The joint chair of the Conservative Party says a lot of his colleagues have "real concerns" about the government's Tobacco and Vapes Bill. The Labour Party wants to ban vaping and smoking in playgrounds and outside schools. Nigel Huddleston says there needs to be an element of "personal responsibility", adding this is "good for long-term health outcomes". Report by Brooksl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00Well, Rishi brought it in and the previous bill is slightly different that we voted on
00:05earlier in the year from this one because I understand that this will have a few outdoor
00:08smoking bans. So, I would say we're likely to have a free vote as we did last time because
00:14there are some very strongly held views on this. In particular, when we start to impose
00:19bans outside, a lot of my colleagues have real concerns about the freedom and freedom
00:24of decisions and personal responsibility elements there. Of course, it has to be balanced with
00:28the health impacts. So, I'll be looking at the details as well on this before making
00:33my mind up and I suspect we'll have colleagues who vote different ways. My personal instinct
00:38is more broad in that direction, but it needs to be finely balanced. We do need to make
00:43sure that the government doesn't do everything and tell everything. We do need an element
00:47of personal responsibility and actually that is good for long-term health outcomes. If
00:51everybody believes that the government will do everything for them, then we can all behave
00:55in a way that actually isn't necessarily good for our own individual health. So, there's
00:58real elements here of genuine concern and balancing out that business impact versus
01:04the health impact. In particular, I understand that the government's not proposing now to
01:10put in the ban in pubs because that would have been really harmful to the hospitality
01:13industry which is still recovering from the pandemic. So, I'd say if that was still in
01:18there, I would have had great difficulty supporting it because, again, probably gone a bit too
01:22far. So, I'll look at the details of this proposal and as I say, my colleagues will
01:26on our benches as well.