UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 485-ii

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

HEALTH COMMITTEE

 

 

SMOKING IN PUBLIC PLACES

 

 

Thursday 17 November 2005

MR PHIL WHEATLEY CB, MR PAUL FOWEATHER, MR PAUL THAIN MR IAN HULATT and MR PAUL CORRY

MR ROB HAYWARD OBE, MR JOHN HUTSON, MR NICK BISH MR BOB COTTON OBE and MR TONY PAYNE CBE

MR SIMON THOMAS, SIR PETER FRY and MR JOHN CARPENTER

MR HUGH ROBERTSON, MR BRIAN REVELL MR VINCENT BORG and MR MICHAEL AINSLEY

Evidence heard in Public Questions 208 - 391

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

1.	This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.
2.	Any public use of, or reference to, the contents should make clear that neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings.
3.	Members who receive this for the purpose of correcting questions addressed by them to witnesses are asked to send corrections to the Committee Assistant.
4.	Prospective witnesses may receive this in preparation for any written or oral evidence they may in due course give to the Committee.

 

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Health Committee

on Thursday 17 November 2005

Members present

Mr Kevin Barron, in the Chair

Charlotte Atkins

Mr Paul Burstow

Jim Dowd

Anne Milton

Dr Doug Naysmith

Mike Penning

Dr Richard Taylor

________________

 

Examination of Witnesses

 

Witnesses: Mr Phil Wheatley CB, Director General, HM Prison Service; Mr Paul Foweather, Governor, HM Young Offenders' Institute Wetherby; Mr Paul Thain, Director, Modernisation and Strategic Development, Norfolk and Waveney Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust; Mr Ian Hulatt, Mental Health Adviser, the Royal College of Nursing; and Mr Paul Corry, Director, Campaigns and Communications, Rethink Severe Mental Illness, examined.

Q208 Chairman: Good morning. Can I welcome you to this evidence session looking into the issue of smoking in public places and work places. I wonder if I could ask you to introduce yourselves.

Mr Foweather: My name is Paul Foweather. I am Governor of Wetherby Young Offenders' Institute.

Mr Wheatley: Phil Wheatley, Director General of the Prison Service, responsible for public sector process.

Mr Thain: Paul Thain. I am the Executive Director of the Norfolk and Waveney Mental Health Trust.

Mr Hulatt: I am Ian Hulatt, the mental health adviser to the Royal College of Nursing.

Mr Corry: I am Paul Corry and I am a Director of the mental health charity, Rethink.

Q209 Chairman: Thanks very much for coming along. Could I just ask you, Mr Wheatley, do you think that prisons should be included among the institutions exempted from the Government's proposals to ban smoking in public places and work places?

Mr Wheatley: Obviously that is largely a question for Parliament and for the Government as to what they propose to Parliament. I think prisons are special and the circumstances are special and it is important we take account of the fact that they are places in which people not only work, but live and in many cases for years at a time, in some cases for natural life. I think that makes it special.

Q210 Chairman: In the written submission that you gave to us, you had a range of options for creating smoke-free environments in prisons. How likely is it that these will be implemented and do you think there should be any sort of timescale on taking action like that? If you are to get exempted under the proposed legislation, should there be any timescale on it?

Mr Wheatley: Well, I think prison will remain a place where people live for large periods of their life and that, to me, is why prisons are special. We are looking at options, we have not decided on what the best way forward is, and we will pay attention obviously to any legislation, and we are not yet certain what the legislation will say. I would expect them to work towards a situation where prisoners smoke in their cell, they do not share cells with non-smokers, no smokers and non-smokers together, so we keep prisoners segregated by whether they smoke or they do not, and they smoke outside in the open air and in other parts of the prison they do not smoke. That is, I think, replicating largely what the legislation may achieve for the rest of society and I think we can do that. I would expect staff not to smoke, except possibly in the open air and I think there is no real reason why we should stop people smoking in the open air, but that is all to be thought through carefully. We do need to make sure that we do not cause significant problems for disturbed people arriving with us with already a multitude of problems, many of them coming off drugs, many with serious alcohol problems and many of them potentially suicidal. As we try to settle people into prisons, I do not want to heap any more pressure on them than I need in the interests of keeping people alive and safe.

Q211 Chairman: The Department of Health has suggested to us that banning smoking in certain circumstances in prison would be an infringement of human rights. Do you see it like that or is it more about control?

Mr Wheatley: I think prisoners would see it as an infringement of their human rights. I do not think staff would see it as an infringement of their human rights and we are not arguing that. It would create control problems in some establishments, there is no doubt about that. You do not know what you are in for in prison; you are deprived of most of the things you might ordinarily enjoy, and probably what you enjoyed last night are things the prisoners do not do, so to take yet another thing away will not be wildly popular with a group who are not always charming and pleasant in their behaviour, so I am not volunteering for a complete ban in every place. We have done things in young offender institutions where we have put in complete bans successfully with a lot of work to support it, but there people are not as well entrenched in their smoking habits and are not normally doing the sentence lengths that we will meet in some of the adult male secure estates.

Q212 Chairman: Why should we give this freedom to smoking when, as you suggest yourself, the people in prison who have alcohol problems would like to feel that they should have access to that as well, although they are not given access to that officially?

Mr Wheatley: We do not give access to anything which we regard as a mind-altering substance. Certainly until my time, we made sure that prisoners, except for remand prisoners at one stage, were allowed to have a pint of beer a day, a rather Victorian custom, but it lasted into my experience of the Prison Service. We have not let prisons have access to alcohol and we work very hard to make sure they do not get drugs. I do not think that tobacco has quite the same threat to people's thought processes, but it is just not good for their health and there is no doubt about that.

Q213 Mike Penning: Can I just pick up on one point you made there. Can you assure the Committee that what you said is correct, that no prisoner who does not smoke ever has to share a cell with someone who does?

Mr Wheatley: No, I did not say that. I said that is what I envisaged us doing as we went through the review. That is not true at the moment and, as we pack prisoners in, and we are packing prisoners in, 77,634 today in the whole system including the private sector prisons and with large-scale sharing of cells, I have not got the luxury of being able to differentiate and carefully select. However, we do try to make sure that we do not cause undue problems, and it is not the wisest of things to put smokers and non-smokers together, but we will be doing that in order to get the places for prisoners and make sure we use every available place at the moment.

Q214 Mike Penning: I apologise, I misunderstood what you meant, and I was gobsmacked by that having recently visited The Mount Prison ----

Mr Wheatley: No, it is certainly not true and there will be an effect on the amount of prisoners we can put in. It will slightly reduce our ability to use every place.

Q215 Mike Penning: You mentioned earlier on that it was a decision for Parliament as to whether there was a total ban in prisons, so if we assume possibly that Parliament has decided that there will be a total ban, how would that actually affect your capabilities of running your prisons?

Mr Wheatley: It would pose some significant risks.

Q216 Mike Penning: Can you explain those?

Mr Wheatley: Yes, as we announce that smoking is to stop, presumably with some sort of run-in, so we work hard to try and get people off cigarettes and that costs quite a bit of money and we are currently spending about £158 per quitter as we go through the process of using nicotine patches and trying to offer advice and support, or that is roughly what that cost is, as we go through that process, there will be some people who did not come out of that process as quitters and I would expect to find that there was an increased incidence of assaults on staff, that we ended up with prisoners who were more likely to be troublesome and there would be an increased risk of disorder. Those are the things that would be a problem, particularly in the long-term, high-security estates where taking things off prisoners who are doing very, very long sentences always carries a degree of risk.

Q217 Mike Penning: You mentioned earlier on that the Prison Service is doing everything it can to prevent drugs and alcohol getting into prisons, but I think we are all too aware that they do get in. As I say, I recently visited The Mount Prison where there is an issue like there is in most prisons, so would it really be physically possible for the Prison Service to enforce a smoking ban? If they can get alcohol in or even produce it themselves and they can get drugs in of all different types, surely they will be able to get tobacco in and smoke.

Mr Wheatley: Tobacco would end up being more of an illicit currency than it currently is and people would work hard to smuggle it in. It would be very difficult to keep it out of open prisons, as it is very difficult to keep drugs out of open prisons. There would be people who will attempt to bend my staff in order to get them to bring things in, people who will attempt to smuggle stuff in through visits and people who will attempt to throw things over the perimeter, the ways that illicit substances enter prisons. We would not ever, I think, achieve complete success unless I can put lids on prisons, which actually I cannot.

Q218 Mike Penning: So what you are basically saying is that you would drive it under ground?

Mr Wheatley: We would drive it under ground, we would reduce it. Do not get me wrong, I am not saying people would not continue to smoke at the same rate, but there would be another area in which we would be working hard and, as prisoners might see it, battling with them to make sure they did not get what they were trying to get, and we would have to put a lot of effort into that. We would do it if Parliament required us to do it, but it would carry risks, it would carry costs, and I guess it is for Parliament to decide whether that is something we should do because it will involve spending the country's money.

Q219 Mike Penning: It is for Parliament to decide and for us to try and find out what effect it will have on the different institutions.

Mr Wheatley: It will cost in staff time and produce another significant rubbing point in prisons and we would not have complete success.

Q220 Mike Penning: You were talking earlier on about the significant amount of money that is spent in prisons on trying to get people off smoking and alcohol.

Mr Wheatley: Yes, we do.

Q221 Mike Penning: What percentage of your inmates are smokers?

Mr Wheatley: I think about 80 per cent of our prisoners smoke on entering prison, or it is about that.

Q222 Mike Penning: And your success rate of weaning them off it?

Mr Wheatley: I do not know whether Paul would know.

Q223 Mike Penning: You do not have to tell us exactly.

Mr Wheatley: No, I cannot give you exact figures. I am told that we are getting about the same success on the quitting as we do in the community, so if we go for a quitting programme ----

Q224 Mike Penning: So it is quite a high proportion.

Mr Wheatley: We have about the same proportion as you get with ordinary members of the public. In other words, prisoners are not special. With the evaluation, we will be able to give you decent figures of the scheme in the North West that is being done with Health and at that point we will have real figures. The early indications are that we get roughly the same proportion as if you work hard on people in the community.

Q225 Mike Penning: Prisons are starting at a much higher threshold though.

Mr Wheatley: Yes, but prisoners have every incentive to give up because cigarettes are expensive and we do not pay them a lot of money, and there are other things they might spend their money on. Just like the public or in fact more than the public, probably a greater proportion of their money goes on cigarettes and, if they can get more of the other things they might want to buy, like phone cards and so on which give them access to home, they have every incentive of trying to break free as well as the health reasons.

Q226 Chairman: If this legislation is perhaps passed and we have a situation where smokers and non-smokers are sharing cells, you are exempt, so the smoker can actually smoke, would you be concerned that you may have a human rights challenge against you by the non-smoker in that situation?

Mr Wheatley: Well, I am always concerned that there is always that risk of a variety of legal actions being brought against us and this might well be another one, but I would not speculate on that. I would expect to gain support for a policy that says that smokers and non-smokers should not be together. The consequence of that is that we would hold slightly less prisoners because we would be making slightly less efficient use of our accommodation, so there is a real implication for government and, therefore, for Parliament as well as to how many people we can hold. It would make a significant, but not enormous, difference because we would end up with a non-smoker and a smoker arriving, there are two cells and they are put in two separate cells, so we would lose the mixing of people as the wrong sort of prisoners arrive. We cannot order from the courts the required numbers of smokers and non-smokers in advance.

Q227 Chairman: We have seen written evidence sent in by another organisation of prisoners having to share. The one that stuck in my mind was the individual who was in there for a number of years, had never smoked in his life, and yet here he is in a confined space effectively smoking a percentage of the cigarettes that are smoked in that cell. That presumably will become an issue once this legislation is enacted, however it turns out.

Mr Wheatley: It is and, as I say, I would like to move to a situation where we do not have to do that. The effect is that a slightly smaller number of prisoners can be fitted into the number of cells because we make less efficient use of them.

Q228 Chairman: Can I move on to Mr Foweather. I actually saw on my regional television news during the recess that you have been given the National Clean Air Award at Wetherby Young Offenders' Institute and, in part, I was quite surprised. Having visited prisons on occasions, they tend to have a tobacco 'thing' about them, as it were, so I was very surprised you got that. Why did you take the decision to go towards getting the National Clean Air Award, was it an easy passage and what difficulties did you find in relation to that?

Mr Foweather: It certainly was not an easy decision to take because it is a major step for any institution, something of that magnitude, but, as a governing Governor, I have got responsibilities both to the trainees in my care, that is 15- to 17-year-olds, bearing in mind for 15-year-olds it is illegal to buy tobacco and smoke, yet we find them in the presence of smokers, so there are unique issues for juveniles, but also I have a legal obligation under the Health & Safety Act 1974 where I need to ensure the safety and decency of my staff and trainees and also the Health & Safety Act 1999 about risk assessing and managing it. When you combine all of that, given the unique needs of the juveniles that I have to take care of, what you see is a high incidence of bullying because tobacco is a currency, you get incidents of fire and other aspects related to tobacco. Because of that, I did an in-depth study and we have researched the issue concerning juveniles, we have weighed the risk and I thought that it was worth taking that risk and we planned a move towards it, so it was not an easy decision, but one I can say I would not have taken if I was managing one of the larger, more secure establishments. The majority of my background is working in the high-security estate, for instance, where taking that decision would have been even harder and much more difficult to impose because the risks would have been significantly greater. Therefore, as we moved to it, there was an eight- to ten-month lead-in period, and that included consultation with other agencies and particularly the primary care trust and smoking cessation organisations, and there was significant money placed in terms of support, developing staff training, literature and it was not an easy path. The implementation date was 1 January and I coincided that with New Year's resolutions and, as silly as that may look, that had a beneficial effect, so I had 45 staff who were training and I had quite a number of staff that took patches as well as trainees who did. Then you have got to put the systems and processes in place because it is not just about stopping it and having the contingency in place to manage the potential for serious unrest, but also once you have got over that, it is the new trainees coming in and some of them are extremely young and vulnerable and how we manage that process, particularly if they have got mental health needs or other unique needs, so it is the systems and support in place which are all expensive as well. I suppose I am fortunate in that it was a juvenile site and that certainly impacted on my decision-making and I was extremely pleased and proud of the staff who introduced it for Wetherby, the first in the country to introduce it, and Ashfield then followed Wetherby's template and introduced it later on, so it was very successful, but unique to juveniles, I think.

