Smoking Police?

The Conservative Party says this morning that Government guidance to local authorities will create a new layer of smoking inspectors and risk turning employers into "secret police" when the smoking ban comes into effect on July 1st. The guidance is for local authorities who are responsible for enforcing the ban, levying fines and collecting (and keeping) the revenue and says:

• Bosses to act as smoking spies: Businesses are to be instructed to implement “management controls” of keeping written records of any person smoking. A template Smoking Incident Form is provided for firms to fill out, and firms are to be told to pass the detailed records of incidents to town halls “to inform them of the occurrence”.
• Fines by town hall inspectors: These Smoking Incident Forms will provide sufficient evidence for town halls to levy £50 fines on anyone who smokes. If any individual fails to provide assistance or information to the state inspectors when requested, they in turn can be fined £1,000.
• Snoopers’ charter: The guidance explicitly authorises the use of uncover and “intrusive” surveillance – including the use of snooping devices like hidden cameras. It asserts that the Human Rights Act and Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act provide no rights against the snooping.
• Inspectors’ power of entry: The legislation gives town hall inspectors forcible rights of entry into any premises where the public may be. The guidance encourages “proactive inspections”, “to generate lists from their premises database”, and to particularly target small and medium firms.
• ‘Stasi State’ raids by police: Town halls are told to draw up an “enforcement protocol”, and get local police officers to assist in “targeting individuals as part of a pre-arranged programmed activity”. Yet this will inevitably displace the police from tackle violent crime, car crime and burglary.

Eric Pickles, the Shadow Local Government Minister, says:

“Experience from abroad shows that smoking bans are largely self-enforcing. Yet rather than relying on common sense and peer pressure, I am concerned that Labour Ministers are giving the go-ahead to a snoopers’ charter of heavy-handed surveillance and zealous inspections to impose the smoking ban on England. This is a municipal sledgehammer to crack a nut. 

"Step by step, Labour Ministers are introducing a Stasi State – giving ever stronger powers for state officials to spy and enter private property, and now, even asking bosses to act as secret police.

“Councils are under such intense financial pressures due to fiddled funding and new burdens, that I fear that a town hall Taliban could be tempted to use the easy target of a smoking ban as a cash cow. Minsters would be better to encourage councils to target their limited resources on serious risks to public welfare like under-age drinking and commercial fly-tipping.“

Comments

[Sean Fear]

Almost 50% of local authorities are now under outright Conservatives control. I hope that they will all decide that their residents have more for pressing priorities than chasing smokers.

[Bill]

Sean is right. What is about Labour governments? Their natural instinct is to restrict freedom and proscribe others activities.

[Mary Hinge]

Sean - certainly North Somerset do, if you read today's link to their local paper.

[Michael McGowan]

Sean, I am sure that it will only be a matter of minutes before ChangetoLibdem responds to your e-mail to tell us that it is essential to support Labour's petty puritan diktats in order to show that the Tories have "changed" and that this is the law of the land and we must therefore enforce it however perverse and unpleasant and that ConservativeHome is a "cold house" for modern compassionate Conservatives....

[Comstock]

I'm in favour of a smoking ban in pubs etc, but this is completely OTT

[Perdix]

Not really surprised to see the daily unfounded, twisted logic attack on the Tories from Michael McGowan. The guy really is poison.

[Ash Faulkner]

The ban should be repealed. It is the tyranny of the majority, and it's unacceptable in a nation that considers itself to be free.

For the record, I don't smoke - never have, never will.

[Michael McGowan]

It wasn't an attack on the Tories, Perdix. It was an attack on Cultural Marxists posing as Tories....of whom there are many, judging by your post. True to form, you resort immediately to abuse and vitriol from behind the shield of anonymity, having nothing else to offer.

[Matt Davis]

Isn't it a shame that our Parliamentarians didn't realise the stalinist nature of this legislation before some of them supported it in parliament.

[Sean Fear]

Among the nastier aspects of this is that an allegation by an employer (which might be completely malicious) is to be regarded as sufficient proof to impose a fine.

[Sean Fear]

Matt Davis, any Conservative MP who voted for this (and there were quite a lot) should hang his or her head in shame.

