Business and Planning Act 2020 (Pavement Licences) (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2022 Grand Committee

I express my gratitude to local authorities for the huge effort that they made in this matter. Their hard work enabled businesses to thrive, while building vibrant high streets, leading to the success of these measures. I commend this instrument to the Committee.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for introducing the statutory instrument and putting it in context. As she said, it rolls forward the existing pavement licences regime for another year, prior to them being embedded in primary legislation in the forthcoming levelling-up and urban renewal Bill.

My noble friend did not mention one controversial issue: smoking. If she did, I must have missed it. This is the background to the controversy about the instrument. When it was initially introduced there was no provision for non-smoking areas associated with pavement licences. There were then very strong representation from a number of noble Lords that, like licences for inside pubs, those for outside should also be non-smoking. There was a debate, and we ended up with a typical House of Lords compromise, which I suspect did not satisfy the Government and certainly did not satisfy me—namely, that provision must be made for non-smoking areas on the pavements. That is in the statutory instrument and is being rolled forward.

I remind my noble friend that a regret Motion was carried in your Lordships’ House a year ago on the omission of 100% non-smoking provision in the licence. That should be a warning to the Government that, when the LUR Bill eventually comes forward, there will be similar representations that the legislation should be changed. I say in passing that I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Greenhalgh, whom we much miss in these debates, for the briefing that he gave me last week.

There has been a significant change since we last debated this, in the form of the Khan review on smoke-free 2030 policies. The Khan review is quite unequivocal on this. It recommends that the Government

“amend the 2006 Health Act to prohibit smoking on all premises where food or drink is served.”

It actually goes a lot further, calling for the introduction of more smoke-free outdoor public spaces through a ban on smoking in all outdoor areas, not just pavement licences, where children are present. If the Government are serious about the Khan review and the ambition to make this country smoke free by 2030, they have to take on board the review’s recommendations when they draft the LUR Bill.

In the meantime, some local authorities have used the freedom that they have under the SI to introduce smoke-free pavement areas—for example, Manchester and Newcastle. There is no evidence at all that this has had any impact on trade. In fact, the reverse is the case: all the public opinion surveys after the initial ban on smoking in pubs indicated that more people visited pubs when they were smoke free, and 100% smoke free with a pavement licence is much easier to implement than the halfway house we have at the moment. You just have to put up one notice saying “No smoking”, and then there are no ashtrays and no two-metre gap between the smoking and non-smoking areas.

My noble friend mentioned that new guidance will be issued in conjunction with this SI. I ask for an assurance that, before that guidance goes out, there is consultation with the Department of Health, which obviously has an interest in this subject. Last year there was an instance where correspondence went out to Manchester from the department—I think it was then the MHCLG—that I do not think had been cleared with the Department of Health and sent a slightly confusing message. While welcoming this statutory instrument, I would be grateful for that assurance from my noble friend that there will be consultation with the Department of Health before the guidance is sent out.