Q229 Chairman: What has been the effect on the institution from going smoke-free? What is different?

Mr Foweather: I think it is a more decent and healthy environment and the staff and trainee surveys I have done would conclude that. There have been some initial benefits, although it is still early stages, in terms of things like reduced fires because trainees, by their normal sort of impulsive behaviour, tend to play with matches or lighters, if they have them, so we have reduced the number of fires. A third of the bullying was attributed to tobacco and, as a consequence, trainees tell me that there has been a reduction in bullying for tobacco. That does not mean to say that something else, toiletries or other things, has not replaced that currency, but what we have done is reacted to that. There have been instances where we have caught tobacco trying to be smuggled into the establishment. Well, from a governing Governor's point of view, if the worst of my problems with this is stopping the odd bit of tobacco coming in when it is not drugs, hard drugs or other illicit substances, then I think I can cope with that because it is the lesser of the evils. I have now got a smoke-free environment which is healthier for staff, it is healthier for trainees, and there are some spin-offs for the juvenile agenda inasmuch as 69 per cent of my trainees say that they have tried to stop before and been unable to.

Q230 Chairman: Has there been a move in smoking cessation? Has it been measured? Are you getting more cessation than the norm?

Mr Foweather: Well, the cessation is total, but what we have done is I have put to all the courts and to all the other agencies involved, "If you send a trainee to Wetherby, they will not be smoking", and all my staff recruitment is, "If you want to work at Wetherby, you will not be smoking inside the establishment", so the smoking cessation is total and 80 to 85 per cent of my trainees arriving smoke and a growing number of those say they will not smoke on release, although when you look at my survey results, the average cost for a trainee smoking is £110 and most of these are unemployed, so there are some real benefits. The point for me, I would stress, is that if I was managing somewhere like Leeds or Hull or one of the big opens, I do not think, irrespective of all the planning and management, that it would have gone as smoothly and you could be looking at some significant costs and injuries.

Q231 Chairman: You use smoking shelters inside the perimeter fence for staff and for prisoners - is that right?

Mr Foweather: Not at Wetherby because what I said is that it is very difficult to police a no-smoking policy in part. For instance, if staff are still carrying tobacco around in their pockets or if trainees or prisoners have got it on them, would they restrict themselves? You have to police it. If you are going to have a healthy environment and if you are going to take that measured response, which we took, then I saw it as an issue with staff that if they are not smoking on duty, and we do not pay staff to take smoke breaks, then that should be outside of the establishment and in their own time. That in itself is controversial, but nonetheless we have put the support system in place where there is covered shelter outside of the establishment. I suppose Wetherby is unique and it is early days, but that has been accepted by the union and it has also been accepted by staff and trainees, although it was not as positive at the outset because there was some resistance to that.

Q232 Chairman: What would be the big risks of attempting to do this at adult jails as opposed to a young offenders' institute?

Mr Foweather: I think I would mirror what the Director General said inasmuch as you have got a fairly sort of more intransient population who have probably been smoking for a long time. A lot are doing long sentences, a lot have been deprived of privileges, probably a lot are feeling aggrieved and this will compound any feeling of aggravation. I think you would run the risk of potential unrest, potential serious unrest, and that would accumulate maybe in individual incidents or maybe lead to a larger-scale incident, depending on, establishment to establishment, how it is managed and the severity of the impact of either the legislation or the local policy. However, what you will see across the estate generally is that governing governors are managing as they are required to under current health and safety legislation and managing smoking policies and some are more successful than others, but I would endorse the Director General's comments that it should be looked at very carefully and the establishments seen as special cases.

Q233 Dr Naysmith: I would like to ask Mr Corry some questions, particularly in the area of mental health and mental health premises because it is one of the proposed areas of exemption in the legislation. What do you think are the main issues that arise from smoking with regard to mental health and particularly in mental health premises?

Mr Corry: I think you have to set the question in some context. Up to 70 per cent of people with severe mental illness who are in institutional care of one kind or another will smoke. People with severe mental health problems are unique amongst health groups in the sense that they can be subject to compulsion, whereas people with other health problems cannot. We are concerned in the legislation that the definition of 'premises' is open to local interpretation and we are not quite clear from that quite how that is going to be interpreted. We are also concerned that the smoking cessation work that is being done across the NHS at the moment is very often for the general population rather than targeted at groups with particular needs. People with severe mental illness can very often have problems with their desire to give up smoking first of all, which I think is something where more thought is needed. There are also issues for people with severe mental illness about the effects of giving up smoking in the short term where some of the medications that can be used, the anti-psychotic drugs that are used for the treatment of schizophrenia and other illnesses, can be adversely affected if someone gives up smoking and the dosages have to be changed and so on. Zyban, which is a drug that is used to help people who find it particularly difficult to give up smoking, is unsuitable, for instance, for people who are using anti-psychotic medication. If you take that in the round, then I think you have got a group of people for whom the legislation needs to be particularly tailored.

Q234 Dr Naysmith: Are you suggesting then that smoking is an ineradicable part of the culture of psychiatric hospitals?

Mr Corry: No, I do not think so at all. We have worked very hard and Rethink runs some 370 services across England and Northern Ireland. We have something of a no-smoking policy in our services where it is possible to actually enforce that, but we find it very difficult to get support from the local primary care trust and other health bodies to help us to run smoking cessation policies in our services. To give you one instance, we have a day service in the Ebbw Valley, called 'The Croft', where the service manager there used a service in the PCT herself and asked the PCT if a similar service could be run inside the day service, and it took over 18 months of negotiation before the PCT would agree to do it inside the service and to tailor it to the particular needs of people with severe mental illness. However, when it was done, we all discovered that the quit rate was actually higher than the PCT was achieving in the community generally, so it certainly can be done.

Q235 Dr Naysmith: So really that is what we should be trying to do rather than applying for an all-out exemption for premises. Perhaps you could also touch on your problem about defining 'premises' as far as mental health institutes are concerned?

Mr Corry: We, as an organisation, just need to be clear about what the Government's intention here is. You have a number of different facilities in mental health where people may reside for short or long periods of time and you need to find a way of balancing the interests of people who are using a psychiatric unit on a voluntary basis and may not wish to be in a smoking environment against those who are there under compulsory detention who may have a long history of smoking and their needs need to be addressed as well.

Q236 Dr Naysmith: Is there any possibility of separating the two in terms of having smoke-free and smoking rooms, for instance?

Mr Corry: It is something that we encourage in our own services and we encourage the NHS to do as well, but I think this Committee will be well aware that, despite seven or eight years of increased investment in mental health, some of the psychiatric units and health facilities that are around are still in need of repair even to the extent of reducing suicide in them. Some of them, I think, would find it difficult to find the money to be able to introduce entirely smoke-free areas for people.

Q237 Dr Naysmith: I am going to bring Mr Thain in in a minute because he has some slightly different experiences from you, but it does sound as if you are not saying, "We need this exemption", but what you are saying is that you need more resources and you need more will perhaps behind it all to change things within the institutions.

Mr Corry: I think it is difficult to imagine a situation at the moment where you could introduce a complete smoking ban in all psychiatric units given that a significant proportion of the people who are using them will be there under compulsion. However, what I do think we need to do is move from a situation where we are today to a point in the future where we have a complete smoking ban and that will require specific targeted interventions for people with severe mental illness to help them and encourage them, rather than coerce them, to give up smoking.

Q238 Dr Naysmith: Finally for you on this point, how do you feel about the workers, the people who work in these places - do they not deserve protection from second-hand smoke from other people?

Mr Corry: Absolutely. We employ, as an organisation, something like 1,500 staff across our services. A number of our services are delivered directly into people's homes and there is a whole issue there which is obviously not covered by this legislation. The people who are employed by us who work in institutions do need protecting and it would be fair to say that we, as an organisation, are struggling to find a way to actually deal with their needs.

Q239 Dr Naysmith: Could I move on then to Mr Thain because your experience, as I have said, is different. We understand that you have made your institution smoke-free, so can you tell us how you have managed to do that?

Mr Thain: That is not quite accurate and I need to be accurate. I can only talk about my Trust, not the wider mental health services. Eighteen months ago we introduced a smoking cessation policy and we did that for two reasons fundamentally: one, to reflect our responsibilities and duties under the Health and Safety At Work Act because our view is that mental health staff should be treated no differently from any other staff and, therefore, should be afforded exactly the same protection as other staff; and, secondly, because those who suffer from severe mental illness have added health difficulties if they are also addicted to tobacco, so we felt we should do something in respect of supporting and helping our patients with those difficulties. Those were our motives. We introduced the policy, it has been running and we do allow for some smoking within our Trust. When a patient is brought to our Trust and they are a smoker, it is recorded on their care plan as a clinical issue, and then that clinical issue is addressed at the appropriate time, so there has to be a period of time where people are able to smoke. We do have within our Trust a 66-bed forensic medium-secure unit and it has been our surprise that that has actually taken the lead in smoking cessation rather than, as we expected it to be, towards the end of the journey we are undertaking, and patients within our secure unit who are there for many years do not smoke. The fundamental principle is that they do not smoke within the building itself, but in fact are allowed to smoke one cigarette at a time under supervision, not at night, in small courtyards. Our emphasis has been wholly on trying to support people who do not smoke because it is anecdotally viewed within the service that people have in the past entered the service in some numbers as non-smokers and come out of the service as smokers because of the culture, so we have focused our attention on supporting non-smokers and also on trying to support people who smoke into a position where they do not smoke. We have found that, working with our service users on this issue and with our trade unions, we have made great progress and we are now considering moving in fact to being completely smoke-free. The one issue, I have to say, that has actually made it more difficult for us has been the social context, the fact that there has been no wider legislation which of course does not help if you find yourself as an island trying to move forward in this area.

Q240 Dr Naysmith: So would you be happy with the legislation as it is proposed, giving you an exemption, or would you really prefer something a little bit stronger?

Mr Thain: I think I would be happy as it is because that will allow us to move forward, but I do not want any exemption for mental health services. I am not quite sure what you are asking, but that is my view.

Q241 Dr Naysmith: You do want an exemption, did you say?

Mr Thain: I do not want an exemption.

Q242 Dr Naysmith: So that would mean that you would want the legislation to be a bit stronger, not exempting mental health?

Mr Thain: Yes.

Q243 Dr Naysmith: Do you think there are things that you could say to Mr Corry? I know you said that you could only speak for your own Trust, but could these lessons be transferred more widely?

Mr Thain: Certainly. In fact I invite anybody to come and have a look around our Trust. What I would say though is that we have had now an 18-month/two-year lead-in and we have been working at it and working with our service users and that has given us, I guess, as we sit here at this point in time an advantage over others who may not have started.

Q244 Chairman: Could I just ask you, Mr Thain, on smoking cessation in particular and co-operation with the PCT - do you have it?

Mr Thain: We do, and a totally different position from the one the Committee has heard of already from elsewhere. Yes, our primary care trust has been extremely supportive and, I have to say, as commissioners some 18 months/two years ago were, I suppose, part of the process that brought us to make a decision to move in this direction. In fact we were one of the first, in fact I think we were the first secondary trust in our area to move in that direction with full support from the primary care trust who sat on our steering group and provided us with some financial support.

Q245 Chairman: Mr Corry, you talked about the issue of home visits in particular which is an area which could cover yourselves and many other organisations as well. Do you have any policy where you sort of get messages out prior to one of your people going along that people should not perhaps smoke for an hour or whatever or do you think it is just not feasible to be able to make that type of request?

Mr Corry: We do, and we also encourage staff to be proactive in asking to meet people within the house in a smoke-free area. I think you had some evidence in one of your earlier sessions that it can actually have the effect of appearing to be a smoke-free environment in the sense that it does not smell of smoke, but some of the particles themselves may remain in the air, so it does not offer full health and safety protection for our staff. We are in a situation at the moment on home visits where we leave it very much up to the discretion of staff to negotiate with the service user about how to handle that situation, but I do not think it is a happy situation or one that has actually met its full conclusion yet.

Q246 Chairman: Do you feel that you do get co-operation in the most part?

Mr Corry: From the individuals?

Q247 Chairman: Yes.

Mr Corry: Yes. One of the things we pride ourselves on, and indeed mental health services do generally, is about being a people service and building up strong personal relationships with people. It can actually be quite a useful way to break the ice, a negotiating tactic and a trust-building exercise to negotiate around something like that. On the whole, I think we get co-operation, yes.

Q248 Chairman: Mr Thain, do you have an opinion about it?

Mr Thain: Yes, I do. We, on our letters that go out to people regarding appointments, make it very clear that we do not expect our staff to have to enter a room where people are smoking and we instruct our staff that they have the right not to if somebody should insist that they are going to smoke in their presence. Our staff themselves, just to make it clear, when they are acting on behalf of our Trust and when they are on duty, are asked not to smoke even when they are out visiting people in their homes, so we would not allow our staff to go into a smoke-filled room. The issue about whether in fact there are chemicals left over is one that we have pondered and I believe under the Act we can only do what is reasonable, and we believe we have done as much as we reasonably can. We cannot go in with special equipment and check out a room every time, but we have taken it that far and we are very clear on that, and we have received co-operation from patients and the public.

