Business and Planning Act 2020 (Pavement Licences) (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Lord Greenhalgh Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Greenhalgh]

That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 8 June be approved.

Relevant document: 6th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 8 July.

[The Minister of State, Home Office and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)]

I beg to move.

Amendment to the Motion

Moved by

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Faulkner for bringing this really important issue into the Chamber. His very well-informed and passionate speech does not need too much adding to.

I want to bring in a slightly different dimension. My noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, both referenced the speeches in Grand Committee, which were really well put together; I recommend that everyone have a look at them in Hansard. We should also look at what we have learned over the last 18 months of the devastating impact of the coronavirus. We have been on an incredibly steep learning curve in understanding how the virus has impacted on the people who live in our communities. We have a duty, surely, to look at all the evidence before us.

Covid-19 is often described as a cruel virus and it has exposed health inequalities in the most vicious way. Surely we must learn from the knowledge that those suffering from underlying health conditions have been disproportionately affected by the virus. Smoking is a major contributory factor to those health conditions. Do we not have a responsibility to do everything in our power to reduce exposure to the impact of smoke inhalation? I am referring to both the customers and the staff in the premises we are talking about.

I would also like to emphasise the points that the noble Lord, Lord Young, made in Grand Committee about the lack of evidence and the lack of consultation with local authorities, which would have demonstrated that there has just not been the evidence that we should be concerned about the impact on the businesses we are talking about.

We have an opportunity to make an improvement to the provisions in the Building and Planning Act 2020. Of course, the irony is that the Act was brought in specifically to deal with the impact of coronavirus. I hope we will recognise the public health improvement outlined in my noble friend Lord Faulkner’s amendment and that we will all come together to show our support accordingly.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, for tabling this amendment and I thank noble Lords for an interesting debate on this matter. I will take this opportunity to respond to the noble Lord’s amendment. In Grand Committee I was not able to answer fully all the questions noble Lords raised on smoking issues relating to the temporary—I emphasise that—pavement licence extension regulations. I welcome the opportunity to address these issues in greater detail.

In Grand Committee, the noble Lords, Lord Faulkner, Lord Bradshaw and Lord Shipley, and the noble Baroness Lady Wheatcroft, all challenged me on the passing of these regulations and the potential passive smoking impacts. The impacts of passive smoking are very much a key concern and a top priority for this Government, which is why we should look to tackle this issue strategically. We will be a publishing a new tobacco control plan later this year, setting out our ambitious plans for England to be smoke free by 2030. The tobacco control plan will consider areas of regulation to strengthen in support of this aim.

In the very short term, it is right that we act to support hard-hit hospitality businesses to boost their capacity and continue their recovery. For this 12-month extension of the pavement licence provisions, the Government consider local and business-led discretion over implementing smoke-free policies to be the most appropriate approach. Businesses are able to introduce their own smoke-free policies if they wish to go further than the regulations require.

As the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, mentioned, local authorities are also able to set their own local smoking conditions where appropriate and where local decision-makers believe it is reasonable to do so. A number of local authorities have already implemented such local smoking ban conditions within outdoor seating; these include the city of Manchester, as mentioned by a number of noble Lords, Newcastle, North Tyneside, Durham and Northumberland. This makes it clear that local conditions can be implemented where it is appropriate and desired locally.

I also remind noble Lords that the pavement licence guidance sets out ways in which the requirement for provision for seated and non-seated smokers could be met, such as displaying clear no smoking signs, the removal of ashtrays from smoke-free areas, and a minimum two-metre distance between smoking and non-smoking areas wherever possible.

The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, referenced international comparisons. I emphasise that the UK is a world leader in tobacco control, and it is important that we share our learnings on the journey towards a smoke-free 2030. We must also learn from the successes of other countries. We will be closely monitoring the outcome of the Canadian approach. International studies of smoke-free parks and beaches, including in New Zealand and Canada, have found evidence through litter collections of continued smoking, suggesting that successfully enforcing any restrictions will involve considerable resource, including training people, such as park staff, in enforcing new policies.

I hope noble Lords will recognise that there is a real commitment in government to a smoke-free United Kingdom, but at this stage we are looking for an extension for a year. This is a temporary pavement licence extension of provisions that have worked incredibly well, as many noble Lords commented in Grand Committee. I emphasise that this Government are committed to reducing the smoking impacts of outdoor eating and drinking, both in terms of these regulations and, importantly, in future policy. Therefore, I ask the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall be very brief. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, and my noble friend Lady Blake for their splendid speeches and strong support for my amendment.

The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, reminded us of the transformation that smoke-free legislation has brought about in our society. There is no need for us to go into detail about that now because that is no longer an issue between the parties or, indeed, with the British people; it is accepted. That is one of the reasons why I find it so inexplicable that the Government did not take advantage of the pavement licences provision to extend that smoke-free regime to cover the outside areas. As the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, said, the pavement outside a pub or a café is essentially an extension of the indoor rooms of those premises, and the people who go there, particularly those with children, are entitled to enjoy a smoke-free environment.

My noble friend Lady Blake referred—very tellingly, I think—to the impact of smoking on people with severe health conditions, perhaps brought on by Covid. Limiting the exposure of those people to second-hand smoke is particularly important and we should be doing all in our power, including making pavement licence areas smoke free, to achieve this.

I thank the Minister for his speech and the considered way in which he has approached this issue, and I recognise that he has repeated the Government’s commitment to a smoke-free Britain by 2030. That is good news. But I ask him and other noble Lords to reflect on whether the adoption of smoking as part of the pavement licence helps that process or makes it more difficult. I think most people would argue that it is making it more difficult. It is an unnecessary obstacle.

I am pleased that the Minister also referred to passive smoking concerns and the fact that the Government now accept them. Again, this is another reason why pavement licences should be smoke free.

Interestingly, the Minister did not answer the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, about consultation with the Department of Health over these regulations. We did not get an answer to that question a year ago or last week in Grand Committee, and we have not had one today. It is fair to say that the Department of Health takes a rather different view of these matters from that of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

The Minister also did not refer to the extraordinary letter that the Secretary of State in his department wrote to Manchester City Council last August attempting to talk it out of its proposals with a series of arguments that, as the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, demonstrated last week in Grand Committee, were completely spurious.

The House should have an opportunity to express a view on the regulations and on my amendment. I therefore wish to test the opinion of the House.