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Briefing on the Health Bill and smokefree legislation

MPs have voted by a massive majority to enact smokefree legislation, including pubs and private members' clubs.

This means that workplaces and enclosed public places will be smokefree from July 2007.

The move means that workers will be protected from the cancer-causing chemicals in secondhand smoke, whether they work in an office, a pub or a club. And experts predict that as many as 700,000 smokers will be encouraged to quit smoking during the first year of the ban.

Cancer Research UK has been campaigning hard for the smokefree law to be as comprehensive as possible. Thousands of our supporters wrote to their MPs through our CancerCampaigns website or signed our petition for smokefree public places.

The charity's Chief Executive, Prof Alex Markham, welcomed the news, calling it "the most important advance in public health since Sir Richard Doll identified that smoking causes lung cancer fifty years ago".

Details of how any exemptions will work, and the extent of fines for those who flout the law, will be contained within regulations, which will be published for consultation shortly. The Republic of Ireland has shown that smokefree legislation works best when it contains as few exemptions as possible.

Read our detailed briefing on smokefree legislation - this briefing was sent to MPs in advance of the vote.

Find out more about how Cancer Research UK and our supporters campaigned for smokefree workplaces on our CancerCampaigns website.

Why we need comprehensive smokefree legislation

Cancer Research UK supports comprehensive smokefree legislation because:

Private members' clubs are workplaces too. All employees deserve an equal right to protection from secondhand smoke at work. There are more than 20,000 private members' clubs in the UK. Why should their staff be unprotected?

Ventilation doesn't work. There is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke. Ventilation systems are expensive to install and maintain, and airflows equivalent to tornadoes or wind tunnels would be needed to remove all the cancer-causing chemicals in secondhand smoke.

Smokefree laws are popular and easy to enforce. More than 70 per cent of the population in England support a smokefree law. Public support in England is already higher than it was in Ireland, prior to their smokefree law.

Smokefree laws do not damage profits. No independent, peer reviewed study has ever found a significant downturn in business from going smokefree. The majority of the UK pub trade supports comprehensive legislation, as it creates an even playing field for business.

Comprehensive smokefree laws are good for everyone. Going smokefree does not lead to people smoking more at home. It can even reduce exposure at home through encouraging smokers to give up.