Q249 Anne Milton: Before I ask Mr Hulatt some questions, I would like to say I am very impressed, Mr Thain, and I did notice you shaking your head as Mr Corry was talking. I should, before I ask you some questions, Mr Hulatt, declare an interest because in fact I am a member of the Royal College of Nursing. Perhaps we could have your perspective on whether nurses in psychiatric institutions are subjected to second-hand smoke more than in other situations?

Mr Hulatt: I think that the RCN position on this, which relates to that question, is that to exclude psychiatric institutions is to perpetuate health inequalities that are not acceptable for people with mental health issues. I think the mental health nursing constituency, if you like, is challenged very much at the moment to promote the wellbeing of individuals with serious mental health issues and to challenge the previously accepted normality that people smoked which was not challenged, yet we know that people with serious mental illness diagnoses, such as schizophrenia, will die ten years younger than someone without that label, we know that twice as many people are obese in that group and twice as many people will have diabetes. I think the mental health nurses are currently challenged in our review under the Chief Nursing Officer in that we are very keenly debating the overlooked area of physical health and how we need to address that seriously. I think what we are talking about is almost 'denormalising' smoking, not seeing it as an accepted part of the package of being a mental health client. I think that where concerns have been raised and where we do have concerns is how this is 'operationalised' in our places of care and that that needs to be done in a sensitive and patient-centred way, by which I mean not a Draconian way such that people would disengage from services because that is an anxiety.

Q250 Anne Milton: So what you are actually advocating, which would be proper, is a holistic approach to people with mental health problems?

Mr Hulatt: Yes.

Q251 Anne Milton: In other words, you do not just treat their mental health problems?

Mr Hulatt: No.

Q252 Anne Milton: Particularly having sat between Mr Thain and Mr Corry, do you feel that stopping smoking in psychiatric institutions would be practicable?

Mr Hulatt: Yes, being in the middle, as nurses often are, I think ----

Q253 Anne Milton: Hear, hear!

Mr Hulatt: ----- the view would be that it is practicable and I think it is achievable, but I think we have to remember that it is the nurses who will be required to manage and enforce this policy and I think it has to be one where they can do so humanely and reasonably. I think that there are situations in extremis, and Mr Thain has alluded to this, where someone can be admitted under section, extremely distressed, possibly suicidal and very unwell, so is that the most appropriate time to commence smoking cessation? I think these are the questions that have to be carefully considered. I think it is a goal that can be achieved, but it must be done appropriately and humanely.

Q254 Anne Milton: In what way do you feel nurses are exposed to second-hand smoke?

Mr Hulatt: Well, those that do not smoke, I suppose, may well be exposed to smoke in settings such as when one is closely observing the individual who is at risk and who wishes to smoke and currently may be able to, so if one is closely observing an individual within arm's length, for example, and that person wants to go into the smoking room, then is it safe to be away from that person? Probably not, but your health is at risk while you are with them.

Q255 Anne Milton: So there are special difficulties?

Mr Hulatt: There are difficulties. They are very practical, operational difficulties that need to be thought through very carefully and they are very specific to the environment in mental health institutions.

Q256 Anne Milton: But maybe with the long lead times that Mr Thain was talking about, that is how it is achievable.

Mr Hulatt: Absolutely. When I have been talking to colleagues who are in trusts that are engaged in this, they are talking very much about moving towards, and taking practical steps towards, this ambition and they see it as achievable, but it needs to be carefully managed not only for the vulnerable individuals within those institutions for whom smoking is adding to their social exclusion anyway and who are also impoverished financially, and it is a difficult habit to maintain from that point of view, but also for the staff who are going to police and manage this. It needs to be done sensitively, but it can be achieved.

Q257 Anne Milton: Just moving to home visits of nurses into homes of clients who might well be smokers, do you know if there is any evidence to suggest that that contact that nurses have in people's homes is doing their health any damage?

Mr Hulatt: I am not able to provide evidence now. That is certainly something that I could look at and supply to the Committee, but I think that we have a situation where it is culturally considered almost inappropriate to challenge the client not to do it and it is things like that that need changing.

Q258 Anne Milton: I think that is when it gets even trickier really.

Mr Hulatt: Yes, and what we do not want is people disengaging from services because that adds to the risk and to the negative effects to their health and the relationship with the people providing the care.

Q259 Anne Milton: Do you think that sometimes there are groups of people who are difficult to hang on to?

Mr Hulatt: Yes.

Q260 Anne Milton: For the psychiatric services, you hang on to them like grim death really, knowing that the relationship is very tenuous at any point. Of course visiting people in their own homes, they are entitled not to allow admission if they do not want to. Do you feel that asking people not to smoke when you visit would actually put at risk that relationship, damage, if you like, the therapeutic relationship that the psychiatric nurse might have with their patient?

Mr Hulatt: I think it is a potential risk, but I think that mental health nursing is founded on that collaborative relationship with the client, it is pivotal, and those long-term relationships can be such that difficult and sensitive issues can be discussed, and I think this may well just be another one of those.

Q261 Anne Milton: As you say, there is a holistic approach to people with mental health problems and maybe, and I value your comments, a partial ban is suggesting otherwise, that somehow people with mental health problems do not deserve attention to the rest of their wellbeing.

Mr Hulatt: That is, I think, perpetuating that inequality which, as a college, we are concerned about.

Q262 Charlotte Atkins: I would like to go back to Mr Foweather and ask about the young offenders' institutions. Very often the health of people in the institution is not the highest priority for governors, so I am interested in how you came to look particularly at health. What was the role of the primary care trust here, or was it the role of maybe the service-level agreement you have with maybe the local GP? Who was your support network in terms of trying to introduce a higher priority for health for the prisoners and indeed for smoking cessation?

Mr Foweather: Firstly, the health and wellbeing of the young people in my care is my priority and I think it is probably the priority of other governors in other juvenile settings. In terms of the close liaison with the primary care trust, we have heard mixed views this morning. I would endorse the view that we had an extremely close working relationship from the outset and that manifested itself in clear, practical support, and it is part of the planning process, it was embodied in the training, the development, getting smoking cessation tutors in the establishment and even smoking awareness days when we had big, red buses coming in and engaging the trainees and staff.

Q263 Charlotte Atkins: And that was the PCT that organised that?

Mr Foweather: That was the PCT and the smoking cessation services. I think it reflects, where there is real partnership working, what you can achieve and I think that was an extremely influential part of the successful implementation at Wetherby.

Q264 Charlotte Atkins: There are a number of institutions around the country, indeed I have one in my own constituency. How many of those have now gone smoke-free?

Mr Foweather: Total institutions?

Q265 Charlotte Atkins: Yes.

Mr Foweather: My understanding is that I think Warrington went some way towards that, Wetherby was the first of its kind to do it fully from 1 January of this year, and since that time we have promoted it to a range of other establishments, including the private sector, who have taken away our information and our template, if you like, our footnote on how to do it, and there are others looking at it as we speak, and Ashfield have taken it on several months later. Therefore, to my knowledge, there are two juvenile sites which are fully no smoking and the rest have all got smoking policies in place, as has the prison estate because it has been left to the discretion of governing governors within their legal remit to implement, but each have different interpretations of that.

Q266 Charlotte Atkins: I am interested that you mentioned Warrington, one, because you say that they are going for a partial ban, two, because it happens to be in my constituency, and also because we are looking at the whole issue of exemptions here. What have they done which is almost like going down the partial ban route and what is your view of how easy it is to introduce a partial ban?

Mr Foweather: My personal view, as a Governor of a juvenile establishment, is that juvenile establishments should not allow smoking on the premises. I think that is detrimental to that particular age group and I also believe there is something along those lines in the prison rules, that juveniles should not smoke, and that is because there are various complications. We have 15-year-olds for whom it is illegal to buy tobacco, although not to smoke it, and then you have the bullying issues of those who do get tobacco because they cannot procure it through the canteen(?) route. There are some unique issues surrounding juveniles and we have also got some further complications because some of the sites are in part juvenile and in other parts YOs, which are up to 21, so there are these added complications.

Q267 Charlotte Atkins: What was the worst moment in your bid to ensure that the institution went smoke-free? Was it opposition from staff or was there a particular event during that process? There must have been some difficult times.

Mr Foweather: Yes, I think the main resistance that I found was from staff and that is probably in part because my trainee turnover in a place like Wetherby, for instance, is maybe 1,100/1,200 trainees coming through, so when I announced that we were going to be totally no smoking from the 1 January with a ten-month lead, quite a high number of those trainees were not going to be at Wetherby when the policy came in, so it was a case of identifying those boys who were going to be there past that date and then you are actually working on a small number and you are bringing it in through transition. The biggest resistance that I found was that initially there were some union implications and then it was from a hard core of staff. Incidentally, the staff surveys and focus groups which I held showed that quite a high percentage of staff were in favour with a hard core vehemently against, so it meant challenging those staff appropriately, engaging with them, offering support, guidance, occupational health, smoking cessation services, free nicotine patches and other sort of support mechanisms. I think part of the success was the time that it had in which to come in because it was a long process and I think that assisted it. I think we were lucky in terms of juveniles because they are a lot more susceptible to change when it has been managed and well-communicated, whereas for the older adult population, smoking is more entrenched, they have been smoking for years, it is probably seen more as a privilege or entitlement and that would be a harder population to get it across to, I think.

Q268 Charlotte Atkins: Did you have any staff leave?

Mr Foweather: I have had no staff leave as a direct consequence of that. I have had a few staff who have left the establishment as a consequence of not necessarily wanting to buy into the juvenile agenda, and the smoking cessation may well be part of that process because there is a raft of initiatives and change programmes in order to make establishments, such as Wetherby, more juvenile-appropriate to better meet the individual needs of juveniles.

Q269 Mr Burstow: I just have a couple of very quick questions and the first was to Mr Thain. Picking up something you were saying earlier on, you said that one of the drivers for your move to a smoke-free working environment was the protection of the workers and you particularly made reference to the Health and Safety at Work Act. Did you have any advice at the time that you were framing your policy and beginning to implement it which would have suggested that for you not to have this policy in place, you would be legally liable to challenge?

Mr Thain: Not specifically, no, but reading all around the subject, thinking about how we could improve the health and safety of our workforce and being part of an NHS initiative called Improving Working Lives, which encompasses trying to make the workplace better, this was the direction that we decided to go in, but it had this health and safety feel about it.

Q270 Mr Burstow: Given that you accept that we have got to the point where we know the effects of environmental tobacco smoke in terms of health, have we got to the point where the legislation possibly does mean that people can take action against those who still have workers in smoking environments?

Mr Thain: Yes, we are very much aware of that and in fact our trade union supported us on the basis that we needed to take account of health and safety.

Q271 Mr Burstow: I have a question for Mr Wheatley and this was something you said in response to Mike Penning's question about the percentage prevalence of smoking within prisons. You said 80 per cent, but you then went on to say that, in terms of cessation, there was an equivalent success rate amongst smokers in prison to that in the general population, smokers outside prison.

Mr Wheatley: Yes. The DoH has put money centrally into our PCTs, so it has been distributed in order to make sure that we have got support to get prisoners off tobacco, and with those who are engaged with that smoking cessation process, we do as well as people who are engaged in the community.

Q272 Mr Burstow: Is the level of engagement as good as it is in the community?

Mr Wheatley: I cannot give you comparisons on that, so I could not give you an accurate account.

Q273 Mr Burstow: The reason I ask that, and it is interesting to tease that out now, is because if the level of engagement had been as good, presumably the level of prevalence would be going down very rapidly and I assume you are saying that the prevalence has not been going down rapidly.

Mr Wheatley: Well, the population is not static.

Q274 Mr Burstow: No, no, but we have also established that quite a lot of people are there for quite long periods of time.

Mr Wheatley: The population is an interesting mix. About 56.7 per cent of the adult male population are serving four years and over and over 6,000 are serving life sentences or indeterminate sentences, but the short-termers move through very quickly and there are a lot more short-termers, so if you look at the population over the course of a year, there have actually been hundreds of thousands of short-termers through the system, but the long-termers are stuck for a very long period of time, so it is quite sharply divided population. Probably the biggest problem, from our point of view, are the people who are coming in, arriving for a week, two weeks, three weeks and then off again and with different people being recruited because it is not always the same people that come back, though far too often it is some of the same people we have seen before.

Q275 Dr Taylor: Mr Wheatley, the whole point of the proposed legislation is obviously to protect the health of staff. Have you any idea of the proportion of prison staff that are smokers and non-smokers?

Mr Wheatley: I have not got any accurate statistics on that. My impression is that amongst younger staff, there are less smokers, people are less inclined to smoke, and amongst the older staff group, there are probably rather more smokers, and smoking was very much what happened in prison. We are aiming to protect staff and our policy already says that staff do not smoke in offices, and that is single offices, not just shared offices, and staff should not be smoking in the public areas of the prison, and my office staff cannot smoke in their offices, so they have to go outside to a sealed smoking room, which is a rather unpleasant place in the bowels of Cleland House that is best avoided, so we have already got a series of moves designed to protect staff. There is of course the question that if prisoners are smoking in their cells, staff will occasionally have to go into cells, mainly to search and to do a security of cells, staff do not spend a lot of time otherwise in prisoner cells, and at that point I would expect them to say to prisoners, "You don't smoke while I am in here", so it is possible to have a situation where in effect the prisoners are smoking as if it is their own home without great risk for staff, although I take the point that there may be powerful things that hang around in the air for some time, but we can avoid the straightforward smoking in the face of staff, I think.

