Wes Streeting confirmed that the government has scrapped its plan to impose a smoking ban on pub gardens after the policy was leaked.
As first reported by The Sun in August, ministers were planning to ban smoking in outdoor restaurants, outside sports stadiums and hospitals as well as pub gardens – news which triggered a significant backlash from the hospitality sector.
Two months later, the government is still going ahead with Rishi Sunak’s plan to introduce a phase smoking ban in its Tobacco and Vapes Bill, making it illegal for anyone born after 2010 to legally buy tobacco products.
And Labour will still be banning smoking outside schools and hospitals to protect children and the most vulnerable.
But, the health secretary told broadcasters today that the decision to extend the ban to certain public areas was now going to be dropped.
LBC presenter Nick Ferrari asked what was behind the government’s change of heart, to which health secretary Streeting replied: “There’s only been a U-turn, Nick, because some scurrilous person leaked an internal government debate on this measure.
“One of the happy side-effects of a leak, [though] I would not encourage it.”
Ferrari replied: “If you believe in a policy then you stick with a policy, whether or not these damned journalists get in your way, Mr Streeting.”
Streeting said: “To be fair, both to your profession and on the debate we’ve had since that scurrilous leak, what we’re trying to do on public health is, yes, to take action which improves our health, wellbeing, and healthy life expectancy and reduces the cost and burden to the taxpayer and to the NHS.
“But also to do in a way that’s proportionate.”
He said the hospitality sector had “taken a real battering” in recent years, so he did not think “it was in anyone’s interest to worsen that situation”.
The presenter asked: “Had there not been a leak, would you have proceeded?”
The minister said: “I think we would have ended up consulting on it – and in a way, the leak brought forward that consultation because all the measures in the bill will be consulted on – that is our legal duty. ”
Vape flavours, displays and packaging are likely to be more restricted too, while a ban on the sale of single-use disposable vapes is already kicking in from next June in England and Wales.
Outdoor vaping bans are currently being considered by the government as one of many proposals set to be put up to public debate in the coming months.