17th February 2006

Thank you to everyone who wrote to me, emailed me, or voted on my website about the proposed ban on smoking in public places. I got hundreds of responses and the message was clear. You were in favour of a total ban, and by a massive margin too.

And having asked for your views, I could hardly ignore what you said. The people had spoken, so I voted in favour of the ban.

And yet, and yet…...

As we voted, I found myself wondering why we weren’t being allowed to consider another alternative.

If we’re worried about the effect of passive smoking on people who work in pubs and clubs, why not simply pass a law setting a minimum quality standard for the air they breathe at work? That’s what we’d do for people who work in factories with dangerous fumes, so why should pubs be any different?

That way, pubs or clubs that wanted to allow smoking could go ahead, providing they could keep the air clean. Some would buy heavy-duty air-conditioning equipment, while others would decide it wasn’t worth the expense and become non-smoking under their own steam instead.

Most importantly, employees wouldn’t have to breathe other people’s smoke at work and people would still be able have a pint and a cigarette in the pub without fugging the air up for everyone else.

But, sadly, we weren’t offered that alternative. There were already dozens of amendments covering all sorts of different possible permutations. When it starts to get over-complicated the Speaker has to draw the line somewhere, so he selects a representative series of amendments and discards the rest.

So, sometime next year, it will become illegal to smoke in public places. It’s safer. It’s cleaner. It’s better than the other alternatives we could have voted for. But it’s hardly live and let live, is it?