Q276 Dr Taylor: I was very impressed with the evidence that you gave us from Wetherby about involving staff as well as customers. Obviously you have had unique cooperation with your PCT. Is there cooperation, Mr Wheatley, with PCTs for smoking cessation services widespread throughout the prison service as a whole?

Mr Wheatley: Yes, because the DH has helpfully centrally put some central money in order to encourage PCTs, working with prisoners, to regard prisons as somewhere where smoking cessation can take place. There is support. I think, as Paul was describing, Wetherby has much more successful cooperation than is being experienced everywhere, but there has been quite a lot of smoking cessation work done. I think Paul has achieved an exceptional level of support and his PCT is to be congratulated on putting that effort in.

Q277 Dr Taylor: Would your smoking cessation services be open to staff as well as prisons?

Mr Wheatley: No, we have not spent the money on staff. Paul's experience at Wetherby, where the whole prison has gone completely smoke free, is unique.

Chairman: Could I thank all of you very much indeed for coming along this morning. We are hoping to publish this inquiry before Christmas.

Q278 Jim Dowd: Can I ask one question of Mr Wheatley. Earlier you said 80 per cent of the prison population, in your estimation, were smokers. That is about the reverse of the national picture. Do you have any view as to why that would be?

Mr Wheatley: I think the sort of people who are going for crime are often not thinking a long way ahead - if you did think a long way ahead you would not go in for the sort of casual crimes that people do - and they are living very risky lifestyles. Sixty per cent of them are probably using hard drugs. Again, 60 per cent of the population are not using hard drugs, at least I hope not. This is a group who do risky things.

Q279 Jim Dowd: You are not saying that smokers are more likely to indulge in criminal behaviour?

Mr Wheatley: I am not saying that. I am saying that our criminal population appear to have a larger proportion of smokers amongst them. I think our criminals do engage in risky behaviour without looking at the long-term consequences in many cases. If they looked at the long-term consequences they would not engage in the crimes that they do.

Q280 Chairman: It is almost on the basis of social class well.

Mr Wheatley: That may be part of it.

Q281 Chairman: Again, thank you all very much indeed for coming along this morning and assisting with the inquiry. Hopefully it will be in your stockings for Christmas, but you will have to wait and see what next week brings as well as this week. Thank you.

 

Examination of Witnesses

 

Witnesses: Mr Rob Hayward OBE, Chief Executive, British Beer and Pub Association, Mr John Hutson, Chief Executive, J.D. Wetherspoon, Mr Nick Bish, Chief Executive, Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers, Mr Bob Cotton OBE, Chief Executive, British Hospitality Association, and Mr Tony Payne, Chief Executive, Federation of Licensed Victuallers Associations, examined.

Q282 Chairman: Good morning. Could I first of all thank you very much for coming along this morning to give evidence to the Committee. I wonder if I could ask you to introduce yourselves for the record?

Mr Hayward: Rob Hayward, Chief Executive, British Beer and Pub Association.

Mr Hutson: John Hutson, Chief Executive of J.D. Wetherspoon.

Mr Bish: Nick Bish, Chief Executive of the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers.

Mr Cotton: Bob Cotton, Chief Executive of the British Hospitality Association.

Mr Payne: Tony Payne, Chief Executive of the Federation of Licensed Victuallers Associations.

Q283 Chairman: Thank you very much. I suppose it is a question for all of you. Do you believe that second-hand smoke in the workplace is a danger to the health of workers? Who would like to start? Mr Hutson.

Mr Hutson: The feedback from our staff is that they prefer to be in surroundings that are smoke-free. Whether they perceive it to be a danger or not, they certainly prefer to be in smoke-free premises.

Mr Bish: I think that is the general position, and I think that the operators would like to improve the atmosphere in pubs for staff and for customers.

Mr Cotton: My members employ 600,000 people right across the industry. Over 90 per cent say they would rather have a comprehensive smoke-free environment in all areas.

Mr Payne: Our members do take care to look after the interests of their staff. They have done risk assessments and we make sure that we recommend that people do not smoke at the bar to look after the interests of the staff.

Mr Hayward: I would echo what has been said already. Since we are pressed for time, I am going to keep the answers as short as possible.

Q284 Chairman: I perceive that none of you dispute, or do you dispute, the issue of science in secondary smoke?

Mr Hayward: No.

Chairman: There is no dispute.

Q285 Mr Burstow: Given that answer and given what we know about the current state of legislation in terms of the Health and Safety at Work Act, do any of you think that you are liable as a result of that now that you admit that you know the health effects of environmental tobacco smoke?

Mr Cotton: I have a very clear view that our employers have a duty of care to their employees, and we are particularly concerned, if we have current proposals where some employees will have to work in smoke environments, that there may be claims down the track, and our employers feel very nervous about that, where you are exercising a duty of care for some employees but not others.

Q286 Mr Burstow: Do any others share that concern?

Mr Hayward: Yes, generally, I think we would probably all echo those concerns. What the industry in different forms has been attempting to do is to introduce progressively smoke-free circumstances in each of the different venues in different ways, and significantly the industry has made more progress over the last few years than government has because we have been introducing those policies.

Q287 Mr Burstow: I noted in your submission that you felt there had not been a great deal of support for the roll out of policies around smoke-free environments when you submitted to the consultation earlier on. What is your view about the support you have had from the Government to implement them?

Mr Hayward: Originally, when the original charter was launched, there was government support, but I do not think there has been as much support since then as we might have wished. In fact, the BBPA launched (with a large number signatories) an initiative last year to make more marked progress in terms of no smoking at the bar, no smoking back of house and in smoke-free areas, and we set time deadlines. One of the difficulties in pursuing those deadlines has actually been that there has been so much uncertainty. Given that 70/75 per cent of licensees are small businessmen, trying to induce them to actually take action when there is uncertainty in relation to what government policies are going to be is not an easy set of circumstances, but we have made some progress.

Q288 Mr Burstow: So certainty is one of the key things you are looking for out of all of this. Can I come on to a specific question? If the Health Bill does become law, will some pubs stop serving food in order to continue to allow smoking? Secondly, how many pubs are currently drink only and how many additional pubs do you think will stop serving food as a consequence of the legislation and the regulations as currently envisaged by the Government?

Mr Bish: We believe somewhere in the order of 20 per cent of pubs - there are 60,000 pubs for broad comparison - will cease doing food in order to retain their smoking status.

Q289 Mr Burstow: That is an additional 20 per cent over and above those who currently do not serve food. Is that what you mean?

Mr Bish: We are in the throws of defining what food is, but there are very few pubs that do no food at all. We are not talking additional, we are talking total. They are about 20 per cent.

Mr Hayward: I am sorry to interrupt, but we have actually provided some data in our submission on page 12 which I think sets out what we expect to be the position.

Q290 Mr Burstow: You suggest something like 34 per cent, I think was the figure I have seen in your paper?

Mr Hayward: Yes.

Q291 Mr Burstow: The Choosing Health White Paper suggests a range of ten to 30 per cent; so I am interested that you suggest it is 20 per cent. That looks as if you are splitting the difference?

Mr Bish: That is the report back from my members who are marginally different from the BBPAs.

Q292 Mr Burstow: So 20 per cent of your members are saying that within those multiple premises they will be giving up food in order to retain their smoking status?

Mr Bish: Yes.

Mr Cotton: Can I come back to your previous point? We as an industry have been very much engaged with government in trying to improve the health of the nation in a holistic way, because we are very much into food (about salt, fat, sugar, all these issues), and I think improving the health of the nation is an holistic issue - you have got to treat it in the whole - and smoking is a key part of improving the health of the nation. If we are looking to, as it were, make changes to what people eat to improve their health, smoking is a key part of that dialogue as well. You cannot treat these in a segmented way and have one thrust in one part of government and not supported in another way.

Mr Payne: Going back to your first point again, when I came into the trade 30 years ago you walked into a pub and it was full of lank smoke. Nowadays licensees have spent millions of pounds and you can go into many public houses that are clear. I do go and have meal in a public house where they have smoking in one area, no smoking at the other area where I go, and it is clear. Going on to the other part about the changing over from food, we have many members who have a turnover of 120,000 or less and they do rely to a certain part on food, and a lot of those pubs will close. The survey from our members said that a blanket ban, first of all, would see 38 per cent of them closing down.

Q293 Mr Burstow: Thirty-eight per cent of your members?

Mr Payne: Of our membership, yes.

Q294 Mr Burstow: That is based on their statements?

Mr Payne: On their statements - their statements only - on a total blanket ban.

Q295 Mr Burstow: That would be a higher level of closure than has even been observed in the Republic of Ireland, would it not?

Mr Payne: Yes, but this is on a total ban: if we had a total ban where you could not have either smoking areas or food areas.

Q296 Mr Burstow: Do you think if a ban of the sort that was implemented in the Republic of Ireland were implemented that figure would go down?

Mr Payne: The only different position in Ireland is that the family own a lot of the public houses. They do not have rents or mortgages to pay. We still understand that 400-500 public houses have closed in Ireland since the ban came in.

Q297 Mr Burstow: The figure does seem to move about quite a lot, as we discovered when we went to Dublin last week. Even here, in terms of the evidence we have had, we have had the suggestion of very varying levels of speculative figures about job losses. I think 7,500 has been mentioned in another of the submissions we have had.

Mr Payne: Could I clarify the point about the 38 per cent?

Q298 Mr Burstow: Yes.

Mr Payne: We are talking about the smaller end of the market. We are not talking about 38 per cent of the country.

Q299 Mr Burstow: That is a helpful qualification. Finally on this issue around partial bans, it has been put to us by a number of those who have submitted evidence that the areas of the country where pubs will opt to remain smoking pubs will be very concentrated in the less well-off areas. Is that a view that you would share, or do you believe that this would be spread across all areas and all social groups as a result? Is there a view here?

Mr Hayward: Smoking prevalence clearly indicates certain classifications of higher levels of smoking than others, and there is no reason for believing that that would not apply in this set of circumstances.

Q300 Mr Burstow: Would that support the contention that this would exacerbate health inequalities, at least in terms of smoking?

Mr Hayward: I think the indications are yes.

Q301 Mr Burstow: The other thing which I know is vexing many of you is this question of exemptions for membership clubs. What are your views about the equity of such a proposition that membership clubs should be excluded from the ban?

Mr Bish: We think it is totally inappropriate. We do not see the consistency or the logic. We fear the sort of political agenda in the original proposals, but it is not equitable, it is not fair on the staff who would work in the club, and it is not fair on the businesses that, as it were, are just down the road competing for the same trade. You would end up with a non-smoking, local community pub and a smoking club just down the road, and there will be a migration of customers, which I think would lead to what Mr Payne was saying about his members' likely closures.

Q302 Mr Burstow: Does anyone else want to add to that? Is that the general view across the industry?

Mr Hayward: It is a general view, but I would make the observation: people tend to think of it just as clubs - i.e. the RAF Club, or the Conservative Club, or the working men's clubs - this is sporting clubs and all sorts of other clubs as well, and, therefore, there would be a substantial impact. Thinking of parts of Bristol, you can think of the rugby clubs and the football clubs which would have the exemption right alongside small pubs which are in Tony's membership, and there would be no problems there.

Q303 Mr Burstow: I think my final question is again going back to the partial ban. Given what you understand currently of the Government's intentions around this partial ban (and there are obviously issues about the interpretation of what food is for this purpose from what we understand), what are your views about how easy it will be to achieve compliance with this partial ban?

Mr Cotton: Totally impossible.

Q304 Mr Burstow: Do we have any further offers in terms of whether it is possible?

Mr Hutson: Why it is going to be difficult is because there will be no clarity for customers, because they will not know necessarily, before they walk into premises, whether they do or do not serve food and whether it is or is not non-smoking. That is why it will be very difficult to enforce, because it will not be a simple rule.

Mr Bish: I agree up to a point. I think that clarity is an issue. I think the experience from elsewhere has been that the issues of enforcement are the problems. Compliance actually is less of a problem. I think if there is clarity, compliance comes through. The difficulties are of enforcement. Just on that point, I think it is important for the Government to realise that the industry is, as it were, on side in this, that our mission is to serve our customers and to protect our businesses, but in the general smoking cessation debate the remarks that we have previously made are right. Therefore, there is an element of alienation in some of the proposals. I particularly refer to the fines that are being suggested. It seems bizarre that an individual who smokes against the rules is likely to be fined £50 and the proprietor of the premises, the manager of the premises, will be £200. It is like asking a policeman to pay the fines of the speeders on the motorway. It is bizarre.

Mr Cotton: Can I just add, enforcement is best done by the consumer. If there is universal understanding of what the rules are, the consumer will be the enforcer, and you do not need an enforcement officer or the HOs to go round and actually do it, in the same way as when smoking was banned on the underground, for example. If anyone lit up now it would be consumers who would say, "Stop", and that is the approach that we want.

Q305 Mr Burstow: Certainly that is what we picked up whilst we were in Dublin?

Mr Hayward: Can I disagree with Bob Cotton in relation to his comments. I do not think it is unworkable, but it is complicated. Where there is a will there will be a way, and you can work round it, and certainly I think, in general, pubs and bars would want the process to be achievable.

Q306 Mr Burstow: So the regulatory burden would be higher, the costs would be greater?

Mr Hayward: There is no question. Whichever route you go down, whether you go smoking rooms or food exemptions or any other form of exemption, once you start introducing those exemptions the complexities rise. There is a suggestion, for example, that if the clubs exemption remains you will have pubs switching to clubs in all sorts of fascinating legal manners; so any exemption has a regulatory burden, but you have to work within those and I think those are achievable.

Q307 Chairman: It does not describe a level playing field as far as business is concerned, the sort of exemptions that are being floated around at the moment. Would anybody disagree with that statement?

