Fight the ban, fight for choice

The Government must have hoped that the anger and incredulity that greeted reported plans for an outdoor smoking ban would have fizzled out by now.

Instead, almost two weeks after The Sun published its exclusive story, based on leaked information, the issue continues to make headlines around the country, and not in a good way.

Yesterday, Observer columnist David Mitchell (yes, that David Mitchell) weighed in with his thoughts on the matter (The pub garden smoking ban is a drag on our freedoms).

After a bizarre swipe at Margaret Thatcher, he finally got to the point:

The indoor smoking ban was bad enough. I know it’s been successful at reducing smoking and, on balance, I wouldn’t go back on it now. Nevertheless it is my belief that that is not the sort of law governments should make. Smoking is a stupid thing to do but, in a free society, we should be allowed to do stupid things unless they impinge on the freedom of others. But the advocates of the ban tried to claim that it was not an assault on liberty, by citing the health impact of passive smoking.

Are they really going to make the same claim when it’s being done outdoors? That smoking in pub gardens significantly shortens the lives of significant numbers of non-smokers? More than driving non-electric vehicles or smelting steel or lighting bonfires on 5 November, activities the government is not proposing to ban?

Mitchell is (or was) a smoker, but I don’t remember him being an outspoken critic of other anti-smoking measures. Perhaps the threat of an outdoor smoking ban was the final straw.

His piece is one of many op eds on the subject, most of which have been critical of the plan.

The Spectator led the way with at least five articles online including Starmer may regret an outdoor smoking ban (Andrew Tettenborn) and The war on smokers has gone too far (Sam Leith).

The Telegraph has also published several op eds denouncing an outdoor ban including I’ll never go to the pub again if outdoor smoking is banned by a certain Nigel Farage (who else?!).

More surprising was a piece by Martha Gill in the Guardian: I love the nanny state, but let’s leave outdoor smokers to puff away in peace.

Other articles have included Defending an outdoor smoke (Charles Amos) and Crossing the public health Rubicon (Chris Snowdon), both of them on The Critic website.

Of greatest interest, perhaps, was a piece by Mary Glindon, Labour MP for Newcastle East and Wallsend. Writing for the Northumberland Gazette, she commented:

Have a thought for those who see smoking as a crutch in a difficult life. Remember older people, particularly single men, who nurse a pint and a tab outdoors and feel less isolated.

I’m sure she’s not the only Labour MP who is uncomfortable with the plan. How many, though, will stand up and make their views known, as Glindon has done?

Meanwhile, reports in the local press as recently as yesterday have included the following:

York hospitality bosses slam beer garden smoking ban plan (The Press)
Sparks fly over proposed pub garden smoking ban (Coventry Telegraph)
West Dorset residents on smoking ban plan in beer gardens (Bridport News)
'It's getting stupid!' Shropshire Star readers have their say on leaked smoking ban proposals (Shropshire Star)
Leicester divided over 'ridiculous' outdoor smoking ban plan as future of pubs is feared (Leicestershire Live)
Wyre Forest pub bosses slam outdoor smoking ban plans (Kidderminster Shuttle)

But what about public opinion generally? In a series of tweets, YouGov (ASH's favourite pollster) reported that:

• Nine in ten Britons (88%) support the existing indoor smoking ban, including 70% of smokers

• Britons tend to support banning smoking in public areas, but are most divided over banning it in pub gardens

• Support for the proposed outdoor smoking bans are not uniform, with smokers and Reform UK voters least likely to support them

But is that the full picture? For example, local newspapers have been busy polling their readers and the results I’ve seen are overwhelmingly against a ban.

Of course these are self-selecting polls whose results must be viewed in that light, but the results seem to be consistent and it indicates to me that there is no significant demand for an outdoor smoking ban because if there was far more people would be driven to vote in favour and that isn’t happening.

One issue I have with polls like YouGov's is this. It’s all very well polling a representative sample of the general public, but I’m guessing that many of them - almost certainly a significant majority - are not regular pub goers.

Surely the people that matter most in a discussion about smoking outside pubs are the people who frequent them at least once a week?

The opinions of those who never go to pubs are largely irrelevant. Likewise those who only visit pubs on a sunny day. The people that really matter in this debate are those that help keep pubs in business all year round.

Prior to the indoor smoking ban it was said that 47 per cent of regular pub goers were smokers. (This was at a time when the national smoking rate was around 22 per cent, if I remember.)

