How would an outdoor smoking ban work – and who would be part of the ‘smoke-free generation’?

Published

3 months ago

August 29, 2024

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The government has said it is considering banning smoking in pub gardens and other outdoor areas.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer confirmed the proposal is in the works on Thursday, following reports in The Sun.

He says the measures are aimed at reducing the 80,000 preventable deaths from smoking in the UK each year.

Labour also wants to continue with the previous government’s plans to create a ‘smoke-free generation’ by banning the sale of cigarettes in the future to anyone 14 or under.

While details of the new plans are still in the works, here’s what we know so far and how the ban might work.

How would the outdoor ban work?

Smoking has been illegal in enclosed public places and workplaces since 2007 in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland – and since 2006 in Scotland.

The current bans do not cover vapes.

Breaking the law on smoking in workplaces carries a £200 maximum fine in England, Wales and Northern Ireland – and £50 in Scotland. Businesses can be given penalties of up to £2,500 for failing to enforce the rules.

An outdoor ban would likely apply the same rules to most outdoor spaces – including some parks, all pub gardens, outdoor restaurants, sports venues, and areas outside nightclubs and hospitals.

Details on all the venues covered by the proposal and what the fines would be are yet to be released.

Why has the ban been proposed?

When asked to confirm the outdoor ban rumours, the prime minister said: “My starting point on this is to remind everyone that over 80,000 people lose their lives every year to smoking, that’s a preventable death, it’s a huge burden on the NHS and of course to the taxpayer”.

He promised to “take decisions in this space” to “reduce the burden on the NHS and the taxpayer”.

Smoking is the UK’s biggest preventable killer, causing around one in four cancer deaths and leading to 64,000 deaths per year in England, according to Dr Javed Khan’s 2022 review into making smoking obsolete.

It is hoped the plans will prevent tens of thousands of deaths and save the NHS billions of pounds.

Will it work?

Hospitality businesses are sceptical the plans are enforceable, however.

Reem Ibrahim, acting director of communications at the Institute of Economic Affairs thinktank, said they would be “another nail in the coffin for the pub industry”.

“Pubs and other private venues should be able to determine their own outdoor smoking rules – just as they should be allowed to decide whether to play music, serve food or show football on TV,” he added.

Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UKHospitality echoed his concerns, saying the plans will also affect hotels, cafes, and restaurants.

She pointed to the number of pub closures after the indoor smoking bans of 2006 and 2007 – and called for businesses to be consulted before any measures are implemented.

What about 14s and under?

Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government proposed to ban anyone who was born on or after 1 January 2009 from buying cigarette or tobacco products.

This would effectively raise the legal age for buying cigarettes in England by one year every year, until it applies to the whole population.

Labour has said it will continue with the plans, laying out the Tobacco and Vapes Bill in the King’s Speech in July.

This will also include limits on the sale and marketing of vapes – but exact details have not been published yet.

As with previous plans, smoking would not be criminalised. Instead, the phased approach means those who are already old enough to buy cigarettes will be able to carry on doing so.

Older people, however, may have to carry ID if they want to buy cigarettes when the law changes.

Will the under-14 ban stop young people smoking?

There is “excellent evidence” increasing the legal age for buying tobacco from 16 to 18 in the UK “substantially reduced smoking prevalence”, according to Jamie Brown, professor of behavioural science at University College London (UCL).

“This provides good reason to expect this measure to have a similar impact,” he said.

Simon Clark, director of the smokers’ group Forest, said the ban was “creeping prohibition” and will not work.

“Anyone who wants to smoke will buy tobacco abroad or from illicit sources,” he said.

Are there any similar bans around the world?

New Zealand passed a similar ban, but it was repealed by the country’s new coalition government before it came into force.

How much of the population will be affected?

In 2022, 12.9% of the adult UK population (6.4 million people) were smokers, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

As for the ‘smoke-free generation’, 21% of the UK population is currently not allowed to buy cigarettes due to their age.

But assuming the age of sale rises to 19 in 2027, and increases by one year every year after that, the proportion of the population below the age of sale will reach 30% in 2035, 40% in 2044 and 50% in 2053.

The ban only covers England – what about the other UK nations?

The legal smoking age is a devolved issue, so the governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland set their own laws around it.

Depending on what laws the other nations adopt, there could be a situation where is it illegal for someone to buy cigarettes or smoke in pub gardens in England, but legal across the border.

What are the next steps?

In the King’s Speech at the opening of the new parliament, Labour said the Tobacco and Vapes Bill would be introduced by the end of this year.

As with all legislation, it will need to be approved in the House of Commons and the House of Lords before being written into law.

If the government wants to stop people smoking, why not just ban cigarettes?

Banning tobacco outright would not immediately stop the UK’s 6.4 million smokers from smoking, Dr Sarah Jackson from UCL explains.

“Because cigarettes are so highly addictive, many people would be unable or unwilling to do so, and a ban would likely drive demand towards the illicit market,” she said.

“Gradually increasing the age of sale over time… will be helpful in discouraging young people from taking up smoking in the first place.”

What about vaping?

This government and the previous one have both vowed to crack down on vaping among children.

