What’s changed most about the House of Commons since I was a new MP for Blackburn in 1979?

Plenty. The hours. These days we start in the mornings and finish around 7.30pm.

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Back then, the sittings commenced in the afternoon. None finished before10pm, half after midnight; and quite a few after 2am.

In 1979 there were virtually no Select Committees to hold government and outside institutions, like the banks to account. Now there are.

But one of the biggest differences is air quality.

Everyone used to stink of cigarettes – smokers or not. The only places you couldn’t smoke was the Chamber of the Commons and committee sessions. There were ash-trays in all the corridors, with notices asking members not to carry “lighted cigars”, but they were observed in the breach. Go into the smoking room and you’d be met by a wall of fog.

The same was true for public transport. It wasn’t only the upper decks of buses, and about half of train carriages where smoking was allowed. Astonishingly, given the danger, it was the same on the Underground until the King’s Cross fire in 1987 caused by a cigarette dropped on an escalator. 31 people died.

Today, every public building is smoke-free. Though people are, rightly, allowed to smoke in their own homes, many smokers spare their non-smoking family by smoking outside.

I used to smoke. “Only occasionally” but more than I admitted. Like every other smoker I know I wanted to stop. I finally did so 10 years ago.

One factor which made a difference was the growing pressure against smokers.

Fewer pals were smoking; many voluntary bans had been introduced in advance of the statutory ban in 2007.

The consequence of this shift in public attitudes is that smoking has now dropped to historic low levels.

Just after the war 80 per cent of men smoked. Now for both sexes, the proportion is below 20 per cent. But smoking remains one of the greatest, avoidable threats to public health.

Plain packaging is a logical next step. One of my concerns has been that the changes are introduced gradually to protect our small shopkeepers.

Yesterday’s vote in favour of plain packaging should help to cut smoking. I voted for it.