[david]

I was rather dissapointed that no party took up my suggestion that smokers should be executed on sight. Roll on Liberation Day July the First, at last we are liberated from the smokers who have polluted our clean air for centuries!!

[Sean Fear]

Your life must be very empty, David.

[Ali Gledhill]

This is deeply unsettling for those of us who support a smoking ban because of liberal principles - one should have the freedom not to inhale smoke passively. Playing that off against a police state is not a welcome development to necessary legislation.

[Bill]

Well Ali, what do you expect with New Labour. It's called the Law of "Intended" Consequences. Their whole raison d'etre is to stick their noses in other peoples business. The idea of getting off peoples backs is anathema to New Labour. And for all their liberal connotations, I am not sure the Cameroons would be much better.

[ACT]

Is Cameron pledged to repeal this ban? No. Is Cameron any different to Blair and Nanny Hewitt? Not in this regard.

[Chris Hughes]

Well, the ban was passed, measures need to be taken to ensure it is enforced. I don't understand the surprise..? No one who opposed this ban was under any illusion that this would lead to more Nineteen Eighty-Four style lifestyle police, because the law itself is of this nature. Don't start complainng your hands are getting dirty when you have to shovel crap

If you believe lighting naturally grown tobacco leaves inside your own business premise (regardless of whether you actually own said premise, or whether any of your peers object) should be a crime against the State, then presumably you won't have a problem with a 'Snoopers Charter' or 'Stasi State' raids by police

[Peter Turner]

I am a non smoker yet I find this concerted witch-hunt against smokers not only unpleasant but pathological. It is worse than McCarthyism.

[Sean Fear]

Peter Turner - I'm not a smoker either. But I really can't get worked up about someone lighting up a cigarette or cigar, on a piece of private property, with the consent of the owner of that property. I really do have bigger fish to fry, and so should the government, IMHO.

100 years ago, our government concerned itself with running a quarter of the World. Now it concerns itself with smoking bans, breastfeeding, and the management of private members' clubs.

[Michael McGowan]

Sean, you are right....although bear in mind that 100 years ago, the Demon Drink was the obsession of the soi disant enlightened. Finger-wagging, busybodying and tutting is the hallmark of the polenta-eating classes. Labour, the Lib Dems and many Tories take positive delight in passing laws to criminalise what they regard as the depraved lifestyles of others. As ever, the legal profession is at the forefront, just as they were when it came to shutting theatres under Cromwell.

Smoking cannabis is of course entirely safe and not remotely connected to psychosis...

[Ed]

Any government that can make a religion of harassing smokers
and calling it "healthy" can do the same with any activity. This tyranny was dictated by the World Health Organization which is a mortal enemy of personal freedom of any kind.

Freedom lovers of the world,unite! Smoker or not.

[Sean Fear]

Well, I think drinkers are next in line, Michael. The trick is to persuade people that they are "victims" who need to be saved from themselves.

[Erasmus]

Ed: "Freedom lovers of the world,unite! Smoker or not."

On the 1 July I will be a great deal freer to pursue my desire to breathe clean air

Sean Fear: "Well, I think drinkers are next in line, Michael."

Drinkers don't go around tipping alcohol down other people's throats

[Bill]

Re "Drinkers don't go around tipping alcohol down other people's throats". So what, it won't stop them attacking boozers (unless of course they are violent vomiting chavs rendering our streets lawless at night). They are OK because they bring more revenue in and are anti-social. But shame on you if you want to drink cheap wine at home when it's not safe to go out.

[Sean Fear]

"On the 1 July I will be a great deal freer to pursue my desire to breathe clean air"

Well, I find that rather hard to believe. Overwhelmingly, air pollution is caused by car exhausts, central heating, and industrial emissions. Cigarette smoke is insignificant by comparison.

To be seriously incommoded by other peoples' cigarette smoke, you really need to make an effort to seek out smokers.

[Yogi]

It is all about jobs. The latest round of Public Sector bonanza is coming to an end. Now there are more opportunities to create extra jobs to Police the ban, then levy extra taxes to pay for the Police and a bit more because these people need to be trained.
There will be more of these idiotic policies from the Stalinistic state.