Mr Bish: I think "level playing field" is a sort of beguiling prospect and to be aspired to, but that the industry is not itself a level playing field and the way that operators operate and the markets that they have and the customer expectations are all different, so we try to reflect that, and to apply this principle in a level playing field way is going to be, as Rob said, complicated.

Mr Cotton: Can I just add, though, that this is primarily a health and safety issue for our employees, not a consumer driven issue per se; so whilst the level playing field issue is key in business terms, we really need to get back to the fact that it is health and safety and protection of employees.

Q308 Chairman: It is the workplace issue.

Mr Cotton: Yes.

Q309 Chairman: The other thing - I think Mr Payne you mentioned it talking about when you went in a pub 30 years ago. Beyond a packet of crisps, none of the pubs I used to drink in as a youth had anything like food at all. What food has done, in a sense, in the area of the country that I know, is changed the culture of what a public house is or is not. Is there a danger that we are going to go back? If people think commercially it is best to get out of food so people can drink, are we going to go back to these men's drinking pubs that there were in the1960s?

Mr Payne: I think it is important that we just talk in that way, because we have got a situation now where families go into public houses and I think it is important that we encourage that. The public houses do a lot. We have got old age pensioners going in for meals at lunchtimes, and you can notices all over with offers for old age pensioners, and they have nowhere else to go, a lot of them, no social outlet otherwise; and the pubs provide, as far as I am concerned, an excellent service for old age pensioners, people on low incomes, where they can go and relax and have a quite drink. They do mix with smokers, but I think they are all quite happy that way, and I think that is important.

Mr Cotton: Can I add, though, that the nature of the business has changed over the 30 years in that nowadays for a business to be viable it may serve food and drink at lunchtime, a different type of business during the afternoon, then certain things in the evening - maybe heavy food in the evening, and then at 10 o'clock it becomes almost predominantly maybe drink only - but in terms of being a viable business you have to reflect customer needs and the nature of your business changes throughout the day, so no longer do you have this sort of clear one thing or the other: What is a pub? What is a restaurant? What is a restaurant hotel bar? They all merge together to reflect the nature of business and the need to have a viable operation.

Q310 Charlotte Atkins: That was a very interesting point, Mr Cotton. The flavour of your evidence seems to be that you think the Government does not realise that you are on side. Can I ask you, therefore, what sort of dialogue you have had with government over these issues?

Mr Cotton: We have had extensive dialogue, not just with government in Westminster but in devolved government as well. I can start off with the extensive discussions we had in Scotland with the Scottish Executive, one-to-one with the chief minister and all the team up there to end up with what I term excellent proposals which the industry is on side with. When we have come to Westminster over the last two and a half, three years, I think, I and my colleagues have had extensive meetings with the Health Department and DCMS, starting off with a voluntary approach, which we felt was the right way forward to start with, but when voluntary, as it were, was not an option, we then discussed in detail possible ways forward, and we have always made two or three clear issues. One is that to run a viable business you have to have a partnership with your consumer (with your customer), so we never wanted to get too far ahead of customers. That is why we have always said we want a progressive change and we want to have sufficient time, whatever change is implemented, to bring your customers with you to mitigate, as it were, the change in business. That is why we have asked for time to do that, and we have suggested 2009, perhaps, would give us sufficient time to do that. We want clarity of understanding for employers, employees and the consumer, and I felt that we had had good dialogue up until a few weeks ago when the proposals were issued, which seemed to be contrary to the nature of the dialogue that we had been having.

Q311 Charlotte Atkins: Would anyone else like to comment on that dialogue thing?

Mr Payne: In 1998 when Rosemary Jenkins collected a paper for the Government, I invited her to come to the north and see some of these Rother Wundram (?) pubs. We took Rosemary Jenkins in, left her for half an hour, and I took an expert on ventilation with me so that Rosemary could speak to the people, and she was amazed at some of these public houses and the difficulty they would have to compete. The other thing we did put to the government in that paper, you will notice, is that we suggested that public houses could also be health clinics. They could, if they wanted it, issue things like patches. A lot of public houses, in fact, run football sporting teams, which is another thing to keep the nation fit, which is one of the government's aims.

Q312 Charlotte Atkins: Would anyone else like to comment?

Mr Bish: I think we are actually very proud of what we have achieved. We started engaging with government more or less when labour came into power after the 1997 Election. The result of that was the 1998 White Paper which itself endorsed the charter for smoking, and that was definitely a customer choice issue, but I think the success that we had, and I fear I disagree with Bob Cotton, I do not think that the Government really did engage and support our activity. We have delivered 54.... I think the latest figure - public and newspaper will tell us - is that over 54 per cent of all pubs have extensive smoking restrictions, positive smoking restrictions. That was from about 14 per cent back in 1995/1996 when we started collecting this information. There is a huge advance, and I think that there was a step-change from customer choice once we had started bringing our customers with us, into the staff issues after we collected that information. I am not really sure the Government has given us credit and seen us as being on side and the people who can deliver the solutions were not in any way in the way.

Mr Hayward: I would just add, in terms of consultation we do not necessarily like some decisions that come out of government, but the Department of Health I would rate on this issue to be above certain other government departments, which I will not identify, in terms of their willingness at least to talk to people. Whether you agree with the decision or not afterwards is a different matter.

Q313 Charlotte Atkins: Mr Hutson, you are going ahead of the later stage in terms of making most of your pubs smoke-free?

Mr Hutson: We are.

Q314 Charlotte Atkins: What exactly are you doing? They are going to be smoke-free from what date?

Mr Hutson: We started to convert our premises to entirely smoke-free from about March this year, and so far we have converted 47, which includes a number of new openings as well. We are doing the whole of Scotland next year. We are going to review it by the end of the calendar year in terms of the pace, but we have been doing about one a week since we decided to convert. Of course, it is quite difficult going it alone, but our view is, and has been for some time, that a ban, whether it is through legislation or consumer choice, is inevitable in any event. Wetherspoon has always tried to appeal to a broad cross-section of the population and we just found that increasingly a large proportion of our customers do not like being around those people that smoke. That was on the basis that at the time we had non-smoking at the bar, and have done for the last 12 years. We used to have a third of our customer area permanently set aside for non-smoking. We increased that to 70 per cent two years ago, and even then we were getting more and more moves from our customers to push on and do more, and so that is what we did. In the pubs we have converted so far we have seen sales fall.

Q315 Charlotte Atkins: This is drink sales?

Mr Hutson: This is overall sales, led by drink sales, because food sales have risen sharply, in fairness, and sales overall are down seven per cent in our pubs, which we think is about what happened in the first year or so of Ireland and which is far better than what happened in New York and about the same as what happened, as far as we can tell, in California. It will be painful for a couple of years, which is why we would advocate, as Bob was saying, a long period of time for the industry to acclimatise to the idea of it, but we just think it is inevitable one way or the other, and above all else we want clarity. You mentioned a level playing field, but that is what we think the suggestions that are proposed do not bring. It will be a mass confusion for consumers, and for operators it will be very difficult to adapt to the legislation as proposed.

Q316 Charlotte Atkins: I believe in Mr Hayward's evidence that you are talking about having a 20 per cent floor space smoking area. What worries me about that is how can you have 20 per cent smoke-free, and, indeed, you are talking about a meter from the bar, because in my experience air tends to move, and whether it is 20 per cent smoky, it does not mean that 80 per cent is smoke-free. Likewise, with the whole issue of so-called smoking carriages, unless people are going to vault into the top of them, you have to open the door and smoke comes out, and people smelling of smoke has an impact. When we were in Ireland the other day someone told me that it is getting to the stage where if someone goes into a home and smells of smoke there is almost a sort of, "Oh, dear, they smell of smoke." That is an issue, that if you do have overwhelmingly a smoke-free environment people are going to notice the smell of smoke, and, unless you are going to have a wind-tunnel effect, I do not really see how you can make one area smoky and one area smoke-free when often it is not feasible to have a physical barrier between the two?

Mr Hayward: It is a question, as has already been said, of getting people used to the change. What is interesting is that by introducing progressively smoke-free areas what you actually do is make consumers change themselves. There is a pub very close to here which introduced no smoking at the bar and which I use quite regularly. What is striking about it is that the number of smokers, the proportion of customers who smoke, has gone down throughout the whole of the pub. Scientifically you are absolutely right, but it is a question of changing attitudes over a period of time, and it is quite striking how the introduction of a smoke-free area induces a much more marked level of behaviour than one would actually presume.

Mr Bish: I would not agree. I think that the 1998 White Paper suggested that ventilation was a contributory factor in the solutions. The science definitely exists. The wind-tunnel point is not right. You do not need wind-tunnels to move air around. There is nothing magical about the particulates and carcinogens and things like that that will linger where all other contaminants will be removed. The technology exists for operating theatres with negative or positive pressure to keep them clear. The ventilation industry exists. It is an enormous industry. It must be doing something right somewhere. The Health and Safety Executive offer workers exposure limits and define those, and the ventilation industry provides the kit to deliver those answers. I think, perhaps, there was a time when we believed, in the trade, that ventilation was a solution absolutely in itself. That was then. This is now. Smoking cessation is the issue, but ventilation has a role to play. It can help, but the industry is there to help and advise government.

Q317 Charlotte Atkins: Ventilation does not remove all the harmful effects of second-hand smoke, does it?

Mr Bish: Air replacement replaces air, it replaces everything in it. Nothing clings on, it just moves out.

Q318 Charlotte Atkins: The evidence we have had indicates that the particulates are still there and that they are still damaging. It may make the air feel nicer, and so on, but actually it does not take out the harmful impact. If we are talking about staff, clearly if you have smoking areas or if you have smoking carriages, what about the staff? They have still got to go and clear those areas. Are they given special dispensation? How do they go in there and clear them up, unless, of course, you are going to leave them piled high with cigarette ends, which maybe a solution? Hopefully no-one will go in there anyway, but if we are talking about staff, how do we align our concern about the health of staff and asking them to go in and clean areas piled high with cigarette ends and also with smoke?

Mr Bish: There is a solution there. If we want to do it, there is a way. The ventilation industry can do it. You will get complete air changes, including leaving the room unoccupied for a very good time to allow the air change. That will happen. That is just science. It works. It is whether we want it to work is the point and whether we can afford it to work.

Q319 Charlotte Atkins: That is the issue. The cost issue, of course, is huge. Mr Payne was talking about 38 per cent of the smallest pubs going out of business. They are not going to be able to spend possibly thousand of pounds on ventilation?

Mr Bish: It is very difficult for them.

Q320 Charlotte Atkins: The big chains might able to do that, but it just depends if they have decided to go down the other route.

Mr Hutson: We are fortunate because most of our pubs have been built in the last ten years and have been converted, so they do not have all the grade two listed building aspects which many pubs, particularly in London, would have to face. We spend about £150,000, on average, on air-conditioning, and we change the air 20 times an hour at peak times. Even with all that, on a Friday night it is very difficult to stop the air from the smoking area drifting into the non-smoking area, but by and large it does work, and Nicky is right, our pubs actually are quite smoke free, but it cannot be guaranteed. I was in premises yesterday and the staff, unfortunately, had turned it off and it was very, very smoky. The only way to guarantee it is to ban smoking, I am afraid.

Mr Payne: Even our members who are on low returns themselves have spent a lot of money. As I said before, 30 years ago lank smoke; today you do get clean air in a lot of public houses and I think it is important to understand that it will be over a period of time. The only thing is, if we get some assurances from the Government on this people would invest more money to make the pubs even more health conscious.

Q321 Jim Dowd: Mr Hutson, when you say you convert Wetherspoon's pubs to non-smoking, there is no process, is there? You just say it is going non-smoking.

Mr Hutson: For us it has been.... We have invested, because we are conscious of the fact that we have been going ahead of legislation, so we have had to try and create a bit more impact, and what we have noticed is that food sales do rise. It has cost us, on average, about £50,000 per pub, primarily investment in new kitchen equipment, and we have repainted the pubs and in many cases re-carpeted, but certainly cleaned the carpet, so that when people walk in there is no residue of smoke whatsoever.

Q322 Jim Dowd: What kind of notice do you give customers?

Mr Hutson: We have been giving customers three months notice in terms of a date, and then, with a month to go, every day we do a count-down.

Q323 Jim Dowd: As a commercial organisational do you sell tobacco on the premises?

Mr Hutson: At the moment we sell tobacco, yes.

Q324 Jim Dowd: Even in the non-smoking pubs?

Mr Hutson: In the pubs that we have converted, it is a mixture. If we have an outside area, and we have endeavoured to get an outside area everywhere - and you have been to Ireland yourselves: you will have heard of the importance of trying to get an outside area if you want to retain a lot of the smoking trade - we keep selling tobacco for people who want to go outside. We have not taken a moral issue on smoking. If you want to smoke, fine. It is a legal thing to do. That is why we thought, "Well, if you are going to smoke we will provide facilities outside for you - heaters, canopies, things like that - and we will still sell cigarettes for you.

Q325 Jim Dowd: Just a general question to anybody really. My calculation of what you have been saying is that the distinction the Government has chosen, if there is not to be a total ban, is going to be onerous and difficult. Would it be, in your view, better to simply designate certain premises as smoking permitted under restricted circumstances and others just as non-smoking?

Mr Hayward: If you are saying certain premises, specifically a venue as against another one further down the street, that will cause the problems that John has just referred to, because people will migrate, so that is not the route that we would prefer. Any exemptions, clearly, as I said earlier on, have a regulatory burden. We personally have indicated that we would prefer some form of segregated smoking rooms, and we will work with whatever clear option is introduced, but it has to be clear and operable across an enormous range of the industry: because, as Bob Cotton has said, we are talking about a mixture in the hospitality sector now which just did not apply 20 or 30 years ago.

