Business and Planning Bill

Baroness Northover Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 6th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover (LD) [V]]

My Lords, much of this Bill is welcome, but my focus will be only on pavement licences. Some noble Lords have raised the question of alcohol and we have already seen the challenges in urban areas of people even spilling out on to roads and thus endangering themselves and others. I want to take up the issue of smoking in these new spill-out areas, and I thank ASH for its assistance on this. The noble Earl will be extremely familiar with the vital steps taken over the years to reduce the incidence of smoking and smoke-related harms; indeed, he helped in that process. I am glad that last summer the Government announced plans for England to be smoke-free by 2030. They committed to bring forward proposals on this, but a year has passed with no such proposals. The Bill will allow the Government to show that they intend to deliver on that major public health goal.

We know how transformative it has been to have banned smoking in public places. It now seems very unpleasant and strange when we find ourselves in smoky places. Lives are being saved, especially among those who had to work in those environments. However, the ban on smoking inside public places has displaced smokers to using adjacent outdoor areas, which exposes passers-by and those going in, with staff as always worst affected. Encouragingly, people now do not like being exposed to tobacco smoke. When Greater Manchester surveyed its population, over 70% said that they wanted the areas immediately outside public buildings to be smoke-free. Pavement licences will exacerbate the problem as they are designed to make it easier for bars, restaurants and pubs to serve food and drink to customers on the pavement immediately outside their premises. While previously those wishing to avoid second-hand smoke could stay inside, remaining indoors is both more restricted and riskier because of the coronavirus. Clause 5(1) states that

“A pavement licence may be granted by a local authority subject to such conditions as it considers reasonable.”


Local authorities could therefore prohibit smoking on an ad-hoc basis, but so far councils have not taken that up, even in central London where the pavements are crowded and space is limited. For example, Liberal Democrat colleagues who support Westminster City Council’s plan for reopening Westminster’s hospitality sector have called on the council to make outside dining and drinking spaces no-smoking areas, but to no avail. They have launched a petition, which is what has alerted me to this issue. A number of local restaurants would like this provision, but they need the council to take a lead.

We know that smoke-free hospitality venues did not just happen. They required legislation which was supported by the hospitality trade because it set a level playing field. If smoking is not prohibited, these pavement areas will not be family-friendly spaces. Not only customers and staff but neighbouring premises, particularly in crammed urban areas, will be exposed to second-hand smoke. The Government should make smoke-free status a requirement for all pavement licences. It will be easy to do but, if they cannot take such a simple step forward, we will have to doubt their commitment to deliver a smoke-free England by 2030. I hope very much that the noble Earl will help us to take this forward.