Keir Starmer confirms he is considering smoking ban in pub gardens in bid to ‘reduce burden’ on NHS
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/smoking-ban-outdoor-pub-gardens-keir-starmer/
by tylerthe-theatre
Keir Starmer confirms he is considering smoking ban in pub gardens in bid to ‘reduce burden’ on NHS
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/smoking-ban-outdoor-pub-gardens-keir-starmer/
by tylerthe-theatre
48 comments
Sounds like a great way to rid pubs of the burden of their customers.
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This sound more like trying to put a plaster on a festering wound.
haha what? they’re still gonna burden the NHS they’ll just be smoking elsewhere, let the people have a cig!
State overreach aside, I don’t buy into this reasoning. You’re just going to move smokers into different spaces, rather than get them to stop smoking.
Really just seems like a tokenistic measure, tinkering round the sides of the actual issues.
Anyone notice how when these politicians make decisions it’s almost exclusively at our expense?
I’ve got this crazy idea…If you want to reduce the burden on the NHS FUND IT!
Seriously there aren’t any more pressing issues that they should be looking at?
Just tax the fuck out of vapes. Every man and his dog’s doing it in any open or closed space (regardless of the signage) and fines won’t change anything clearly.
At least with tobacco ya know where to avoid it. Fkn toffee smell out of nowhere, however, is extremely disconcerting for some.
Don’t think he’s proposed one thing I like yet, but he seems to be proposing plenty I don’t.
I don’t smoke and I think this is stupid. This will either mean people will just smoke on the street and litter or they’ll just not come out which will slowly kill the pub trade.
So more buildings go on sale so those that lobby the government (and MP’s of course) can continue buying up the lot.
Absolute nonsense reasoning to justify something he wants to do on ideological grounds.
We’ve already banned it inside, this worked to protect other people from second hand smoke and was a sensible and legitimate reason. This current proposal is more evidence that this iteration of Labour is deeply authoritarian.
This isn’t even on the list of people’s priorities or concerns, also any health benefits won’t be seen for decades. People will smoke and drink at home instead which could damage the pub trade which means less in taxes.
Was this (like the £300 winter fuel payment cut) in the manifesto? I suspect not. If not then why not scrap customs controls with Europe by re-joining the Customs Union that’ll save a few quid as well for businesses and tax payers?
Smoking looks cool and I like seeing it. Let the people smoke.
Mental Health is one of the biggest burdens on the NHS, how about we focus on that and stop trying to nanny adults.
As someone who would probably benefit from this (the smell and second hand smoke makes me physically sick if I get a strong whiff of it)
I still think this is an overreach. I can just go inside as can most. I’d agree with a designated section so they can’t smoke outside the literal front/ back door (very irritating pet peeve) but a blanket ban on anywhere outside within the pubs victinity is too far
Why not ban drinking alcohol in the pub . That will help unburden the nhs too? Where does this crap end .
How about improving social care for the elderly. Re opening hospices and paying better wages for carers.
That would relieve some stress on the nhs
Smoking costs the NHS an additional £1.9bn per year. Tax revenues from Tobacco raise approximately £7bn per year.
This is not about public health, this is about the government controlling what you can do with your own body.
The trouble with this argument is that the tax and duty on tobacco more than pays the additional costs that the NHS says are caused. Recent figures are hard to find, but older ones showed something like five times as much raised as needed for smokers’ care. Smokers have become fewer, but duty charged has gone up.
There is a bigger case, perhaps, that there are more costs to society from fires, and lost workdays, but also smokers draw less pension and benefits, and the tobacco industry provides jobs.
As smokers disappear, the subsidy they are paying for the healthcare of non-smokers will have to be replaced somehow.
Yes Kier, banning people from smoking in pub gardens, where they are in a controlled and busy environments and where the drinks they buy are more expensive( and taxed) is really going to reduce strain on the NHS.
Smokers certainly won’t just be drinking more at home, with cheaper and stronger alcohol, causing a ruckus for the neighbors and being antisocial.
Of course, this will reduce strain on the NHS won’t it?, it won’t significantly destroy pubs profits, or isolate people further, or anything like that.
No, what’s important is that we reduce strain on the NHS by a marginal percentage, while we close down pubs and pump NHS users into the country like no tomorrow.
What utterly stupid nanny logic.
Here’s a suggestion for all the smokers then.
If this comes into effect, let’s harness our spite as a motivator and quit. All of us. On day one. All at once. We could male it a national campaign.