Vaping is “rightly” used as a tool to quit smoking, a spokesperson said, but they added: “The health advice is clear, if you don’t smoke, don’t vape and children should never vape”.

The name of the new bill reveals limits will be imposed on e-cigarettes.

This could mean flavours being restricted and tighter regulations on packaging and point-of-sale displays.

The ONS reported a rise in vaping among young people, with 15.5% of 16 to 24-year-olds reporting vaping daily or on occasion in 2022, up from 11.1% in 2021.

UK

UK economy grows by 0.1% between July and September – slower than expected

Published

2 hours ago

November 15, 2024

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UK economy grows by 0.1% between July and September - slower than expected

The UK economy grew by 0.1% between July and September, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

However, despite the small positive GDP growth recorded in the third quarter, the economy shrank by 0.1% in September, dragging down overall growth for the quarter.

The growth was also slower than what had been expected by experts and a drop from the 0.5% growth between April and June, the ONS said.

Economists polled by Reuters and the Bank of England had forecast an expansion of 0.2%, slowing from the rapid growth seen over the first half of 2024 when the economy was rebounding from last year’s shallow recession.

And the metric that Labour has said it is most focused on – the GDP per capita, or the economic output divided by the number of people in the country – also fell by 0.1%.

Reacting to the figures, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said: “Improving economic growth is at the heart of everything I am seeking to achieve, which is why I am not satisfied with these numbers.

“At my budget, I took the difficult choices to fix the foundations and stabilise our public finances.

“Now we are going to deliver growth through investment and reform to create more jobs and more money in people’s pockets, get the NHS back on its feet, rebuild Britain and secure our borders in a decade of national renewal,” Ms Reeves added.

The sluggish services sector – which makes up the bulk of the British economy – was a particular drag on growth over the past three months. It expanded by 0.1%, cancelling out the 0.8% growth in the construction sector.

The UK’s GDP for the most recent quarter is lower than the 0.7% growth in the US and 0.4% in the Eurozone.

The figures have pushed the UK towards the bottom of the G7 growth table for the third quarter of the year.

It was expected to meet the same 0.2% growth figures reported in Germany and Japan – but fell below that after a slow September.

The pound remained stable following the news, hovering around $1.267. The FTSE 100, meanwhile, opened the day down by 0.4%.

The Bank of England last week predicted that Ms Reeves’s first budget as chancellor will increase inflation by up to half a percentage point over the next two years, contributing to a slower decline in interest rates than previously thought.

Announcing a widely anticipated 0.25 percentage point cut in the base rate to 4.75%, the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) forecast that inflation will return “sustainably” to its target of 2% in the first half of 2027, a year later than at its last meeting.

The Bank’s quarterly report found Ms Reeves’s £70bn package of tax and borrowing measures will place upward pressure on prices, as well as delivering a three-quarter point increase to GDP next year.

UK

Meeting the deeply radical anti-tax group that is ‘growing in popularity’

Published

2 hours ago

November 15, 2024

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Meeting the deeply radical anti-tax group that is 'growing in popularity'

“If you are a member of something, it means you’ve accepted membership. Anything with ‘ship’ on the end, it’s giving you a clue: it’s telling you that’s maritime law. That means you’ve entered into a contract.”

This isn’t your standard legal argument and it is becoming clear that I am dealing with an unusual way of looking at the world.

I’m in the library of a hotel in Leicestershire, a wood-panelled room with warm lighting, and Pete Stone, better known as Sovereign Pete, is explaining how “the system” works. Mr Stone is in his mid-50, bald with a goatee beard and wearing, as he always does for public appearances, a black T-shirt and black jeans.

With us are six other people, mainly dressed in neat jumpers. They’re members of the Sovereign Project (SP), an organisation Mr Stone founded in 2020, which, he says, now has more than 20,000 paying members.

As arcane as this may sound, it represents a worldview that is becoming more influential – and causing problems for authorities. Loosely, they’re defined as “sovereign citizens” or “freemen on the land”.

Their fundamental point is that nobody is required to obey laws they have not specifically consented to – especially when it comes to tax. They have hundreds of thousands of followers in the UK across platforms including YouTube, Facebook and Telegram.

Increasingly, they are coming into conflict with governments and the law. Sovereign citizens have ended up in the High Court in recent months, challenging the legalities of tax bills and losing on both occasions.

In October, four people were sentenced to prison for the attempted kidnapping of an Essex coroner, who they saw as acting unlawfully. The self-appointed “sheriffs” attempted to force entry to the court, one of them demanding: “You guys have been practising fraud!”

The Sovereign Project is not connected to any of those cases, nor does it promote any sort of political action, let alone violence.

Instead, they are focused on issues like questioning the obligation to pay taxes, as Mr Stone explains, referencing the feudal system that operated in the Middle Ages.

“Do you know about the feudal system when people were slaves and were forced to pay tax?” he asks.

“Now, unless the feudal system still operates today, and we still have serfs and slaves, then the only way that you can pay taxes is to have a contract, you have to agree to it and consent to it.”

Another member, Karl Deans, a 43-year-old property developer who runs the SP’s social media, says: “We’re not here to dodge tax.”

