Health Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 3:30 pm on 19 June 2006.

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Photo of Lord Wakeham Lord Wakeham Conservative 3:30, 19 June 2006

My Lords, the noble Lord has distorted what I said already. He has had his go so perhaps I may finish what I have to say, which will not take many more seconds.

The issue about which we were concerned and which we wished to put to the Government is that there is a little bit of risk but there is also an infringement of human liberties. It is the necessity of government—and the Government's responsibility—to judge those two factors and to reach a conclusion. Having listened to the evidence, we came to the unanimous conclusion that the infringement of human liberty was sufficiently high in our scale of priorities and the risk of passive smoking—particularly as the Bill does not affect matters in the home—was sufficiently small that in our judgment it did not justify this policy. So that is what we said.

Anyone who wants to read the report is welcome to do so. No doubt there will be a debate on our report in another place, but it does not quite say what some people wish to interpret it as saying. I think that the report is fairly moderate and reasonable. I agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, when he said that the committee was made up of eminent people—that was a good start—but his speech went downhill a little after that. The report was unanimous—and the overwhelming bulk of the members of our committee do not smoke.