If they don’t want us smoking so badly, then they presumably don’t want the tax and duty from tobacco sales either.
That will add £8.8Bn overnight to the budget black hole. Let’s see how they like that.
So now everyone will have to go stand outside the front of the pub, where everyone has to walk past, instead of tucked away in a beer garden where people have the choice to sit elsewhere? Seems daft.
Is he going to exclude fat people from restaurants and take aways too in order to ‘Reduce the Burden on the NHS’?
So Rachel Freeze is just about to burden the NHS with some hypothermic old people, and yet a different bit of Govt wants to un-burden the NHS.
Seems idealism is in play, and not even consistently.
Cool just put people on pub corners to smoke cause they can’t in the garden
Is this a plan to kill the pub industry? They’re struggling enough as it is. Especially small, independently run pubs. People like a smoke when they’re drinking. Especially the people that spend the most time and money in pubs.
I love it when the gov announces authoritarian new laws that no one voted for or knew about before the election!
Really they just want people to DRINK less, therefore reducing the burden on the NHS.
While he’s at it, let’s ban bacon too, as obesity is a burden on the NHS. And diet cola, as aspartame is a carcinogen. What about cars, as the pollution is bad for our lungs? And social media, because of the mental health crisis?
OR we can let people live their own damn lives and not be authoritarian dickheads.
I can’t believe this is the hill he seriously wants to die on.
So many greater problems with this country and with the NHS than a cheeky ciggie in a beer garden.
Increase the NHS budget? Nah. Let’s just make some daft rule that will have no meaningful impact whatsoever.
This is the ultimate consequence of having an impossible-to-fund National Health Service: your health becomes the government’s business and they will pressure you to give up what they deem to be unhealthy habits by banning and prohibiting where they can. As heretical as this may be to many British people, it would be better to transition to a partly insurance-based system to give more choice to patients and reduce the role of the government of the day. Because unless you treat the NHS like your religion and worship it for ideological reasons, the current system just isn’t working.
I’m all for getting rid of smoking, but is there a direct link between the 80,000 people that die from smoking related illness and pub gardens?
I’d imagine that it’s heavy users smoking at work and home where these numbers come from. Reducing the burden on the NHS is going to have to come from dealing with the power users, not pub gardens.
If he was lowering taxes on the hospitality industry at the same time, I might believe it’s a good idea.
Just fund it properly. I don’t smoke, but smoking in beer gardens is fine. People need their pleasures, even if not everyone likes or does them.
Over twenty one thousand people either died or had serious injuries due to dangerous driving in 2022. Are we going to ban cars next?
I moved to the Netherlands and this reminds me of when the local government removed the “metal grate bins for cigarettes” that used to be at the bus stop and replaced them with tiles saying not to smoke here. And surrounded by cigarette butts everywhere.
If he really cared about the burden on the NHS he would take a long hard look at the amount of poison our supermarkets sell in addition to the junk food takeaways on every corner.
Banning smoking in pub gardens isn’t going to do much.
Banning drinking in pubs probably would though – how much NHS resource is spent fixing up all the lairy drunk people on the weekend?
I think this is just to help ease people into the smoking ban.
It’ll be weird in a few decades when a 31 year old can still keep smoking while the 30 year olds at the table can’t. If they have to go outside, it might make it seem a little less ridiculous. (to be clear, I don’t disagree with the policy or the ban! but it does paint quite a silly picture)
Feel like obesity is an easier problem to tackle than nicotine addiction.
You want to reduce the burden on the NHS charge fat people £500 × their BMI
He needs to “reduce the burden” on the NHS so he can bring in and give away our resources to more and more illegal immigrants without our say so.
To be fair, Sunak tried to implement significantly more restrictive smoking rules.
If you want to reduce the burden on the NHS from people who smoke, stop treating them for smoking related illnesses…?
Will just lead to more people binge drinking at home on the cheap so they can smoke
Tax vapes to hell too. Get rid of smoking outside any public place. It should be limited to homes only
Oh great, I’ll actually be able to sit outside at a pub again. Maybe I’ll start going back now.
If you really want to reduce the burden on NHS due to smoking, then just make buying cigarettes for people born after X year illegal. There are people that have been smoking for decades that will never quit, but young adults still can.
Focus on the support to help them quit, but first you need to get rid of easy access. Nobody smokes for fun, they do it because of other controllable factors in their life then become addicted. Or the idiots who think smoking/vaping makes them look cool.