in public places. Other Committee members served with me on that Public Bill Committee. Health and safety legislation was used as a back-door method to ban smoking in public places. It was not designed to preclude people from smoking, but to protect people from passive smoking in their place of employment. We should be honest about that.