The bleakness continues. After a doom-laden address in the Downing Street garden, Keir Starmer has perpetuated the general sense that the fun is over by confirming that his government is looking at tougher rules around smoking in public places.
On Tuesday, I described the Prime Minister’s approach as that of “a headteacher lecturing kids who took muck-up day too far”; today, the headteacher has called rebellious pupils into his office for a sermon about the perils of smoking. Leaked reports in The Sun turned out to be true: Labour really is drawing up plans to extend the smoking ban to outside spaces, such as pub gardens and outdoor restaurants, as well as outside hospitals and sports venues.
The vibes of this move feel decidedly counter-productive. After a brief burst of exhilaration in the wake of the election, and national pride during the Olympics, there hasn’t been much in the way of optimism going around this summer, what with riots and spending cuts and the warning of even tougher economic times ahead. The speed of the switch from “Things can only get better” to “Things will get worst before they get better” is enough to give you whiplash. Starmer himself has a reputation for being boring (he doesn’t even have a favourite book and his main vice is watching football), but did he really need to kick off the first parliamentary term of his new Labour government by announcing war on pub gardens and nightclub smoking areas? Really?
I say this as someone who has never smoked or vaped. I have no skin – of the dermatological or roll-up kind – in this game, beyond a general sense of unease at personal freedoms being increasingly encroached upon and a liberal’s belief that, in general, people should be allowed to do pretty much as they please, so long as they’re not hurting anyone else. The “not hurting anyone else” bit is key. The indoor smoking ban of 2007 was easily justified on the basis that no one should be forced to breathe in second-hand smoke for prolonged periods in their place of work or in confined public places like bars or restaurants if they didn’t want to. That logic doesn’t follow when it comes to outside spaces. It feels a lot less about protecting people who don’t smoke than punishing those who do.
There’s the health argument, of course. Starmer said his “starting point on this is to remind everyone that over 80,000 people lose their lives every year because of smoking”, reminding the country that the NHS is “on its knees”. But we should be careful here. If persistent smokers are more likely to die early, the “cost” to the NHS of treating their smoking-related diseases should be balanced by the money saved when they do not require the kind of expensive long-term care that is increasingly crippling healthcare budgets as people live longer. It’s a bleak, morbid point to consider, but someone who dies of lung cancer at 65 will save the NHS significantly more money than someone who lives until 90, afflicted in the final decade of their life with dementia and a range of complex age-related conditions. And that’s before we even get on to social care. This isn’t the way politicians like to talk about healthcare – and rightly so. The utilitarian approach takes us to some very dark places very quickly. But if you’re going to put “cost to the NHS” on one side of a policy debate, it’s disingenuous not to consider the other side too.
The fact is, if the move to ban outdoor smoking is intended as a money-saving exercise, Starmer is likely to be disappointed. So is Rachel Reeves – and, indeed, Wes Streeting (desperate to find the funds to keep the NHS going). As a public health measure more generally, there may be some impact, but it’s worth keeping in mind that smoking rates are currently at historic lows as it is. What we’re doing right now is working. And even if it weren’t, Labour has already adopted Rishi Sunak’s pet legislation on banning today’s teenagers from ever being able to legally purchase tobacco products (another move backed by health professionals but viewed with suspicion by advocates of personal liberty who worry about the consequences of discriminating against legal adults by the year of their birth). If Labour does move ahead with this policy, there is a real risk of minimal public health benefit, at the expense of further damage to a hospitality sector that is already fighting for its life. Nigel Farage has warned “if they do this, it will be the death knell of the pub”. Frankly, he has a point. So do those flagging the pub garden and club smoking area as hotspots for tipsily meeting new people on a night out, although Starmer and Reeves probably don’t see curtailing flirtation as a massive flaw in their plan. (Labour, after all, happily went along with the Tories’ de facto sex ban during Covid.)
So if it there is neither a strong medical nor financial case for doing something that could cause economic and indeed social harm, why suggest you might do it? Depressingly, the answer is probably polls. It may be pointless, but punishing smokers is electorally very popular. A snap YouGov poll out today found that 58 per cent of people support the kind of measures Starmer laid on the table today, with only 35 opposing. Incredibly, 42 per cent would even support a ban on people being able to smoke in their own homes if they live in shared apartment buildings. These numbers back up YouGov’s previous research on the subject, as well as other surveys. In September 2023, More In Common found overwhelming support for Sunak’s plan to phase out smoking, regardless of how people voted in 2019. No wonder Starmer is committed to implementing it.
When money is tight, governments look for eye-catching policies that are cheap to implement but give the impression of action. The Conservatives were great at this – think of all the attention given to free speech rules for universities instead of actually trying to fix higher education, or rules of junk food advertising instead of getting to grips with social care, or criminalising nitrous oxide on the grounds of litter instead of coming up with a sensible, evidenced-based drug strategy. It’s easier to tinker around the edges with a policy the public like, even if it won’t have the real-world impact they expect, than it is to make tough choices that will upset everyone and take a long time to pay off. Labour learnt that from the Tories.
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