Health Bill

I should like to remind the Committee of what I said last time. I have no doubt that Members of the Committee have their own views on the Home Office and all sorts of other government departments. The fine levels are proposed in the light of advice from the Home Office and the responses received during the full public consultation on the smoke-free aspects of the Bill during the summer of last year. The fine levels are maximum figures for offences at particular levels in the hierarchy of offences. I will not repeat the much longer account that I gave previously. If you regard a particular offence as justifying a particular level of fine, offenders will attract up to the maximum that is ascribed by government for that level of offence. That is all we have done here. The view was that the fine levels for some offences were too low and that they were in the wrong category of seriousness. I will not repeat the very long explanation that I gave on an earlier amendment, which is in Hansard, setting out how the offences in the Bill are aligned with other offences outside the terms of the Bill and the fines that they attract. I also said that the fine levels we propose will create consistency with the majority of fine levels now in place in Scotland for the same offences under Scottish legislation. The only difference is that there is not the first option of a fixed-penalty notice for the offence of failing to display the appropriate signage in a smoke-free place. We have tried to align these offences and fine levels with the position in Scotland. I have nothing more to say except to remind the Committee that the fines are intended to be a deterrent so that people adhere to the requirements of this legislation. We have consulted on them. These are the fine levels that we think are appropriate. As I made clear earlier, we do not think that these should be in the Bill. Fine levels change and people need to learn from experience. It is more appropriate that they are set out in delegated legislation.