[Adam Tugwell]

It is truly frightening to see the number of initiatives that this Government is providing that pile yet more pressure on the overburdened budgets of Local Authorities.

Not wishing to sound cynical here, but I suppose that apparent financial mismanagement or dificiency would be a damned good excuse to do away with a tier or two of Government wouldn't it?

[Richard]

This whole mess could be dealt with by allowing the owner of the property in question to decide whether or not smoking is allowed on the premises.

[Erasmus]

"To be seriously incommoded by other peoples' cigarette smoke, you really need to make an effort to seek out smokers."

No, you need to be waiting on a station platform when someone comes along sits down next to you and lights up. You are then faced with the delightfully libertarian choice of putting up with their smoke or getting up and going elsewhere.

Alternatively, you just need to go to a pub with your colleagues after work. Again you have a choice: put up with a smoky atmosphere -- or refuse to socialise with your workmates.

These are everyday situations, but from next month they disappear into history. So yes, I do feel freer.

As for noxious car fumes, one day these will be banned too.

[a-tracy]

Sean - you forgot the patio heaters!

So imagine you're a business owner, all of your none smoking signs are up to date and clear for everyone to see, the policy manual has been updated, memo's sent out to all employees, the policy has been clearly communicated to all new workers, reminders are on the notice board and reminders are in the newsletter and yet you find someone contravening the smoking policy. Is this gross negligence and a sackable offence or not? If you don't stop them you're the one facing upto a £2500 fine.

[Sean Fear]

Curiously enough Erasmus, I never seem to suffer from those problems. I seem to be able to avoid smoky pubs, and one person smoking a cigarette next to me in the open air really doesn't affect my quality of life very much. I expect that my experience is the experience of most non-smokers who are honest with themselves.

Unwanted music is much more irritating.

[Michael McGowan]

Sean, people who want to run other people's lives will always find a perceived source of "harm" to curtail others' freedoms. With alcohol, the pretext will be that drinking too much imposes a burden on the NHS.

[Erasmus]

Clearly you have a greater tolerance for other people's noxious emissions than I do, Sean.

But I agree with you that leaky ipods etc are a curse

[William Norton]

I'm thinking of founding a group called BIGOT (Banning Items through Government-Organised Tyranny) which will campaign for the government to ban things.

We at BIGOT will not rest nor cease from our fight until we have successfully forced the govmt to introduce an immediate ban, backed up by six months' jail sentences, fines of not less than £10,000 and a high-profile expensive public information programme organised by a tax-payer funded quango of which I shall be the chairman AND on which all of my friends will be commissioners on at least £67,000 pa + expenses + a free bicycle at Christmas.

More CCTV is needed as a matter of urgency. 24/7. Think of the children.

I haven't decided what I want to ban yet, but I don't think that really matters. You're a social nobody these days unless you're campaigning to ban something. All the obvious targets for a swingeing irrational clampdown (tobacco, alcohol, fox-hunting, global warming, adoption agencies etc etc) have been taken by other groups, and I would welcome any suggestions from fellow readers.

The other night some chap in the pub [and they'll be shutting that any day soon] mentioned that he thought people who wore woollen tanktops always looked a bit peeky and ill. I might start with them.

STOP THE TANKTOP TERROR! WE DEMAND ACTION ON LETHAL KNITWEAR NOW!

[Sean Fear]

Oh, I think we can find some useful targets, William. Anglers, people playing dangerous sports, sellers of chocolate bars and crisps, people who haven't got FENSA certificates, etc. etc.

[Bill]

Sean

You include amongst your perhaps not so ironic list of potential targets for Banning Items through Government-Organised Tyranny sellers of chocolate bars. Of course the great Chocolate Orange Inspector has already touched, albeit tangentially, on that subject.

[William Norton]

We at BIGOT have just received the results of some specially-commissioned research from the University of South Mimms Service Station. And it makes shocking reading which will chill your blood.

Apparently 100% of domestic accidents take place in the home.

Now some woolly-liberal surrender monkeys would say that we can deal with this through the medium of public awareness campaigns and compulsory lessons in the national curriculum to make sure our kids don't grow up in ignorance of the dangers of tin openers.