Local government tends to be a target beyond just demands for tax. Mr Stone speaks of “council employee crimes”.

I ask whether, considering the attempted kidnapping in Essex, there is a danger that people will listen to these accusations of crimes by councils and act on them.

“Well that’s proved,” Mr Stone says. “We only deal with facts.”

Evidence suggests this approach is becoming an issue for councils across the UK, as people search online for ways to avoid paying tax.

Sky News analysis shows that out of 374 council websites covering Great Britain, at least 172 (46%) have pages responding to sovereign citizen arguments around avoiding paying council tax. They point out that liability for council tax is not dependent on consent, or a contract, and instead relies on the Local Government Finance Act 1992, voted on by Parliament.

But the Sovereign Project’s worldview extends beyond council tax. It is deeply anti-establishment, at times conspiratorial. Stone suggests the summer riots may have been organised by the government.

“The sovereign fraternity operates above all of this,” he says. “We look down at the world like a chessboard. We see what’s going on.”

He explains that, really, the UK government isn’t actually in control: there is a shadow government above them.

“These are the people who control government,” he explains.

“A lot of people say this could be the crown council of 13, this could be a series of Italian families.”

Professor Christine Sarteschi, an expert in sovereign citizens at Chatham University, Pittsburgh, says she’s worried about the threat sovereign citizens may pose to the rule of law, especially in the US where guns are readily available.

“The movement is growing and that’s evidenced by seeing it in different countries and hearing about different cases. The concern is that they will become emboldened and commit acts of violence,” she says.

“Because sovereigns truly believe in their ideas and if they feel very aggrieved by, you know, the government or whomever they think is oppressing them or controlling them… they can become emotionally involved.

“That emotional involvement sometimes leads to violence in some cases, or the belief that they have the power to attempt to overthrow a government in some capacity.”

Much of this seems to be based on an underlying and familiar frustration at the state of this country and of the world.

Mr Stone echoes some of the characteristic arguments also made by the right, that there is “two-tier policing”, that refugees arriving in the UK are “young men of fighting age”, that the government is using “forced immigration to destroy the country”.

Another SP member, retired investment banker David Hopgood, 61, says: “I firmly believe it is the true Englishman – and woman – of this country – that has the power to unlock this madness that’s happening in the West.

“We’ve got the Magna Carta – all these checks and balances. We just need to pack up, go down to Parliament and say: It’s time to dismiss you. You’re not fit for purpose.”

The members of the Sovereign Project are unfailingly patient and polite in explaining their understanding of the world.

But there is no doubt they hold a deeply radical view, one that is apparently growing in popularity.

UK

Wes Streeting ‘crossed the line’ by opposing assisted dying in public, says Labour peer Harriet Harman

Published

2 hours ago

November 15, 2024

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Wes Streeting 'crossed the line' by opposing assisted dying in public, says Labour peer Harriet Harman

Wes Streeting “crossed the line” by opposing assisted dying in public and the argument shouldn’t “come down to resources”, a Labour peer has said.

Speaking on Sky News’ Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Baroness Harriet Harman criticised the health secretary for revealing how he is going to vote on the matter when it comes before parliament later this month.

MPs are being given a free vote, meaning they can side with their conscience and not party lines, so the government is supposed to be staying neutral.

But Mr Streeting has made clear he will vote against legalising assisted dying, citing concerns end-of-life care is not good enough for people to make an informed choice, and that some could feel pressured into the decision to save the NHS money.

He has also ordered a review into the potential costs of changing the law, warning it could come at the expense of other NHS services if implemented.

Baroness Harman said Mr Streeting has “crossed the line in two ways”.

👉 Click here to listen to Electoral Dysfunction on your podcast app 👈

“He should not have said how he was going to vote, because that breaches neutrality and sends a signal,” she said.

“And secondly… he’s said the problem is that it will cost money to bring in an assisted dying measure, and therefore he will have to cut other services.

“But paradoxically, he also said it would be a slippery slope because people will be forced to bring about their own death in order to save the NHS money. Well, it can’t be doing both things.

“It can’t be both costing the NHS money and saving the NHS money.”

Baroness Harman said the argument “should not come down to resources” as it is a “huge moral issue” affecting “only a tiny number of people”.

She added that people should not mistake Mr Streeting for being “a kind of proxy for Keir Starmer”.

“The government is genuinely neutral and all of those backbenchers, they can vote whichever way they want,” she added.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has previously expressed support for assisted dying, but it is not clear how he intends to vote on the issue or if he will make his decision public ahead of time.

The cabinet has varying views on the topic, with the likes of Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood siding with Mr Streeting in her opposition but Energy Secretary Ed Miliband being for it.

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is being championed by Labour backbencher Kim Leadbeater, who wants to give people with six months left to live the choice to end their lives.

Under her proposals, two independent doctors must confirm a patient is eligible for assisted dying and a High Court judge must give their approval.

The bill will also include punishments of up to 14 years in prison for those who break the law, including coercing someone into ending their own life.

MPs will debate and vote on the legislation on 29 November, in what will be the first Commons vote on assisted dying since 2015, when the proposal was defeated.