Q326 Chairman: Is it not the case that any segregation - the smoking carriage is the recent debate - if we are to believe it they cannot get any consensus on that at cabinet level either - just brings the problems about Tony Payne's smaller pubs and everything else. It seems under those circumstances that.... Is not your answer to this in a sense, maybe reluctantly in as much as you preferred a voluntary approach, that a comprehensive ban would be more certain for you as a group and as individuals representing organisations? Would that be an unfair assumption to make from what we have heard and from the written evidence that we have taken as well?

Mr Hayward: I think it is a conclusion that you can draw, but I think in society, whatever field you are talking about, whether it is smoking or anything else, you either have a complete ban or complete freedom and anywhere between those two imposes a regulatory burden with which one has to work. Yes, the simplistic solution on anything in life, whether it is stopping people from driving over Westminster Bridge, that is a clear decision, or else you allow them to go at 80 miles an hour and anything you impose in between has implications. The simplest solutions are always the extreme ones.

Q327 Chairman: You represent a lot of people, and all of you, one way or another, represent some quite small business. Is not the great fear that if it is not a comprehensive ban, it throws this whole question about switching from food to drink, or whatever, into great confusion within the hospitality trade?

Mr Cotton: Absolutely. Whatever we have said, all along clarity is absolutely essential in this, fairness, but also recognition that it is about the protection of the employees wherever they work. If you are in a small business or in a chain business, the fact you might be treating employees differently in one place to another - I think in five years' time it will be very difficult standing in front of the red robed judge saying, "I recognised the problems for that particular employee and we took action, but not for that employee." I think you will be laughed at, quite frankly.

Q328 Chairman: Is that what you heard in Scotland?

Mr Cotton: Yes, indeed, and I also went to Ireland and I have seen the impact in Ireland where I think it has worked extremely well and the whole sector has continued to grow. I am talking about tourism, hospitality, leisure in its totality.

Chairman: We did add to it for a couple of days last week, I have to say.

Q329 Mr Burstow: And we are not the only ones who have been there to add to the expansion in the tourist trade. There seem to be a lot of people going to the Republic to learn about what they are doing. I wanted to pick up on something else we heard whilst we were in Dublin. It was put to us, I think, primarily by the Hospitality Association in the Republic, but they were saying it was something being experienced, anecdotally at least, across all parts of the hospitality industry, and that was the implications for the costs of maintenance of premises. The argument was that in environments which are predominantly smoking environments there are increased costs of maintenance - repainting to remove the obvious tarring effects that cigarette smoke causes and various other things - and that the costs of maintenance went down; and this was something that the Hospitality Association was putting forward as a benefit from this. I wonder whether anyone here would sign up to the proposition we heard from the Republic's Hospitality Association or whether you say that was an incorrect assumption?

Mr Cotton: It is a clear issue for hotels. Quite frankly, cleaning a hotel bedroom is substantially easier when people have not smoked, and there are particular issues which I think we have given in evidence to you about how you treat hotels. The Irish solution is a very good one, Scotland is almost there, but it is particularly important, and it has reduced the cleaning costs certainly for hotels. I would not comment on pubs.

Mr Hutson: In the ones we have converted we have seen already, costs do come down, but I think for us that is more as a result of change in the customers that come to the pub as opposed to anything else. You get fewer heavy drinkers.

Q330 Mr Burstow: Right; so you get less spillage?

Mr Hutson: More food customers, fewer heavy drinkers, and they tend to respect the premises better.

Mr Hayward: One of the reason why we were arguing for a period of time, because some costs do clearly go down, other costs.... We were asked by the Department of Health in relation to the question of food the implications since, the Chairman indicated, there has been this huge shift. You have got large numbers of pubs who have invested very heavily in some from of food supplies, food refrigeration, food preparation, et cetera, and those are costs which in the short-term they would clearly face in terms of making the shift from one side to the other. There are clearly some changes which would be beneficial and others which are disadvantageous.

Q331 Mr Burstow: Mr Bish, have you any observations?

Mr Bish: Nothing more. Obviously it just weighs in the balance with the declining income. I mean if Wetherspoon's income has gone down by seven per cent, they are jolly glad not to have so much cost in refurbishment and cleaning. It is as simple as that. It is a profit and loss issue, but it is weighed in the balance.

Q332 Mr Burstow: It is as simple as that in as far as it was presented that way to us in the Republic, but the Republic's most recent figures show that there is actually an upturn in terms of sales of alcohol both in licensed premises and to take home. Mr Bish, you were talking in response to Charlotte Atkins' questions about ventilation, saying that this was at least a partial solution to this. I wondered if you had any technical papers or research papers that backed up that position that we might be sent so that we can have a look at that. It might be useful just to see if there are any robust technical assertions that would support your proposition today?

Mr Bish: Yes, the University of Glamorgan, Professor Andrew Geens, has conducted extensive surveys and I believe it is now out for peer review. I am not sure when that response is coming in, but through the contacts that I have I would be very glad to furnish that to the Committee?

Q333 Chairman: I do not know, Mr Bish, if you have been to Ireland. We probed this issue in Ireland and could find no evidence of it whatsoever.

Mr Bish: That there was any ventilation.

Chairman: There is ventilation which makes the place more pleasant; it is the issue of protecting the health of the workforce that we were trying to probe, and that was the evidence that was lacking in our visit to the republic of Ireland. Richard.

Q334 Dr Taylor: Thank you. It is really just to clarify a point Mr Payne made, and I apologise if I did not quite understand it, but you were talking about 38 per cent of pubs closing down at the smaller end of the market. Was that with the total ban or the partial ban as proposed?

Mr Payne: A total ban. Thirty per cent of our members, and we are talking about the people that returned it, said that 38 per cent would have to close down with a total ban.

Q335 Dr Taylor: So if it was a partial ban, as the Government are proposing, would that therefore be a lesser percentage.

Mr Payne: It would be lesser, but the difficulty is when we talk about non-food elements, say a smoking area, loads of public houses do things, and it has been brought up to my attention that they provide sandwiches for the games team, so that would be stopped. Nothing has been clarified yet, and I think there is a lot of.... If that type of thing was stopped it would cause more problems.

Q336 Dr Taylor: So, despite the risk to these 38 per cent at the smaller end of the market, you would still be on the side of everybody else, that it is clarity and a total ban that is the only workable option?

Mr Payne: No, we have said all along that as far as we are concerned, like Mr Cotton said earlier - Mr Cotton mentioned earlier the situation why we could not have food, say, 12.00 until 10.00 and then a smoking pub later on. That type of thing I think would help rather than either talking about just food-led or smoke-led. I think I that would help everybody going down something like that, where licensees could, in fact, make the customers aware what service is being given at certain times of the day.

Q337 Dr Taylor: Can I come back? We have heard "clarity", we have heard "protection of employees", we have heard "level playing field". Is there any way other than a total ban of getting there?

Mr Hayward: We believe there is. In terms of smoking rooms, we believe you can achieve it with food, and I indicated earlier that there is a regulatory implication, but we believe you can achieve an acceptable route.

Mr Hutson: Our view is that it is as simple as it appears to you and that everywhere else in the world it has been a simple solution: a complete ban and anything else is unworkable?

Mr Bish: We believe in self-regulation and responding to the customers. We think that it is likely there will be a ban at some stage. We, above all, want time to prepare for it, time and clarity.

Mr Cotton: Quite clearly a total ban is inevitable, as in Ireland, as in several countries in Europe. All I ask for is time to ensure that the customer adapts to it but that we have complete clarity.

Mr Payne: A total ban, I am afraid, would cause chaos for the rural and community public houses and the customers, and that is the most important thing: the public that we look after.

Q338 Chairman: Do any of you represent people from Northern Ireland?

Mr Hutson: We have some pubs over there.

Q339 Chairman: What do you think of the Government's announcement in October that we are going to legislate for a complete ban in Northern Ireland?

Mr Cotton: I am staggered that with no devolution to Northern Ireland direct through from Westminster, but we can have a government that puts a total ban in Northern Ireland and does not in England.

Q340 Chairman: And Wales?

Mr Cotton: Wales, I think, is going to ask for permission. I understand very clearly Wales is going to follow the Scottish route.

Q341 Chairman: They will be empowered to do that if they want. I understand they took a principle decision on this.

Mr Cotton: They have already, I understand.

Q342 Chairman: People who are representing Wales will be looking at it differently to England, and Scotland is the same presumably?

Mr Cotton: When we are promoting Britain overseas for tourism that we have different rules in different parts of Britain, I find, is not going to help our tourism business either.

Q343 Jim Dowd: But that is true of the United States.

Mr Cotton: Fine. That was in California. The United States is a very big country.

Q344 Jim Dowd: In Colorado it is different again?

Mr Hayward: I think in Scotland you had a total ban implemented very quickly. In Wales the indications are that they have taken the decision in principle but there is an element of timing, which will be somewhat longer than in Scotland, and I think what we have all argued is that we should have a consistency of time. If I can throw in two quick observations, because they have not come up at any point. I think we are all united: the one thing we do not want is local authorities with different operations, that there should be a consistency across the whole of England; and, secondly, just as a very small point, in the proposed legislation there is the requirement on signage, but as it currently stands you would actually be required, even though it is a no-smoking building, to put up a sign in here saying, "No Smoking", and the regulatory burden needs to be addressed overall on the subject.

Mr Bish: The reverse in fact: if the presumption is no smoking therefore it is only the smoking places such as remain that should be signed, because this just does not apply to the hospitality industry, and I am sure it has been brought to your attention that it is every single business in every single office-block up and down the land and the VAT man will tell you how many businesses that involves, but it is not a lot.

Q345 Chairman: It looks like this is going to be fun. Could I thank you all for coming along and giving evidence in such an open and honest way. If you have anything further on areas we have discussed you sending to us we would be more than happy to receive it.

 

Examination of Witnesses

 

Witnesses: Mr Simon Thomas, Managing Director, Thomas Holdings Ltd, Sir Peter Fry, Chairman, and Mr John Carpenter, The Bingo Association, examined.

Q346 Chairman: Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you very much indeed for joining us here this morning. I wonder if I could ask you to introduce yourselves for the record.

Mr Thomas: Good morning. My name is Simon Thomas, and I am the Managing Director of Thomas Holdings Ltd and represent gaming operators from across the current leisure market, including bingo halls, adult gaming centres, et cetera.

Sir Peter Fry: My name is Peter Fry. I am the Chairman of the Bingo Association. Unlike Mr Thomas, who only very small number of the people he represents are bingo operators, I think there are two others besides himself, we are the official voice of the Bingo Association. I do not think we are going to disagree, but I think we should put that on record to start with.

Mr Carpenter: John Carpenter, I am an owner/operator of small bingo club in Oxfordshire and I am a member of the Bingo Association.

Q347 Dr Taylor: Can I go first to Mr Thomas, because obviously, as you have said, you only have a small number of bingo halls, so your main interests are really in betting offices, gaming centres, seaside arcades and machine-manufacturing companies. So you have got a wide range of interests?

Mr Thomas: It is not actually entirely true. For example, I have the largest bingo hall in the country, so I am very bingo focused as well. The group I represent has an interest in all of those areas.

Q348 Dr Taylor: In your submission to the Government, I think this was, you proposed that steps taken to improve the health of employees in all types of leisure establishment should apply equally, regardless of the type of establishment. That is your firm belief?

Mr Thomas: Absolutely. The health of the employees is paramount, and our view is unless there is a complete ban it will lead to complete migration of our customers into environments where they can smoke. We find the idea of a partial ban mystifying. A lot of our customers already go to working men's clubs, et cetera, and, given the choice of coming into a bingo hall or an adult gaming centre and playing the slot-machines, drinking, eating, playing bingo and smoking, or doing more or less the same in one of the 19,000 registered clubs across the country, the customers are going to migrate.

Q349 Dr Taylor: What about betting offices? I have seen people stay in those for quite some length of time?

Mr Thomas: Betting offices are a slightly more specialised product. People will put a bet on, go outside and smoke. It is not really a sessional product, like bingo halls and adult gaming centres, where people spend prolonged periods of time.

Q350 Dr Taylor: Is it true that in some casinos cigarettes are provided free?

Mr Thomas: I am not in the casino business currently, but I believe it is the case, yes.

Q351 Dr Taylor: You also, I think, would be in favour - and you have heard some of the other witnesses in the previous session - of the legislation being brought in rather more slowly?

Mr Thomas: Yes. For example, in bingo halls, 30 per cent of the floor area is non-smoking. Clearly that is an improvement, but it is not a solution, and, regardless of all the ventilation we put in, and like publicans we have put a lot of money into it, the smoke transfers across, the customers go between them. We can hardly have customers wandering around in nuclear biological and chemical suits to protect them or going into these smoking carriages to clean them in yellow suits. It does not work. It has to be complete.

Q352 Dr Taylor: So smoke-free areas do not work. Coming to the Bingo Association, I very much liked the last sentence of your submission to us which was, "The proposals contained in the Choosing Health White Paper are a confused mixture of policies, attempting to keep all sectors on board and reflecting a vague notion of public opinion but in practice discriminating against some premises in favour of others", and, of course, as you end up, "The proposals will produce a more ... applying differently in England to the rest of the United Kingdom." You feel it is all fairly ridiculous?

