Therese Coffey has been criticised for her links to the tobacco industry after it emerged the government could U-turn over a plan to tackle smoking.
The health secretary, who is known to enjoy a cigar, has previously accepted gifts and hospitality from the multi-billion pound tobacco giant Gallaher.
According to the MPs’ register of interests, Coffey accepted two tickets and hospitality from the company at the Chelsea Flower Show in May 2011, to the value of £1,132.80.
The Guardian reported that Coffey could ditch a pledge to publish a tobacco control plan, which has been carried out by Dr Javed Khan and sets out recommendations on getting the adult smoking rate down to five per cent by 2030.
This morning Coffey was unable to say definitively whether the plan would be published, telling Sky News: “I’m not aware of any targets being scrapped.
“My focus right now is on the ABCD [ambulances, backlog, care, doctors and dentists].
“There’s quite a lot of prevention programmes already underway and I will be of course looking at many of these in more detail.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said it was “inaccurate” to suggest that the tobacco control plan had been scrapped.
It said the government remained “committed” to its smoke-free ambition by 2030.
“We are currently considering the wide range of recommendations set out in the Khan review and how best to take these forward,” a spokesperson said.
“We will set out our next steps for the plan in due course.”
In 2010, Coffey was one of 77 backbench Tory MPs to vote in favour of a bill that would have relaxed the smoking ban in pubs and private members’ clubs.
She also voted against banning smoking in cars containing anyone aged under 18, a policy that has been law since 2015.
A source close to Coffey said her declarations had all been made properly and in the usual way and that all her votes were on record.
But a Labour source told HuffPost UK: “You have to question whether Therese Coffey is up to the job when she doesn’t know the law set by her own department. How clueless can you get?
“Having enjoyed the hospitality of big tobacco, she is now choking off an anti-tobacco plan that could save thousands of lives — it stinks.”
The health secretary today defended her opposition to the ban on smoking in cars with children present, telling LBC’s Nick Ferrari she didn’t think it was “the right thing to be telling parents how to handle the situation”.
She then admitted that she did not know what the current law was, saying: “I think you’ll find that the law...I can’t recall now if the law changed or not, I think it probably did.”
She added: “You’re asking me something from a decade ago … I’m not quite sure where the obsession with smoking has come today.”
Asked about her views on the smoke-free target, Coffey said: “I’m a government minister so if that’s government policy today then that’s what I agree with. I don’t have personal views on these sorts of matters.”
Following Coffey’s media round, Labour’s shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, tweeted: “The health secretary is ‘unaware’ of a major plank of her own government’s health policy because she spends little time in her own department and most of her time firefighting in Number 10.
“Clueless and hopeless.”
He added: “The Conservatives are on an ideological mission to rip up common sense measures that benefit public health and ease demands on the NHS. The irony is that ditching prevention will end up costing the taxpayer more in the long run.”