Smoke-free (Private Vehicles) Regulations 2015

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, welcome these regulations and congratulate my noble friend Lord Ribeiro on his unstinting efforts in this area. I stress that this new law and these regulations are not designed to turn smokers into criminals or to demonise them; they are about protecting children from the avoidable dangers that tobacco smoke presents to their health and welfare. For me, that is what it is all about. Right through these discussions, I always saw this legislation primarily as a matter of child protection. If noble Lords will excuse the terrible pun, it was about putting children in the driving seat.

When we had those early debates, I was very taken with the number of children who said that they felt that they had no control over the situation and that they were either too embarrassed or too scared to ask adults to stop smoking. The survey mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, referred to how children really want this legislation. In my professional life, we often talk about the voice of the child being at the centre of what we do. Based on that survey, we have a clear mandate from children and young people to take these regulations forward.

The Minister said that the start date will be October. In an ideal world I would have liked to have seen it earlier, but I accept the reasons that he gave. It will be incredibly important legislation in addressing health inequalities, and will go some way at least towards protecting children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds from smoke and enable them to have a healthier start in life. As others have said, this is very much about behaviour change. Certainly, the experience that we have seen on similar issues, such as public smoking and compulsory seat belts, suggests that educational campaigns, which are important, are most effective in changing behaviour when accompanied by appropriate legislation. For the effect of legislation on the proportion of people wearing seat belts, I have a figure that shows an increase from 25% to 91%, which seems extraordinarily large. Just imagine how many children’s lives will be improved if this legislation has even half that success.

The Minister referred to success being measured in terms of positive behaviour change rather than the number of fines handed out. I am sure that that is right, and I approve of that approach, but will he confirm precisely how that behaviour change will be measured?

There are very high levels of public support for the law. In previous debates, as one would expect, we heard that parents were very much in favour of this legislation. However, we also heard about recent surveys and the number of adults, including adult smokers, in favour of this legislation and the number of car drivers who support it. There is a real and growing consensus that these regulations are a good thing and should be introduced without delay.

I very much hope that, without much further delay, we will very soon debate the regulations on standardised packaging.