Sir Peter Fry: We actually take the view that we are more confused with the publication of the Bill, because, under the exemptions, which are not clearly delineated, you could read into the exemption for premises under the 2003 Licensing Act that that could include bingo halls. That rather threw us because we thought entirely in terms of a total or partial ban. We never thought that some bingo halls could be included. We still, I think, would say very strongly that a full ban is necessary, but what we would also say is that any help for the smaller clubs - and I would like Mr Carpenter to talk a little bit about this - any help we can give to the smaller clubs who are the most at risk, who perhaps provide the greatest social content for the customers, if there were exemptions, obviously we would like them to take a chance on using them, but my information from the Department of Health is that it is very unlikely. So, with that caveat, quite clearly we are in favour of a total ban, not just because it is going to affect our industry, our industry's profits, but because of the effect upon our customer. A partial ban could cause the closure of about 150 clubs all over the country, according to a report we have had from the Henley Centre. A full ban would lead to the closure of something like 90 clubs. If we have to choose between partial disaster and total disaster, quite clearly we believe that the health interests that would require a total ban are also in the best interests of our customers.

Q353 Dr Taylor: So full ban 150. Was it 95 you said for...

Sir Peter Fry: A full ban would be less than a total ban.

Q354 Dr Taylor: You have also told us that really nearly 50 per cent of your players are smokers, and a lot of them are elderly ladies as well. Can you see any way of attracting that same sort of clientele to a bingo hall where there is no smoking? Can you see ways of making it attractive to them?

Sir Peter Fry: We have done various surveys ourselves, and one that we commissioned independently. We, of course, admit that there will be some people who will go to a bingo club who do not go now because the atmosphere is clearer, but, on balance, there will be a considerable net outflow, and that, as I say, will endanger a lot of clubs. I think it is perhaps a point that is not understood widely. When a bingo club closes we have discovered that about 50 per cent of customers do not transfer to another Bingo club; they just stop going; and that is why we do believe that if many of our customers, such as the category you have mentioned, lose that opportunity, that will be social harm to them and why should they not continue to enjoy what they like to do, to go and have their little flutter and a good night out? I hope that has answered your question.

Q355 Dr Taylor: Yes, I think many of us concerned about constituents think of elderly ladies living alone for whom this may be their only outing?

Sir Peter Fry: Indeed.

Q356 Dr Taylor: Mr Carpenter, did you want to come in from the point of view of the smaller clubs?

Mr Carpenter: As Sir Peter was saying about possible exemptions for smaller clubs, I make it clear now that I want to go no smoking. I would like my club to be no smoking and I would do it tomorrow but for the fact it would be financial suicide. I would have 36 per cent displacement of customers who would leave and go and play bingo where they can smoke. Having said that, I think we have got a great opportunity here. I think if there is a total ban our club will survive. It will take a loss of profits for two or three years, yes, obviously, but there is light at the end of the tunnel; we will survive. So I am asking and I am saying that I think we should have a total ban. Let's do it and get it over and done with. My customers feel the same. Three or four years ago if I had spoken to them and said, "We are thinking about banning smoking," they would have been up in arms, "The Government can't do that", but their mindset has changed. They are now thinking it is going to happen. "I cannot smoke at work, I cannot smoke on the train or bus. Lets do it and hopefully I will give up smoking." That is what they are saying. They are saying let's do it.

Q357 Dr Taylor: Do you think some of your little old ladies are keener on bingo than on smoking?

Mr Carpenter: I think a lot of them are keener on bingo.

Q358 Dr Taylor: So they might continue to come?

Mr Carpenter: But if they had a choice and if they can go somewhere and do both they will go there and do both.

Q359 Dr Taylor: Of course.

Sir Peter Fry: Just a point stressed by your last interviewees that a gradual introduction time in necessary in order to readjust, particularly for the smaller businesses because they are the ones that are at the greatest risk of going under early. I think we all appreciate in time the public will accept smoking bans everywhere in the way they do when they go to a theatre or when they go to a cinema, but there will a time gap, there will be a period in which you are going to lose people, so what we are hoping is we know where we are clearly from the word go, that we do get reasonable notice of when the ban is coming in, and then people like John Carpenter can organise their businesses and keep their little old ladies coming into bingo.

Q360 Dr Taylor: So you would all agree with the previous witnesses that 2009 would be a reasonable period?

Sir Peter Fry: I think we would be, well, I would not say very happy but we would be well satisfied with that, yes.

Mr Thomas: It gives us time to work on this question of displacement. When Mr Carpenter is talking about little old ladies going somewhere where they can play bingo, just for clarity, all working men's clubs, all political clubs, these 19,000 clubs, can play bingo. They are playing bingo now and a lot of our customers go between the two already. If we are banned from smoking and they are not, our customers will go there and they will play bingo there and play slot machines there, they will go drinking there and eating there, in an environment where they can eat and smoke, which will be the only place in the country, and also in an environment where children are allowed in, which seems to be completely against all of the principles of this smoking legislation.

Q361 Chairman: Does that alter from one part of the country to another? In the village in which I live there are four what I would call working men's clubs. There used to be five and one has been recently knocked down for house building, but other parts of the country do not have those types of membership clubs, do they?

Mr Carpenter: I am in Oxfordshire and I have four private members' clubs in town three of which regularly play bingo.

Sir Peter Fry: To give an example, in Northamptonshire the owner of the local bingo club told me he has investigated and there are no less than 60 clubs within a ten-mile radius of his club.

Q362 Chairman: Prize money is substantially different.

Sir Peter Fry: Yes it is. But can I just say I do not want anybody to get the impression we have come here to knock the working men's clubs. Indeed, when the weekly limit for bingo was put at £1,000 in the Gaming Bill we said that it could go up to £2,000 before the scrutiny committee, so no way are we attacking them, no way are we saying they should not play bingo. We just want it to be the same rules for them as there are going to be for us.

Mr Carpenter: I would make the point that £2,000 is a considerable prize fund and it is more than I can offer in a night.

Chairman: Could I thank all of you for coming along and giving evidence to us. You probably heard earlier that we are hoping there will be in somebody's Christmas stocking the report itself, and we will see what happens from there, as it were. We hope to publish it before Christmas if at all possible. Thank you for inviting us. We are very pleased you are doing this study.

Witnesses: Mr Hugh Robertson, Senior Health and Safety Policy Officer, TUC; Mr Brian Revell, National Organiser for Food and Agriculture, and Ms Pauline Robson, TGWU; Mr Vincent Borg, Assistant National Health and Safety Officer, UNISON; and Mr Michael Ainsley, London Region Organiser, GMB, examined.

Q363 Chairman: Could I welcome you at the final session for this morning and thank you very much indeed for coming along. I think first of all I would just like you to introduce yourselves and your organisations so we have got it on the record exactly where and who you are.

Ms Robson: I am Pauline Robson from the Transport & General Workers Union and I am an area boss representative for the North East.

Mr Revell: My name is Brian Revell and I am National Organiser of the Transport & General Workers Union for the food and agriculture sector.

Mr Ainsley: Michael Ainsley, I am the GMB Organiser for the casino and leisure industry.

Mr Robertson: Hugh Robertson, Senior Policy Officer for prevention, rehabilitation and compensation in the TUC.

Mr Borg: Vincent Borg, from Unison's Health and Safety Unit, Assistant National Officer.

Q364 Chairman: Thank you. Could I ask you all a question here. What should the Government do to protect employees from passive smoking exposure?

Ms Robson: A complete ban.

Mr Revell: A complete ban.

Mr Ainsley: A complete ban.

Mr Robertson: There should be a complete ban with some small exemptions for places in someone's residential home, for instance.

Mr Borg: Yes, I agree, with small exemptions.

Q365 Chairman: The next question is what do you think of what we are led to believe is the Government's partial ban that is doing the airwaves at the moment? Do you have a view on that?

Ms Robson: I would not agree with that at all. Maybe if I could explain, I work in a pub in Newcastle which is licensed for 300. It is quite a busy pub and even if 150 people in the pub are smoking, and we have had new ventilation put in by a new company that just started in the summer, the smoke levels are far too high. I think all workers have a right to a smoke-free environment. Can you imagine this room, and I counted the number when I came in there were about 60 people in here, my pub is about two-thirds the size of this, can you imagine maybe another 100 to 150 people in here with half of them smoking? You might go to a pub say two or three times a week. You might actually spend about eight hours a week in the pub. Our staff spend 40 to 50 hours a week in the pub. We are talking about sessions of eight to ten hours of constant smoke. Apart from the fact it gives you cancer, even if you do not get the cancer, you get sore eyes, you get a sore throat, you stink when you go home, your hair stinks. I think the Government has missed it and there should have been a complete ban in the beginning. I listened to what the gentleman from Ireland said before, and it is very, very true what he says. If you have got no smoking in the pubs you do not have to decorate so much, you do not get so many holes in the furniture, and your insurance is bound to go down. You may lose a few customers but you will probably find you get new ones. You will get the ones who never went to pubs who will start going to pubs. You will get more families going and you will get more children going. It works in America. I have been in America and there is nothing wrong with going outside and having a cigarette. I am sorry, I am ranting, I will let somebody else answer!

Dr Taylor: I think we want her to talk to the Prime Minister!

Q366 Chairman: That is not within my gift but thank you very much for that anyway. Just before I move on to some of my colleagues, we were out in Dublin last week and we took evidence from two trade unions there. Have you been in touch with the trade unions in the Irish Republic about what and why they did what they have done?

Mr Ainsley: Absolutely.

Q367 Chairman: Did it change any minds, to your knowledge, in terms of sections of the British trade union movement?

Mr Ainsley: Certainly what we have done is we have spoken to Mandate who campaign on this issue. They showed us that there has been no drop even in the prevalence of smoking. I think they said there was one cigarette per day which is deemed to be smoked less. What it has done is those people who frequent pubs do not have to worry about other people's tobacco smoke. That is what our position from the trade union movement is. This is not for us a public health issue, it is a workers' health issue. If somebody wants to smoke a cigarette that is entirely for them, it is their choice to do so, but they do not have the right or the choice to force somebody else to smoke that cigarette with them. That is our position and we are bewildered, I have to say, that the Government have taken this coward's way out because they are fully aware of all of the evidence. In fact, they have published documents themselves. There are government documents here and I will pass these round for anybody to have a look at. It lists the constituent parts of tobacco smoke. Why anybody should be exposed to that is amazing, why people want to expose themselves to it is amazing, but why somebody should expose somebody else to it is criminal. I do not believe that if that was being pumped out of a factory chimney that the HSE would allow it to continue pumping it out. It would be stopped directly. The Government paper from a few years ago, which you will all be familiar with, challenged cutting smoking as the leading cause of preventable death. That is why we are here, not because we have got some issues ourselves but because we represent workers, and workers are being exposed to other people's toxins, carcinogens and tobacco smoke on a daily basis, and it has to stop. There has been some evidence to show that there are round about 600 workers per year dying of second-hand smoke. That would clear the Commons. Everybody in the Commons would be gone through somebody else's tobacco smoke.

Q368 Jim Dowd: We hear this figure and sometimes it is 600 through passive smoking and sometimes it is 700,000. How is that figure calculated?

Mr Ainsley: The figure I quote of 600 is workers who are exposed to second-hand smoke.

Q369 Jim Dowd: Yes, but how is it calculated?

Mr Ainsley: Again I am not a scientist or a doctor.

Q370 Jim Dowd: You are just repeating it?

Mr Ainsley: I am repeating it because that is my job. I am availed of the facts. I do not need to go out and find out what those facts are. If somebody tells me it is dangerous to drive on the pavement I have to accept that it is dangerous to drive on the pavement.

Jim Dowd: What an astonishingly compliant man you are! Have you got no curiosity?

Q371 Chairman: We have had evidence from the Royal College of Physicians on this, both in terms of secondary smoke and deaths in this country, and I think they used a figure overall of secondary smoke of 12,000, and they said it is certainly thousands. Of course, it is a lot less in public enclosed places in view of the fact that most secondary smoking is obtained at home, as it were, in domestic premises, but nonetheless I do not think anybody would dispute the science that there are deaths from that.

Mr Ainsley: If I could just add to that. We can argue about the statistics forever. I do not think there is anybody, smoker or non-smoker, that would argue that tobacco smoke is not harmful. If it is harmful to the smoker why is it then not harmful to the person who does not choose to smoke.

Q372 Chairman: Some of my colleagues will want to come in but trade unions in this country, and I suppose in many others as well, have a long track record of both representing people at work and on odd occasions getting involved in litigation for harm that is done at work. In the industry in which I used to work it is a full-time job for many thousands of people at this current time. What litigation has there been or threatened within the TUC and its membership groups against employers who you believe to be reckless in a sense?

Mr Robertson: There already have been a number of cases that have been taken against employers. The problem of course with second-hand tobacco smoke is that proving cause and effect is very difficult so the cases that have been taken have mainly been around asthma and emphysema. It is people, including bar workers and other workers in a residential home, who have been unable to work because of second-hand tobacco. They have given warning to their employers, nothing has been done and as a result they have had to leave. They have therefore taken it under the basic negligence of duty of care. In terms of taking a case for someone who actually dies as a result of second-hand tobacco, it is very difficult to prove that was a result of what happened within the workplace, so cases like that would be very difficult to take at present, I am afraid.

Mr Revell: We recently had a case where a woman suffered from a worsening asthmatic condition, which caused her to cough so violently that it created a hernia and also pelvic floor collapse. We pursued a personal injury claim against the pub owners and this one was actually settled out of court in favour of the woman, but I have got a suspicion that, just like the nuclear industry, a lot of pubcos will be settling out of court rather than it becoming established on the record through the courts.

Q373 Chairman: That was a local government worker I think in the town of Preston a number of years ago. Perhaps you could tell us about that?

