20 years ago MPs voted to ban smoking in enclosed public places

On this day 20 years MPs voted overwhelmingly to ban smoking in all enclosed public places in England.

February 14, 2006, was a Tuesday but although I must have been interviewed at least 20 times during the day, the only two that I remember took place at the King’s Head theatre pub in Islington.

For the BBC’s One O’Clock News I was interviewed by Branwen Jeffreys. Branwen is now the BBC’s education editor but back then she was a humble health correspondent. She was happy with both the location and the interview so she asked if I would return to the King’s Head later in the day, after MPs had voted, to comment live on the Ten O’Clock News.

She invited five or six other interested parties and we stood in front of the bar while she went down the line inviting each of us to say a few words about the vote, and the ban. I was holding a pint of beer in one hand because by that stage I was in desperate need of a drink.

The outcome of the vote wasn’t unexpected but it was disappointing when MPs rejected a last minute compromise that would have allowed smoking in some pubs and private members’ clubs. According to the Guardian:

A total ban on smoking inside offices, pubs, restaurants and "virtually every enclosed public place and workplace" throughout England will come into force in the summer of 2007 after a resounding cross-party majority of MPs yesterday rejected last minute compromises designed to exempt some pubs and private clubs.

In truth, the entire day was a bit chaotic and I wasn’t entirely sure what was going in the House. As I recall, three options emerged during the debate: (1) a partial ban, with exemptions for private members’ clubs and pubs that didn’t serve food: (2) a ban with just one exemption – for private clubs; and (3) a comprehensive indoor smoking ban with no exemptions.

Crucially, Labour MPs were given a free vote so they didn’t have to support their own party’s manifesto commitment to the partial ban that would have exempted some pubs and every private members’ club. What made things confusing was that Patricia Hewitt, the Secretary of State for Health, had to make the case for a partial ban, but at the same time make it clear that she personally favoured a comprehensive ban, which is indeed how she voted, unlike her predecessor John Reid who voted for a partial ban.

Eventually it was confirmed that an overwhelming majority of MPs had voted for a blanket ban, and we had to accept that our long-running campaign against a workplace smoking ban had ultimately failed. All I can say is, we gave it our best shot.

Forest’s ‘Fight the Ban: Fight for Choice’ campaign was formally launched in May 2004 but our work opposing workplace smoking bans began several years earlier. For example, local authorities in Liverpool and London had considered unilaterally introducing public smoking bans long before Westminster took an interest.

In 2002 Forest was invited to give written and oral evidence to an investigative committee set up by the London Assembly to investigate the link, if any, between passive smoking and ill health. After six months the committee concluded that the evidence didn’t justify a workplace smoking ban, so we chalked that up as a win.

The following year (2003) we were invited to give evidence to several more committees that were tasked with investigating the need for public smoking bans, so I found myself travelling all over the country to places such as Middlesbrough, St Albans, and Plymouth.

What struck me, though, was the open-mindedness of many of the committee members we spoke to. Yes, there were anti-smoking councillors on every committee, but that rarely extended to the chairmen and we were generally given a fair hearing. If I remember, not one of the committees we gave evidence to advised their local authority to introduce a workplace smoking ban, but perhaps they were overtaken by events as smoking bans became a national rather than a local issue.

Two things changed the situation. One, the Scottish Executive decided to follow the example of Ireland and go for a comprehensive smoking ban, which encouraged the anti-smoking industry to lobby for similar legislation in England. Two, the pubcos got involved and started to lobby for a national policy – even if it meant a ban – because they said it would be easier and less complicated to implement. What they didn’t want was a situation whereby smoking was prohibited in pubs in one part of the country but not another.

Anyway, as soon as it became clear that legislation of some sort was coming, we launched our campaign. Working with a public relations company whose office was a few hundred yards from our own base near Oxford Circus, we developed a campaign that included polling in ten English cities (a total of 10,000 people), and a series of advertisements that appeared in The Spectator, New Statesman, The Oldie and The Week. (Our attempt to advertise in Private Eye was rebuffed on the grounds that the Eye didn’t accept ‘political’ ads.)

Writing on May 26, 2004, I noted that:

The 'Fight The Ban’ campaign has attracted good coverage in the regional papers but nationally it's a different story which is no surprise. The fact that an independent poll of 10,000 people nationwide can be overlooked by most of the national media – which just five days' earlier had given blanket coverage to a poll of just 1500 people by the research organisation Mintel – says everything you need to know about the anti-smoking bias we face every day in the media.

