My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Pinnock, who cannot be here today, I can say that we welcome the ability of cafés, restaurants and so on to have spaces outside on pavements. She leads in this area and wanted to make that clear. It has been a welcome development, pandemic or no pandemic. However, my noble friend’s particular concern is that businesses should pay rent for these spaces because the spaces are publicly owned and maintained by council taxpayers.
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That links to a point which other noble Lords have made and that my noble friend Lady Janke, who is standing aside because the last SI went through so fast that she did not make it here in time, wanted to emphasise. It concerns narrow pavements and those with pushchairs or wheelchairs, or people with mobility issues. We now have permanent structures being installed in the footway—business extensions, in effect—and
councils do not seem to have the power or resources to remove them, even in conservation areas; for example, my noble friend is very familiar with Clifton in Bristol in this regard. Businesses use lengthy legal processes to resist. Will the Government issue guidance on the duty of local authorities to enforce regulation and restraint? That ties in with what my noble friend Lady Pinnock intended to say about resources, which could therefore be tackled in that way.
I turn to the reason I wanted to speak in this debate, following on from the noble Lord, Lord Young—the Minister may not be surprised to hear this. I want to come on to what I see as the major deficiency in these regulations, which the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, said would be sorted if they were extended; he certainly told me that after the first regulations were put in place. When the regulations were first introduced, the then Minister pointed out that his father, Professor Roger Greenhalgh, a noted vascular surgeon, had a deep understanding of the public health importance of what I am about to say. The Minister shared that understanding of the public health implications of what he was introducing.
Once again, however, the Government have extended these regulations without revising them to require that all pavement seating is 100% tobacco-smoke free. This would have contributed to the Government’s ambition to make England smoke free by 2030, an ambition which we are currently on track to miss by seven years. Fewer than one in seven adults now smokes—a welcome development that has been very hard fought for—and people dislike being exposed to tobacco smoke. The ban on smoking in public places was introduced against a cacophony of warnings from the tobacco industry, but not only did those warnings not come to pass; people really liked the fact that pubs, cafés and restaurants had become smoke free. They felt clean and welcoming.
What we have done here is to extend the inside of pubs, restaurants and cafés to the outside. These outside areas are equally public places where smoking should quite simply be banned, with no ifs, buts or exceptions. Research shows that this is popular and some councils are doing what the public want, with 10 councils in England introducing 100% smoke-free requirements. These bans have proved popular, with high levels of compliance, and have not been shown to decrease revenues.
However, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, under the current legislation, councils have two options on smoking: to implement the national condition to provide some smoke-free seating, or to go further and make 100% smoke-free seating a condition of licences at local level. It is a more complicated system than a blanket ban and means that non-smokers and children will continue to be exposed to second-hand smoke. The Minister will not need to be told that scientific evidence indicates that there is no risk-free level of exposure to second-hand smoke and that exposure is linked to all sorts of health problems including cancer and heart disease, as the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, acknowledged.
As the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, there is strong cross-party support in the House, as there has been for 20 years, for reducing the harm that tobacco
causes and, in this case, for 100% smoke-free pavement seating. As he said, the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, tabled an amendment, which was passed despite the Minister’s party having a heavy Whip on that vote.
As we have heard, only last month Dr Khan published an independent review of smoke-free 2030 policies, commissioned by the Department of Health and Social Care, which recommended the prohibition of smoking on all premises where food or drink is served, as well as a ban on smoking in all outdoor areas where children are present. This statutory instrument is therefore a missed opportunity to implement Dr Khan’s recommendations and continues a challenge that was introduced in rushed circumstances.
As we have heard, the current pavement licensing conditions will apparently be made permanent in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. We cannot vote on these regulations because we are in Grand Committee and, anyway, SIs cannot be amended. I therefore urge the Government to amend the upcoming Bill to require that pavement seating is 100% smoke free. If they do not, I and others will put forward an amendment when the Bill comes to the Lords. The best thing would be if those working on the Bill, knowing that it will be amended, sorted it out in advance. That would mean one fewer thing to worry about when the Bill reaches this House. Clearly, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, will raise a number of other issues too—so pick this one off and sort it out. There is always the challenge of whether government is joined up.
I am sure the Minister will know how the tobacco industry has long pushed back on tobacco control. But it was in the UK, because of the cancer registries developed because we had a comprehensive health system, that Sir Roger Doll was able definitively to connect smoking with cancer—something the industry knew well but kept closely to itself. We have had long battles to curb smoking and, through cross-party support, progress has been made. The Department of Health is now very switched on in this area, but the department that deals with local government clearly did not have this expertise. In the pandemic, with the Government needing to restrict the number of people inside premises but trying to ensure that businesses remained viable—all very laudable aims—pavement licences were granted. It is extremely clear that pressure was put on the department, persuading it that there would be an economic hit if these were smoke free. I hope we do not hear that from the Minister today. We tried to ensure that these areas, which are an extension of the inside to the outside, were smoke free. It became clear that the local government department had not consulted the relevant part of the Department of Health until after the proposals had been laid.
There was a certain amount of scurrying around, supported by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, when we pressed the case; we were told that things had to be rushed through. But we are not in a rush now, and we forced the department properly to engage with the Department of Health. What consultation was there over this element of this SI with the Department of Health and, in particular, with the part of it that deals with smoking and public health—not simply a ministerial
write-round? Will the Minister make sure that the levelling-up Bill, when it comes forward, has been updated so that it is in line with what the Government say they want to do on public health and so that the siren voices, which have been so powerful here, do not help to lure staff, adults and children on to the very obvious rocks that the tobacco industry presents to us? I look forward to her reply and, if she cannot for some reason fully reply—I would understand that—to her writing to us.