ASH, 102 Clifton Street, LONDON, EC2A 4HW.
Tel 020 7739 5902 Fax 020 7613 0531

ASH Daily News

26 October 2005

[View html version: http://www.globalink.org/nbuk]

HEADLINES

Shambolic cabinet quarrel delays smoking bill

Roy Castle's widow blasts partial ban as 'vote puller'

Ministerial squabble over absurd proposals

Is there such a thing as the right to smoke?

FULL TEXT

Shambolic cabinet quarrel delays smoking bill

The health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, was last night forced to postpone a compromise bill to ban smoking in various public places, after a chaotic and increasingly fraught split within the cabinet.

After a day of conflicting briefings, Ms Hewitt had to accept that agreement within the cabinet's domestic affairs committee was impossible. Her compromise would have banned smoking in all workplaces, restaurants, and pubs that serve food. Other pubs could allow smoking, but only in sealed rooms; and smoking would be allowed in private member's clubs.

Ms Hewitt's predecessor, John Reid, now defence secretary, has been using his position on the committee to persuade the cabinet to stick to its manifesto commitment to allow smoking in any part of a pub that does not serve or prepare food; he opposes the option of separate sealed smoking rooms.

His intervention killed off Ms Hewitt's plan for a ban in private clubs, including working men's clubs and the Royal British Legion. He had the support of Ms Jowell.

A senior Whitehall source said Ms Hewitt and Ms Jowell were now "barely speaking".

He said: "Feelings got so bad they could not even be in the same room and it all had to be done through phone calls."

At one point yesterday the divisions were so difficult to resolve that it was suggested the issue might be classified as a conscience issue and left to a free vote of MPs.

Ms Hewitt now intends to announce that the proposal for sealed smoking rooms be the subject of a three-month consultation, covering issues such as ventilation, oversight, and whether pub staff would have to clean the rooms. She privately hopes the smoking rooms will die out gradually, like smoking on trains.

Source; BBC, Guardian, Publican, Mirror, Financial Times, Daily Mail, Telegraph, Independent, 26 October 2005
Article link: (BBC) http://tinyurl.com/8t9xj: (G) http://tinyurl.com/a9437: (P) http://tinyurl.com/9b9me: (M) http://tinyurl.com/bxu5j (T): http://tinyurl.com/7sgsz: (FT) http://tinyurl.com/9joxd
BHF PR: http://tinyurl.com/dy2zv
Asthma UK PR: http://tinyurl.com/duxuo


Roy Castle's widow blasts partial ban as 'vote puller'

The partial ban on smoking has been blasted as a "vote puller" by the widow of cancer victim Roy Castle.

Fiona Castle believes the government are scared of how the public will react and that it will lead to unemployment and loss in revenue for many businesses. She added that this was never the case in Ireland and New York where the ban is already in place.

She said: "In 10 years time people will say 'this is ridiculous, how can anyone ever have smoked in public places?' "

Source: Channel 4, Telegraph, 26 October 2005
Article link: http://tinyurl.com/7sgsz


Ministerial squabble over absurd proposals

Robert Shrimsley looks at the ministerial debacle over the health protection bill in today's Financial Times:

"The shambles surrounding the government's onslaught on smoking in enclosed public places has provided the entertaining sight of ministers coming up with ever more Byzantine ideas so that they can claim to have stopped short of a total ban and avoid charges of nanny-statism.

First, John Reid proposed allowing smoking in pubs that did not serve food. But his successor as health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, decided this was a) unenforceable (is a jar of pickled onions food? is any of what is served in most pubs food, come to that?) and b) might lead pubs to stop selling what they describe as food.

Her new plan would restrict smoking in pubs and clubs to what have been described as "smoking carriages" (or other rooms with a door to use the technical term).

However, it has been resisted by Mr Reid, puffed up with wounded pride at a colleague dreaming up an even more complex compromise than his own. How - to raise just one query - are the bar staff, who are meant to be protected from the smoke, supposed to collect the empty glasses?

Still, ministers need not despair. There are many unexplored ways to break the deadlock. They might restrict smokers to individual sealed booths rather like the toilets one sees on the high street where, for 20p, they can light up and enjoy their smoke in the knowledge that the unit will be fumigated after they exit.

Alternatively, smoking would be banned in all pubs except those with hermetically sealed smoking areas, which must be at least 50 feet below sea level and which must have an inner and outer door, one of which must be closed at all times. Only bar staff issued with full breathing apparatus will be allowed in to collect empties. Both ideas are easily policed although upfront installation costs could be quite high.

But perhaps it is merely a problem of presentation. Maybe ministers should announce that smoking in pubs will stay legal as long as it is restricted to designated areas known, for legislative purposes, as pavements."


Source: Financial Times, 26 October 2005
Article link: http://tinyurl.com/dvb64


Is there such a thing as the right to smoke?

Oliver Burkeman explores this argument in today's Guardian:

"Internecine arguments inside the cabinet are common enough. But in failing to agree on the extent of a smoking ban, ministers can at least claim this in their defence: they are grappling with a real philosophical dilemma. Where does your right to smoke stop and my right not to breathe your smoke begin?

We can dismiss, for starters, the much touted idea that smokers represent a "minority" who are being discriminated against. Unlike, say, being black or white, smoking is a voluntary activity, not an unchosen identity. And anyway, where's the discrimination? If smoking were banned everywhere, everyone would have exactly the same degree of freedom to smoke: none.

But the question of rights is trickier. "The only purpose for which power can be rightly exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others," wrote John Stuart Mill. If you agree with that, then, says Simon Blackburn, professor of philosophy at Cambridge University, "the state isn't permitted to act paternalistically, to stop you rock climbing or smoking or drinking for your own good."

So the question becomes one of harm. What constitutes being hurt by someone else's smoking? The irritation factor probably isn't sufficien.

Of course, passive smoking is more than irritating: government studies have shown that it increases the risk of health damage. But a pro-smoker could object that this argument is statistical - an increased chance of harm is not definite harm. That arguably makes smoking more like driving a car (you might harm others, but it's legal) than stoving someone's head in with an axe (you will harm others, and it's illegal).

The only people for whom the harm seems rather more certain are pub and restaurant workers, and it's their rights that provide the strongest argument for a ban. Meanwhile, if you buy Mill's argument, you really ought to start lobbying for the legalisation of crack and heroin, too..."

Source: Guardian, 26 October 2005
Article link: http://tinyurl.com/dla6f

------------------------------------
Unsubscribe:

Public subscribers: http://www.ash.org.uk/?unsubscribe
Globalink members: http://member.globalink.org
----------------------------------

Michael Fredman
Web Manager
ASH
102 Clifton St
EC2A 4HW

020 7739 5902