Meeting of the Parliament 17 December 2015
I begin where Jenny Marra finished, by congratulating Jim Hume on the progress of his member’s bill through to what I think will be unanimous support at decision time tonight. I welcome that.
Beyond that, much of the debate has been had and everything has been said. I will therefore make only two points. The first is that we have to hope that the legislation is exemplary and that it has the influence on public opinion that we all wish it to have, because I do not think that any of us would like to see great resource having to be deployed in its enforcement. There could also be issues around the practicality of enforcement. What we want is for public attitudes to change.
Secondly, I would very much have liked the legislation to have been in place when I was a child. I think that I said in the stage 1 debate that I have horrendous memories of my father puffing away on a cigar—the cigar that was, for those of you who remember, branded “Happiness is ... ”. My father was in the motor retail industry, so he had a new car every six months—it was subsequently sold as a second-hand vehicle. By the end of the six months, the white felt lining of the vehicle was invariably a ghastly treacly yellow. Some of the journeys that my sister and I endured were five and a half hours long—a ghastly experience. I have no idea what it did to us. I was almost resolved then that smoking is a filthy and noxious habit that I would be very happy to see curtailed in any way whatsoever. I find it quite unconscionable that any child today should be subjected to that.
I have also mentioned going home from school in the days when there were still bench seats on the buses and having to use a knife and fork in the smoke in order to identify a vacant seat. That was the culture of the time, but it has gone. The residual aspect of it is smoking in vehicles, which must damage everyone’s health, irrespective of whether they are a child. Although the legislative aim today relates to children, the bill will make a difference to everyone and will be worth while.
I would like to think that social attitudes have changed to the extent that the legislation would not be necessary. Interestingly, I was coming into Parliament in a taxi last week and the taxi driver said to me that he had heard about the issue on the radio and thought that he would conduct a wee experiment. He spent the morning driving around Edinburgh in his taxi, counting the number of vehicles containing children in which adults were smoking. In a four-hour shift in the inner city of Edinburgh there were 16 examples. Whatever the common-sense understanding of how smoking in cars must affect children, the reality is that it continues. We need to send a strong legislative message—a message that I hope will prove exemplary and will change the attitude of the public. As I say, I congratulate Jim Hume on the bill that will be passed later this afternoon.
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