According to anti-smoking activists, however, the hospitality industry had nothing to fear from a smoking ban because smokers would adapt and go outside, while the ‘smoke free’ environment indoors would attract more non-smokers and everything would be hunky-dory.

It’s true that most smokers did adapt, some more quickly than others. Furthermore, we now have a generation of adults who have never known anything else so it's inevitable that calls to relax the current regulations have fallen with each passing year.

The suggestion, however, that the indoor ban encouraged thousands of people who had never previously been pub goers to start going to the pub is palpable nonsense.

A handful may have been encouraged to start taking their families for Sunday lunch at the new gastro pub down the road, but how many and how often?

The fact that thousands of pubs closed in the immediate aftermath of the ban tells a rather different story, and an outdoor smoking ban could have a similar impact, although there are at least 20 per cent fewer pubs than there were in 2006, the year before the smoking was introduced in England.

I repeat: who else, apart from smokers, uses the space outside pubs all year round?

At least, with the indoor smoking ban, they can take their drink outside and smoke in the beer garden or smoking area, if one exists. But if smoking is banned outside as well, why would they go at all?

And spare a thought for the businesses that have invested heavily in order to create comfortable outdoor smoking areas to accommodate customers who wish to smoke.

One of the great attractions of Boisdale - the bar restaurant with which Forest has had a close association for 20 years - is the smoking terrace.

Back in 2007 MD Ranald Macdonald spent £40,000 creating a dedicated smoking terrace above the restaurant in Belgravia. It was a risk but it paid off handsomely, and the smoking terrace at Boisdale of Canary Wharf (above) has been equally popular.

Hundreds of other pubs and restaurants have gone to great expense to accommodate customers who smoke.

Some licensees have built sheltered smoking areas either to keep smokers away from non-smokers or to give smokers a comfortable place to light up, especially in the chillier winter months.

If the Government bans smoking outside pubs and restaurants will that investment now have to be written off?

I’m pleased to see that with one exception (Wetherspoon’s Tim Martin who seems to believe that an outdoor smoking ban will not affect his chain of pubs) the hospitality industry has been making its concerns known.

Last week the Morning Advertiser, the pub trade magazine, published an article (Over 8 in 10 operators against outdoor smoking ban) by Chris Jowsey, CEO of Admiral Taverns, who wrote:

I know I’m biased, but this policy is deeply flawed, will not deliver its intended benefits and will cause unnecessary social and economic harm.

Jowsey's article reflected similar comments by other hospitality spokesmen including Kate Nichols of UK Hospitality.

My only worry is, we’ve been here before. Prior to the indoor smoking ban the hospitality industry made similar noises, but in terms of actively fighting the ban they did very little.

Indeed, when it was suggested that local authorities might be given the power to ban smoking in pubs, clubs and restaurants, the pub chains made it known that they would prefer a nationwide ban because it would be easier to administer than a system in which local authorities imposed a range of different policies.

Worse, when there were suggestions that private members’ clubs (including working men’s clubs) might be exempted from the ban, the pub industry insisted that the ban embrace them too.

So, while I welcome their initial opposition to an outdoor ban, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the pub trade (by which I mean the representative bodies) were to soften their position, especially if they were able to persuade the government to cut beer duty as a quid pro quo for not opposing an outdoor smoking ban.

There are many similarities with the battle we had prior to the introduction of the smoking ban. The biggest difference is probably the argument about passive smoking because, as David Mitchell noted in the Observer, it's very hard to argue that smoking outside is a significant risk to anyone else’s health.

In 2004/5/6, even though the evidence of harm from exposure to secondhand smoke indoors was (and still is) almost impossible to prove, we lost that battle, and that was crucial.

It will be much harder for the government to claim that smoking outside is a threat to non-smokers which is why Keir Starmer and other ministers are now talking up the preventative aspect of the policy – in other words, the Government wants to ‘protect’ both the NHS and smokers themselves by ‘encouraging’ them to quit.

Except that banning smoking in outdoor public places isn’t ’encouraging’ them to quit. It’s coercion, pure and simple.

Anyway, our aim over the next few weeks is to build a loose coalition of groups and individuals opposed to outdoor smoking bans.

In the last week alone Forest has been contacted by a number of concerned parties including publicans and restaurateurs.

We‘ve even been contacted by some Labour Party members so if I can make one promise it's this. We're going to fight this all the way.

Watch this space.