Despite that, I maintain the campaign was a qualified success, at least until the 2005 general election. Supported by artist David Hockney, restaurateur Antony Worrall Thompson, and musician Joe Jackson, our message undoubtedly cut through.

In addition to interviews and articles, Joe wrote a letter to The Times that was co-signed by, among others, Stephen Fry, Bob Geldof, Simon Cowell, Chris Tarrant, Boris Johnson, Hockney and AWT. It was published the day before Joe shared a platform with health secretary John Reid at a fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference in September 2004, and we know Reid was aware of it because he said so.

Two weeks earlier Forest chairman Lord Harris and I had been summoned to a meeting with Reid and his chief adviser at the Department of Health and it could not have gone much better. Privately they even agreed with us that the threat of passive smoking had been exaggerated.

Other than that, the meeting was memorable for two reasons. First, it was scheduled for mid afternoon and that morning I had to give oral evidence to a Welsh Assembly committee (the Committee on Smoking in Public Places) in Cardiff. How I got back to London in time for the meeting with John Reid in Westminster I don’t know, but it summed up the frantic pace we were working at.

Second, we were instructed not to go public about the meeting, or tell journalists what was discussed. Within minutes of stepping out of the building, however, I received a call from the Press Association who had clearly been briefed about the meeting by civil servants (probably by one of John Reid’s advisors!) and the PA wanted a quote. Now that’s what I call news management!

Fair play to Reid, though. Under enormous pressure from the tobacco control lobby, Reid tried hard to find a compromise, hence the commitment in Labour’s 2005 manifesto to introduce a partial ban with exemptions for private members’ clubs and pubs that didn’t serve food. It wasn’t perfect but it wasn’t the blanket ban our opponents were demanding, and we considered it a reprieve, of sorts.

Unfortunately, following the 2005 election (another win for Labour), Reid was replaced as health secretary by Patricia Hewitt and a comprehensive ban was back on the table, encouraged partly by events in Scotland where the Scottish Executive became the first administration in the UK to introduce a nationwide workplace smoking ban.

We weren’t finished yet though and in September 2005 David Hockney famously joined us at the Labour Party conference in Brighton where he criticised the proposed ban in England and accused Labour ministers of being “boring” and “dreary”. (Cue headlines in multiple newspapers, national and local, plus interviews on television and radio.)

In January 2006, however, the die was cast when it was reported that MPs were to be given a free vote on the issue, thereby giving Labour MPs permission to ignore the party’s manifesto pledge to introduce only a partial ban:

Smokers' lobby group Forest attacked the "spineless and unprincipled" decision and said it still believed a partial ban was possible.

Director Simon Clark said: "The prime minister has surrendered to a group of anti-smoking fanatics, and Downing Street has shamelessly gone back on its commitment to ensure that some pubs and clubs are exempt from a smoking ban.”

On the eve of the vote we made one final attempt to persuade MPs to support a partial rather than a blanket ban. (By that stage the status quo was not on the table.) MPs of all parties were sent a package that included a letter, a briefing note, and one of our campaign ashtrays. Today only a handful remain and they serve as a reminder of an inglorious episode in Britain’s history when parliamentarians convinced themselves that imposing draconian legislation on small businesses, no matter the consequences, was acceptable.

After the vote it was reported that:

Prime Minister Tony Blair, Chancellor Gordon Brown and Home Secretary Charles Clarke all voted for a blanket ban. But Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, Defence Secretary John Reid and Education Secretary Ruth Kelly opposed it.

There was one final twist, albeit too late to influence MPs, when it was reported (in June 2006) that ‘A ban on smoking in public places is not justified by the risks to health from passive smoking, a committee of peers has said’. This, of course, was the message we had been pushing for years, so it probably wouldn’t have made much difference had the committee published their report six months earlier because, despite the scientific evidence suggesting otherwise, most MPs had long since convinced themselves that banning smoking in every pub and club in the country would save thousands of lives.

Likewise many journalists and broadcasters had fallen for the same anti-smoking propaganda, so we found it increasingly difficult to generate any further interest in the subject. As far as the media was concerned, the matter was done and dusted and it was time to move on to the next story. Meanwhile the anti-smoking lobby was already planning the next step.

See: MPs vote to ban smoking (Guardian/PA)
Smoking ban in all pubs and clubs (BBC News)
Peers attack public smoking ban (BBC News)

See also my Forest diary covering the years 2003-2004.