Smoking in Cars

In brief, yesterday there was a vote in Parliament which has given Ministers the power to ban smoking in cars with young children.

It started with a vote in the Lords that was passed by the Labour party against the government's opposition. It then became an amendment to the Children and Families Bill which is designed to change and improve certain aspects of family law and adoption.

Full details here in this BBC article.

Interesting for G and P students because it illustrates nicely some of the ways in which Parliament does its job of calling government to account and suggesting and passing laws - government is now accepting that this power will become law before 2015 where it had previously not done so.

It also is a useful case study in the power of pressure groups - it was supported by the BMA (which has campaigned on this issue since 2011) and the British Lung Foundation, but opposed by the smoking group Forest.

As a side note - some of the opposition to the stopping of smoking in cars with children is about the invasion of civil liberties, and also the difficulty in enforcing the ban. A Guardian article from 2008 illustrates that opposition to using seat-belts back in the 1970s had similar arguments.

Here is the British Lung Foundation's ad about the issue: