Clegg is left looking like a right Charley over car smoking ban

With the Government having run out of business it fell to the House of Lords to make some up for them last week.

To everyone’s surprise, not least the Labour Opposition promoting the idea, the upper chamber backed a proposal to ban smoking in cars in which children are also travelling.

Labour’s leader in the Lords, Baroness Royall, generally as glamorous as she is effective, won an award for peer of the year the previous night. Maybe that upped her political wattage, as Lib Dems flocked moth-like to her side in the voting lobbies.

Their leader Nick Clegg went on his radio show the next day to denounce the whole idea. His exasperation is understandable this was the second time in two days his members had voted the wrong way.

On Tuesday night, Lib Dem MPs were presented with a perfect opportunity to rebut accusations that the party has a problem with women by electing Lorely Burt looks like Deborah Meaden from Dragons’ Den, sounds like Acorn Antiques’ Mrs Overall as the new deputy leader.

Instead they plumped for Scottish grandee Sir Malcolm Bruce looks like a man, sounds like a man and, most importantly, is a man allowing the other parties to air the old truism that the Lib Dems have more knights than women on their benches.

Whatever the reason for the Lords defeat, the Government found itself having to deal with the headache of facing the same when the legislation comes to the Commons.

They signalled a free vote meaning members will be allowed to vote as they wish and, most likely, it will pass creating a law that nobody really wants and which will be nigh on impossible to enforce. There is another way.

Had this issue come up a few years back it would not have been debated in parliament, it would’ve been the subject of a public information film.

No government ever had to legislate to ban children flying kites near pylons. A traumatising public information film meant no youngster of a certain generation dare fly their kite anywhere there was mains electricity.

The economic crash of the 1970s was surely due as much to the resultant collapse in the kite industry as any oil crises.

No adult will return to even the lamest indoor firework, never mind an unexploded banger, after seeing that little girl in the jumper burn her hand on a sparkler.

Cross the road without stopping, looking and listening and you face a reprimand from Kevin Keegan, a massive squirrel or, most terrifying of all, the Green Cross Code Man who turned out to be Darth Vader.

And who could forget Charley, the cartoon cat who taught a generation not to talk to strangers who want to show them puppies but instead to talk as if their voice box had been replaced by a washing machine with a puppy in it.

All these campaigns changed behaviour without the need for legislation. A well-made short showing the damage done to little lungs by smoking in the same car would surely do the same today.

Except in their dash to cut the budget one of the first things the Coalition did was shut the government unit responsible for public information films.

They replaced it with something called the Nudge Unit, a group of pointyheads who sit around thinking of ways to change your behaviour without you noticing.

Any parent will tell you that sometimes gentle persuasion is the way to get the action you want, at other times a short sharp explanation of the consequences of non-compliance does the job. Only very occasionally is the threat of a visit from a massive squirrel the answer.

With public information not an option instead we are to get a law banning smoking in cars that will cost the busted country public money and time to pass, implement and police.

It’s enough to render even Charley speechless.