Mr Borg: I am not familiar with the one in Preston. I am aware that Unison has brought a number of cases. There were a couple against Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council where our members have suffered years of passive smoking at work. One member, Veronica Bland, eventually developed chronic bronchitis. She received £15,000 from Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council in 1993. In 1995 Beryl Rowe received £25,000 compensation from Stockport Council. She had to retire on ill-health grounds after suffering eye, nose, throat and bronchial hypersensitivity. This returns if she goes into a smoky atmosphere. The council had increased her exposure by shutting down the ventilation system in the office. If I could take the opportunity to comment on one other issue. It seems we all know that passive smoking is dangerous and it is recognised even by the present Government that passive smoking is dangerous. That is why there is a proposal for the ban, but it is a partial ban which seems nonsensical. The distinction seems to be if a pub does not serve food it will be exempt. There is an implication there which seems to suggest if you eat in a smoky atmosphere it is worse for you. That is the only sensible interpretation of that and that is clearly not the case. case. We know passive smoking is dangerous because of inhalation and that happens whether you are in a pub that serves food or a pub that does not serve food.

Q374 Dr Naysmith: Can I just pick up Michael's point. When we were in Ireland (and you have said something similar) it was very clear that the whole thing had been treated right from the start as a health and safety at work matter. They claim that is why it has been so successful in making it work because once you have established that passive smoke causes problems for the workforce, you then find it very difficult to logically talk about exemptions. They also said that this was discussed pretty well before the ban came in by the Irish government. I have two points to make. Firstly, why do you think our Government has gone along that particular line of mixing up two or three different objectives all in one bill and, secondly, have there been discussions with the trade unions about what shape the bill it should be at all?

Mr Robertson: No, in terms of discussions that have taken place, the unions have made a number of representations as opposed to having discussions with ministers over recent years over a ban. The advantage of the Irish ban is it was clear, simple and understood and therefore it was almost self-enforcing because there are no exemptions all over the place so therefore people know they do not smoke in public places in work places. Also they did the education job as part of the build-up to the bill. There was a very good education campaign. I went over at the time it was going on to ensure that there was an understanding of why it was being brought in. The unions have always said that in actual fact because second-hand tobacco smoke is a carcinogen and it is created from workplace activities, it should be treated in the same way as any other workplace carcinogen, and should be banned as far as reasonably practicable and it is reasonably practicable; you just do not allow people to smoke. The Scottish Executive would have liked to have gone down that path but, of course, health and safety is not a devolved function and that is why they have also had to do it in the public health one. The English Bill is also going to cover it under the public health Bill and we can understand why. The primary role from the trade union point of view is to protect workers. We welcome public health issues, of course, but this should not be seen primarily from our point of view as a public health Bill. We see it as being a very basic, bread and butter, simple, health and safety issue about which there should be no arguments.

Q375 Dr Naysmith: Can you see any way of getting it back onto the rails of being that in this country or is it too late?

Mr Robertson: The Health and Safety Commission have put in a submission to the Government as part of the consultation where they supported a full ban. It is part of a health Bill and I do not think it would help if it was now taken away and looked at separately instead. I think the answer is to remove the exemptions because in effect that would make it a health and safety Bill.

Mr Ainsley: The Government needs to make a case for why there should be any exemptions. It is called a Health Improvement and Protection Bill. Who are they going to protect? Why are they deciding that some workers do not need protection? Why is it that their health is not important? We cannot see any logic in this whatsoever. It is not as though it is a difficult thing to do. Everybody else is doing it, New York, California, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, you name it. Everybody is accepting that if an individual wants to poison themselves that is entirely up to them but they are not entitled to do it to anybody else. The Government is fully aware of the situation. They are putting warnings on cigarettes warning a smoker that they are poisoning themselves and other people. There is no point in telling somebody who is addicted that they are harming somebody else, you have to tell everybody else. It is everybody else who has the right to know that, not just the smoker.

Q376 Charlotte Atkins: I should declare that I am a Unison member. I want to ask you about the issue of exemption. Mr Robertson said that you would accept certain exceptions. I do not think anyone would argue nowadays that because you know it is going to be smoky in a pub those workers should not be protected. I know that is an argument that has been used in the past. Having said that, there are still certain exemptions and I would like you to go through those exemptions and indicate to us how we can protect those workers in those particular situations because I think it is difficult. You are from the TUC and you are indicating that you have a slightly different view.

Mr Robertson: There are a number of areas where we would support an exemption and it is primarily where someone is in a workplace which is also residential accommodation, for example prisons, secure mental units and ships as well.

Q377 Charlotte Atkins: And oil platforms?

Mr Robertson: That is another example. To tell people who are actually in these places that they have got different rights to smoke, that they cannot smoke as individuals at all because people in secure units in prisons cannot just walk out the door and smoke outside, is not a possibility. We recommend there should be circumstances where there are exemptions. However, in order to protect the staff and to protect the other people in there it should be restricted either to separate rooms or, if they have an individual room, to their own room. There should not be a blanket ban, it should be for the residential part and only where they are not affecting anyone else. The rest of the areas where people work or congregate should certainly not be seen as having a blanket exemption.

Q378 Charlotte Atkins: Staff will still have to go into prison cells and they will still have to go into the areas that psychiatric patients occupy. What are you suggesting in terms of protecting that workforce? We do not want a workforce that is subjected to unacceptable health impacts whereas others are free of that.

Mr Robertson: Absolutely. You will also get that in the case of people who visit people in their homes, for example health visitors and many members of the unions here. It is a very difficult area and that is one where we did say in our recommendations there has to be strong guidance to protect the staff. However, I do think there would be problems if you were just to put a blanket ban on all residential areas. If smoking is to be allowed, it has to be under very controlled conditions, in separate rooms with proper ventilation so that it is not affecting the staff in particular but also other residents who choose not to smoke.

Q379 Chairman: Pauline, Charlotte mentioned this issue about people's rights to go to the pub. Nobody would argue that if you go to work in a pub you have certain rights, but some people say if you go to work in a pub you know that people smoke in a pub and you are walking into it, it is your choice. What do you say to that argument?

Ms Robson: I have worked in a pub for 35 years and 35 years ago smoking was not an issue. I did not even think about it when I was younger. It is only as you become more educated and when you see the advertisements that are coming on the television now - there is that new one where you see the clot going up the vein, it really freaks you out - that you are encouraged not to smoke. I work in a pub, we take about £40,000 per week, it is a busy pub and we have about 46 staff. I went to them before I came here and I asked them about this. A lot of them are students who are just working in the pub for extra money while they are at university and a lot of them are smokers, but because they have been educated to know how bad smoking is they are quite concerned about it. They do not really want to make a career out of it, it is like a stopgap. It was weird when I got the e-mail from the Health Select Committee. It appeared to me that you were writing off some workers as though they did not matter because they worked in the industries where people go in to smoke. I think a total ban would be the best thing. Everybody would know where they stood and there would not be some playing off against others. We owe the next generation good healthy living and we should show them an example. When this was voted on in Parliament I wonder what percentage of those that voted to keep it were smokers.

Q380 Chairman: We are not there yet on that. You have got a lot of students earning some money while they are at Newcastle University.

Ms Robson: They supported a total ban.

Q381 Chairman: They are not permanent workers, are they?

Ms Robson: No.

Q382 Chairman: What choice would they have to go and earn some money elsewhere in Newcastle as opposed to working in a pub for a few hours a night or at weekends?

Ms Robson: They tend to gravitate to pubs because it is part of their social life as well, that is probably how they view it. They can get a few shifts here and there, especially weekend shifts.

Q383 Chairman: Would there be alternative forms of employment for those people working for six or eight hours in a public house on a Friday and Saturday?

Ms Robson: There would not be a lot on an evening unless they wanted to work in a restaurant. Then you get the other end of the scale, that is the single mothers or people who are on benefits who can only earn a certain amount of money and they would chose to work in a pub as well because they can get a couple of shifts. It is not really fair on anybody's health. I only came here for the health side of it.

Q384 Chairman: I understand that. People do pose the question that if you go to work in a pub you know what you are going to walk into. It is important that we see what alternatives there are on that issue.

Mr Robertson: The point is, and one of the reasons we do want to see it as a health and safety issue, is there is no other area where we say you can choose to work in an unsafe environment. It is against all European legislation and against the Health and Safety at Work Act. It is up to employers to protect people. Some people may think, "I can get a job here and I smoke so I do not mind" but the reality is that even smokers are increasing their risk by working in smoky environments, and some pubs are very smoky environments. Not only that, it would mean these people could never give up smoking, for instance, once they have actually started. It is totally contrary to every principle of protection of workers to say that you can either take danger money or that you can decide to take a risk. I certainly think it would be an absolute disaster were that to be countenanced in terms of any legislation on smoking.

Q385 Dr Taylor: I think it was Mr Ainsley who said that you have to precede this with a very good education campaign. The T&GW paper in the summary at the end supports a comprehensive implementation date of April 2006. Would that be compatible with education? You probably heard previous witnesses accepting the need for a total ban but wanting to delay it to allow implementation. Is there a compromise? They were thinking of 2009.

Mr Ainsley: No, I do not believe that is the case at all. When I was talking about education and getting the public on side, I think that job has already been done. People are now aware of it. The reason why we sat by passively in the past was because we were not aware that we were being affected by other people's tobacco smoke. There have been many campaigns now, not least the ones on the tobacco packets that get discarded in the streets where we can see those warnings to smokers. That job has been done, people are aware, and we are not prepared to sit back passively now and allow ourselves to be poisoned by other people. It is entirely up to them what they want to do to themselves. They cannot do it to the rest of us; it is not right. If I could get back to the Government's position on this, their position is that they will protect everybody, that is where they start from, and they have got a ludicrous suggestion that they will have a metre exclusion zone around a bar to protect the bar staff in pubs. I use an analogy which possibly is not the best analogy to use in mixed company so I will water it down a little bit. There is no such thing as the urine-free end of a swimming pool. Tobacco smoke cannot read, it does not take any notice of signs, and if it is present in the room then the people in that room will be affected by it.

Q386 Chairman: I think we had some transport people here but what about people like ASLEF, regarding the train system, I was going to say public transport but it is publicly accessible transport. GNER, in particular, have gone from two smoking carriages one at either end, as it were, to no smoking. Have you had evidence from the trade unions organised in the transport sector of any problems with that type of move?

Mr Robertson: We have asked the rail unions in particular, but I think also the T&G also have members in transport. The reality is that with the exception of the times when pubs are coming out and when there is a mixture of anti-social behaviour, by and large the bans have been self-enforcing. There are no problems. There have been attempts to have commuter boycotts of smoking bans - and there was one in Brighton when that was introduced - and they totally fizzled out. The reality is passengers themselves have been unwilling to put up with other people's smoking. If you go on a train nowadays, unless it is late at night or there is other anti-social behaviour going on, you do not see people smoking. The transport unions and the rail unions have been heavy supporters of this. They believe that their members having to go through the one smoking carriage that is left is a bit of nightmare for them and they would rather there was a complete ban.

Q387 Jim Dowd: The same was true also in the airline business which is overwhelmingly no smoking. There are a few Eastern European airlines that still allow smoking but nearly everyone else has banned smoking completely across the whole network.

Mr Robertson: Yes, that happened after the US would not allow any airline that allowed smoking to pass over US airspace. As a result, every company then introduced a complete ban ten years ago.

Mr Ainsley: Can I just say that if the Government are serious about this then you have to change the culture. If you send mixed messages about it is banned, it is not banned, it is banned here, it is not banned there, then you are not going to change the culture. You are not going to do what you set out to do in the first place.

Q388 Chairman: Could I just add that the whole trade union movement would not agree with what people have said here today. We had the Tobacco Workers' Alliance write to us and they have got trade union members in it. What is the attitude there within the TUC?

Mr Revell: Maybe if I could respond there because I am responsible for tobacco workers within the Transport and General Workers Union and they have made their views very clear. They want things to continue as they are. They do not want a change. Within the T&G we have had quite a lively discussion with those who are involved in the tobacco industry and those who are on the receiving end, bar staff, our NALHM membership, the National Association of Licensed House Managers and Casino Workers. At the end of the day our General Executive Council took the view that the most important issue was that of health and safety for those who were confronted with a smoking environment and accordingly we have submitted our views. To be honest, our members in the tobacco industry do actually understand why we have taken that stance. We do support the Tobacco Workers' Alliance but, to be honest, we will not engage when it comes to health issues. No way would we say there is anything that is not damaging about smoking, so with regard to the Tobacco Workers` Alliance, there are areas such as taxation where we are against too much taxation because it leads to a greater degree of smuggling and crime and also it is the poorest decile in society that smokes the most, so it is a regressive tax that hits the poorest people.

Q389 Jim Dowd: The Tobacco Workers Alliance are in Amicus are they not, they are not part of the T&G?

Mr Revell: It is T&G and the GMB, not just Amicus.

Q390 Jim Dowd: But they have the lion's share?

Mr Revell: They have the lion's share although there is not very much of a share to go round because there are not many jobs in the tobacco industry now. We have got the largest cigarette factory in Gallagher's.

Q391 Charlotte Atkins: What is the number of jobs in tobacco?

Mr Revell: It is about 4,000 now and declining. The technology is phenomenal.

Mr Robertson: If I could quote in actual fact at this year's Congress there was a motion on passive smoking which was supported by every single union (one voted against) and Amicus also have supported it. The TUC and all unions are very concerned about the loss of jobs within the tobacco industry but that is primarily nothing to do with the public health policy. It is the fact that these factories have been closed because jobs are moving abroad primarily to East Asia. The Southampton factory has just gone, the Midlands one went about two years ago and what is happening is that it is much cheaper to produce them abroad. That is the threat to the tobacco industry and we have always supported tobacco workers in their fight against these closures and we will continue to do so .

Mr Ainsley: I have had some dialogue with workers in the Alliance and put it very clearly to them that what we want for workers everywhere is the same consideration they have in their workplace and that is to have a smoke-free workplace.

Chairman: Could I thank you all very much indeed for this session. I think you may have heard me say earlier we are hoping this report will be out for people's Christmas stockings, although we have at least another week of evidence taking yet. Thank you for coming along.