Smoking in cars: Government stands firm for now

The House of Lords has been debating amendments to the Children and Families Bill.

One of the amendments would ban smoking in cars with children.

Thanks to Twitter and the British Lung Foundation (@lunguk) I've been able to follow the debate online.

To its credit, the Government - including the PM - has been clear that it doesn't want to legislate.

Here are some tweets quoting Government health spokesman Earl Howe:

Earl Howe "the government isn't convinced that creating new criminal offences is the right approach" #smokingincars

Earl Howe questioning how #smokingincars with children ban could be enforced "would be a cause of concern for police"

Earl Howe "the government firmly believes that we should be continuing a non-legislative approach" #smokingincars

Earl Howe "we are not complacent but we are yet to be convinced that legislation is most effective solution" #smokingincars

I understand that all amendments were withdrawn following today's debate but they could still be voted on next month.

I may not be the Government's number one fan but it's good to see ministers adopting a sensible, even laisse faire, approach to legislation.

First plain packaging, now smoking in cars. Let's hope this is the start of a new era in politics. (I wish!)

Comments

[Pat Nurse]

That's more like it. We Smoke and We Vote so its nice that politicians are beginning recognise that if they want to win seats in 2015, they need to earn our support.

[Klaus K]

This, from the WHO last month may have had an influence:

WHO: Air Pollution Is More Harmful Than Passive Smoking

If the background pollution is more harmful than the passive smoke there is really not much more to talk about, is there? It is well known that cars and other indoor areas contain many particulates from outside air ...

Outdoor pollution may be the big missing confounder in the passive smoking studies. A handful of studies should be re-analyzed to see if inclusion of air pollution data will drag the weak passive smoking risk estimates all the way down to zero ...

It would be a good thing for the world if they did.

[Junican]

Sometimes it bothers me that another person might have posted the same comment as me - more or less. It is almost certainly true that this is so.
We continue to argue about the minutiae of bans etc. We need to recognise that what is REALLY important is the philosophical idea being promulgated by TC that non-smoking leads to immortality. This idea is being 'subliminally' promulgated by TC.
It is a 'false god'.