Sir Norman Lamb, the Lib Dem MP and former health minister, has announced he is standing down at the next election.
As Lib Dems go he was one of the nicer ones but truly liberal? Let’s check his voting record.
In 2006 he voted for the smoking ban.
In 2011 he was absent when a majority of MPs voted against a Bill that would have relaxed the smoking ban and allowed smoking in pubs and private members clubs where no food was being served.
In 2014 (and 2015) he voted to ban smoking in cars carrying children (and justified it here).
He also supported plain packaging, even when the government of which he was a member was going cold on the idea.
Here’s what I wrote in 2013 when he continued to lobby for the policy, despite allegedly reassuring a constituent that it would not be introduced until the government had seen clear evidence from Australia that it worked.
And it wasn’t only smoking he had in his sights.
Five years earlier, in 2008, I experienced his interventionist tendencies first hand when I took part in a discussion on binge drinking that he chaired.
The word ‘chaired’ makes him sound like an impartial moderator. In reality he made it very clear that, in his view, the evidence of harm caused by binge drinking supported a "powerful case for society to intervene".
‘A decent chap,’ I wrote at the time, ‘but better, perhaps, if we'd had someone more impartial in the chair.’
So why is Lamb considered by some to be ‘liberal’?
Two reasons. One, his support for vaping. Two, his campaign to legalise cannabis.
Last year, as chairman of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, Lamb suggested that offices and even public transport should allow vaping:
“E-cigarettes are less harmful than conventional cigarettes, but current policy and regulations do not sufficiently reflect this and businesses, transport providers and public places should stop viewing conventional and e-cigarettes as one and the same. There is no public health rationale for doing so.”
I agree with some of that - although it was unwise, I think, to imply passengers should be allowed to exhale clouds of vapour on buses and trains - but easing some of the restrictions on vaping doesn’t mean smoking should be banned in all public places or tobacco should be hidden from view and sold in standardised packaging, measures he supports.
As for his campaign to legalise cannabis, it included, in December 2018, a 10-minute rule bill that was defeated by 66 votes to 52. According to the MP for North Norfolk:
“It is total hypocrisy that the most dangerous drug of all, in terms of harm to yourself and others, alcohol, is consumed in large quantities right here in our national Parliament, whilst we criminalise others for using a less dangerous drug - with many using it for the relief of pain.”
Last month Lamb even became the first MP to be filmed taking cannabis on British television.
This of course has made him a bit of hero in circles where cannabis is cool and tobacco is not.
But does it make him a liberal and how can we be sure that his views on e-cigarettes and cannabis won’t change?
This, after all, is a man who voted AGAINST a ban on smoking in restaurants in 2003 before changing his mind and supporting the prohibition of smoking in every pub, club and restaurant in the country.
This is also the man who spoke out AGAINST the tobacco display ban in 2008 (“This is the nanny state going too far”) yet did nothing to stop it being enacted when his party was in government.
In 2013 he even lobbied for the introduction of plain packaging.
In other words, Norman Lamb is like so many politicians - a disappointing flip-flopper whose voting record staggers from laissez-faire liberalism to heavy-handed interventionism.
It would be harsh to say ‘good riddance’ but, from my point of view, he won’t be missed.
See also: ‘Norman Lamb: Doh!’ (Liberal Vision, May 2013).