A leading peer called for the smoking ban to be delayed until at least the middle of 2008 during yesterday's Lords debate on the health bill.
Shadow health minister Earl Howe told the Lords he sympathised with the fears of many licensees about the ban -which the government wants to introduce next year.
"Many pubs, hotels and clubs have a lot to do to minimise the commercial impact that the bill may otherwise have on them," he said. "We need to take those concerns very seriously."
Earl Howe suggested an amendment to the bill which would not see the smoking ban introduced for another two years.
But later Lord Clement-Jones said Earl Howe had "overstated the case on behalf of the pub trade", and pressed for the ban to be introduced in March next year.
"The government has not indicated a date in any great detail — it has simply indicated summer 2007 as the time the Act might come into effect — but we believe that it would be perfectly possible for the pub trade, as it was described by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, to comply with the requirements of the Act in time for no-smoking day on 14 March 2007," he said.
"We believe that this would have advantages, a great deal of advertising and publicity surrounds no-smoking day, particularly about the various ways in which people can give up smoking. That would make it a very convenient time. We believe that it would be the right time to bring the Act into effect. "
Other Lords, including Lord Monson, Lord Stoddart and Lord Wakeham, suggested the move towards a complete smoking ban had been a step too far - and that the government had been wrong to allow a free vote of MPs on the subject in February.
Lord Wakeham, who was chief whip to the Tory government under Margaret Thatcher, told the House: "I do not approve of free votes on these matters. The government has a responsibility to balance the rights of smokers and non-smokers in a proper way. I accept that that is difficult. The original bill made some attempt to do that. This bill seems to me to have abandoned all principle in an unacceptable way."
Much of the debate centred on the technicality of the law with regard to smoking in the home, when the home could often be described as the workplace for plumbers and other tradesmen.
The debate will return to the Lords at 3.30pm on Monday (April 24).