Results 1-9 of 9 for smoking speaker:Oliver Letwin

Dangerous Drugs (29 Oct 2003)

Mr Oliver Letwin: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. Does he not recognise that what happened in the Lambeth experiment was that the Metropolitan police discovered young people who were openly smoking joints in the faces of the police officers and saying, "We are breaking the law, and you can't do anything about it. Ho, ho"? That is why the police asked for the power of arrest. Does that...

Sub-Post Offices (8 Apr 2003)

Mr Oliver Letwin: ...ensure that most readers will think twice before opening such an account. However, it is difficult to write such leaflets, and it does not say that post office card accounts are dangerous or that smoking post office card accounts kill. If there were an easy method of opening a post office card account that most people who now use post offices to collect their pensions could use, we could...

Agriculture (West Dorset) (5 Feb 2003)

Mr Oliver Letwin: ...than Denhay. I do not know how we can hope that there will continue to be a pig industry if Denhay has given up pig production, as is now the case. It is still producing bacon and the excellent smoked ham but it has no pigs, because it no longer makes sense to have pigs in Britain. It makes sense to import the pigs. When we import the pigs, we export the cruelty. Because the asymmetry of...

Drugs Strategy (10 Jul 2002)

Mr Oliver Letwin: ...decriminalising cannabis use, he still wants young people to buy their cannabis from criminals. He also needs to explain how it can be right to tell one set of people that it is half okay to smoke cannabis, but to tell another set of people they may be put in prison for 10 years if they sell it. In short, the Home Secretary needs to explain how, with a policy that consists of deeply...

Public Bill Committee: Finance Bill: Clause 4 - Rates of tobacco products duty (26 Apr 2001)

Mr Oliver Letwin: ...Secretary's argument. Is he asserting that Her Majesty's Treasury's economists have advised him that the price level is more likely to have an elasticity effect on determining whether people smoke than it is on determining the number of cigarettes that they smoke? If so, it would be counter to every elasticity study that I have ever seen.

Public Bill Committee: Finance Bill: Clause 4 - Rates of tobacco products duty (26 Apr 2001)

Mr Oliver Letwin: The Financial Secretary is too intelligent for that. Surely, he recognises that we are debating whether the duty has been responsible for, on the one hand, decreasing the number of people who smoke—I accept his evidence that that is not increasing—or, on the other hand, whether it has been connected with the fact that the amount smoked by those who smoke has risen. If the duty...

Public Bill Committee: Finance Bill: Clause 4 - Rates of tobacco products duty (26 Apr 2001)

Mr Oliver Letwin: ...is no doubt that the prevalence of smuggling, and of smuggled and often inferior tobacco, is not improving the nation's health, but is making it worse. All the evidence suggests that whereas licit smoking is under control, illicit smoking is burgeoning. That is not to the advantage of the nation's health. I have already made the social point. I suspect that Opposition Members will agree...

Orders of the Day — Road Traffic (NHS Charges) Bill (8 Dec 1998)

Mr Oliver Letwin: ...to a vast application of compulsory insurance across a wide range of activities. Such a course would be consonant with Ministers' desperate efforts to prevent people from killing themselves by smoking. The Government specialise in trying to deal with what they regard as the problem of individuals taking risks that they should not take. Why else spend large amounts of public money trying...

Opposition Day: Local Government (Scotland) (16 Jun 1998)

Mr Oliver Letwin: .... He can do that only by commissioning a full, independent inquiry. At that point, the problem will disappear. Until then, we have what was accurately described by Kafka as a blend of fog and smoke filling the Chamber with a faint smell of burning soot".