Hansard

I am not an expert, so I probably should not answer that question. I think that parents should err on the side of caution. It is common sense that any parent who has small children, particularly babies, should err on the side of caution, and I think that most would. Much of the research into passive smoking has been flawed. The largest-ever study on passive smoking, which was carried out in California, studied a group of 119,000 people between 1959 and 1999, and found that it had no significant impact. The problem with the research that has been carried out in cars is that it is inconsistent because there are so many variables—such as whether a window is open and whether it is open one inch or two—that all make a huge difference. Often, the research that we have seen focuses on that moment—it may be literally a few seconds—when someone has just lit a cigarette and there is a significant amount of smoke in the car. Within seconds, that smoke has normally been massively diluted because a window is open, or whatever. I do not want to come across as if I am justifying or defending people who smoke in cars with children, because I am not. I simply think that the legislation is excessive. Perhaps I may step back a bit and talk about the smoking ban in Scotland in 2006, which I think was grossly excessive. I totally accept that it is fine to ban smoking in restaurants, but I think that a comprehensive ban in every pub and club in the country, without even allowing designated smoking rooms, was outrageous. I still believe that nine years later, and I am not alone. A Populus poll last week before the ASH report came out asked a random sample of 2,000 people whether they would allow well-ventilated designated smoking rooms in pubs and private members clubs, and 57 per cent said that they would. I accept that people obey the law and do not want to get their landlord or publican into trouble, but I dispute the idea that the smoking ban has been hugely popular. It has very high compliance rates, but when people are asked whether we should allow well-ventilated designated smoking rooms, in general the majority of people favour that idea. You said that the idea of a well-ventilated smoking room is complete nonsense, but it is not. Modern technology can solve the problem of environmental tobacco smoke extremely well, but sadly we have not gone down that route. Underlying this legislation is a desire to stop people smoking—that is what it comes down to, despite the fact that tobacco is a perfectly legal product. People talk about making Scotland smoke free by 2035 or 2030, or whatever, but if we leave smokers alone, smoking rates will continue to fall slowly for a number of reasons. Health is a serious issue. A lot of people start smoking when they are quite young, but they give up in their 20s and 30s when they start having families and do not want to smoke around children and all the rest of it. We will continue to see a gentle decline in smoking rates, but unfortunately that is not good enough for the tobacco control lobby. It has already set a target of getting Scotland to be smoke free by 2035—smoke free means that just 5 per cent of the population smoke. The only way that we will get smoking rates down to 5 per cent is by introducing more and more bans and legislation restricting where people can smoke. The way we are going, eventually people will not be allowed to smoke in a public park. We are starting by banning smoking in children’s play areas, even though they are in the open air. Some councils in England have exclusion zones around play areas—eventually people will not be able to smoke anywhere where a child might be present. Those rules and regulations have not been brought in for health reasons, because nobody argues that smoking in the open air is a risk to any bystander, whether they are an adult or a child. The argument now is, “We do not want you to smoke in a public park or anywhere near children because we do not want you to be a bad role model for children. If a child sees you smoking in a park, it might encourage them to take up smoking”. Again, there is no evidence that children take up smoking because they see a complete stranger smoking. All the evidence suggests that children take up smoking because of peer pressure or the influence of family members. That is another reason why some people are trying to crack down on family members smoking, whether in the car or at home, or whatever. There is a desire to stop parents smoking in case they become bad role models for their children. We must remember that tobacco is a legal product. I would have far more respect for people who came out and said that we should ban tobacco completely. Instead of that, Governments are more than happy to put 86 per cent taxation on tobacco—that is the average taxation on a pack of cigarettes in this country; 86 per cent goes to the Government. 11:30 It comes back to the principle that we should try to discourage the few people who smoke in a car with children present. FOREST would be more than happy to join that campaign, so long as it was educational rather than threatening people with fines, penalties and all the rest of it. We feel the same way about litter. We would like to encourage smokers not to drop litter, but it is a two-way thing. It needs some help, rather than rather draconian bullying tactics through which smokers are threatened with fines and other penalties if they drop litter or smoke in a car.