We at BIGOT are not prepared to appease culinary anarchy and we say NO COMPROMISE WITH HOUSEHOLD HORROR. Clearly, the only way to stamp out the peril of domestic injury in the home is to ban homes.

Later today I will be launching an on-line petition at my new website www.heresanotherstupididea.org demanding the immediate demolition of every potentially lethal dwelling-house - without compensation.

You know it makes sense. Could you look your children in the eye if you didn't support us?

[Jonathan Sheppard]

This Government do have some great priorities - it will come to pass that you will be more likely fined for lighting up than you will for habitually shoplifting which keeps getting downgraded as a crime.

[Bill]

They and their agents film us on cctv, they film our houses from the air, they will be able to enter our houses for revaluation purposes and god knows what else, they want ID cards and a digital data base (accessible across departments) to mention just a few unwarranted intrusions. They treat us as if we are all potential "criminals". Meanwhile real criminality in the form of violent crime goes through the roof, they won't build prisons, they lose prisoners, and at any one time with our open borders they don't know who is in the country.

[Curly Peterson]

I am enjoying enormously all these smokers whining and whingeing about the impending new law.

For the entire 53 years of my life I have been unable to exercise the freedom of going about my lawful occasions without forcibly having to ingest someone else's carcinogen-bearing used tobacco smoke which makes my clothes smell and makes me nauseous and unable to enjoy the simple pleasure of taking a pint of best at a pub.

Smokers are selfish, overbearing, rude, dirty, smelly people who are determined to force their filthy habit on the rest of us, come what may.

Well now the boot is firmly on the other foot. I for one cannot wait to see the look of misery on the face of these obnoxious people as they struggle to satisfy their addiction in some lean-to at the back of a pub when the temperature is down to -5 deg C as I quietly enjoy my pint inside and relish pay-back time.

Smokers talk about freedom a lot. But it is always their freedom, never anyone else's. Get used to having to defer to other people for a change.

[William Norton]

Curly: bravo. In fact, tomorrow belongs to you, doesn't it?

[Machiavelli's Understudy]

It's not just Labour who pose a danger. If anything, the danger has passed, with responsibility now being passed to local authorities.

As has been pointed out, around half of local authorities are under Conservative control. It's the antics of amateurish 'municipal Tories' that we ought to be concerned about now. The sort who don't have a Conservative bone in their body, but all the hunger for interference and control that Labour has.

[Bill]

Whilst I also do not like cigarette smoke, I do think that Curly Peterson's post is somewhat over the top to wit inter alia: "Smokers are selfish, overbearing, rude, ...." and "I for one cannot wait to see the look of misery on the face of these obnoxious people".

And I wonder which pleasure of his will shortly be denied by this authoritarian government.

[Sean Fear]

"For the entire 53 years of my life I have been unable to exercise the freedom of going about my lawful occasions without forcibly having to ingest someone else's carcinogen-bearing used tobacco smoke which makes my clothes smell and makes me nauseous and unable to enjoy the simple pleasure of taking a pint of best at a pub."

For the entire 40 years of my life, I've been able to go about my "lawful occasions" without troubling terribly much about other peoples' cigarette smoke.

"Smokers are selfish, overbearing, rude, dirty, smelly people"

Kindred spirits of yours, then.

[Downsize the NHS]

Talk is cheap. What are the Tories actually going to pledge to do about this latest police state fascist tyranny?

Why are there a bunch of fascist Gestapo fans on this supposed Tory site?

[Og]

The suggestion above that chocolate bars might be in line for BIGOT treatment is ironic, given the huge fortunes made by the Rowntrees, Cadburys and other puritanical Quakers who imagined a century or two ago that the rise of chocoholism would wean the common man off the evil bottle.....

What I want to know is how many Stasi smoke inspectors will be on the government payroll, and how much this is all going to cost?

[John]

Curly,

Well I'm sure if the rest of your views are as moderate as your views on smokers then you certainly will enjoy a quiet pint on the 1st of July.

There will be you and the barman in the pub(and I suspect he or she will choose to go and 'change a barrel')

[Downsize the NHS]

Which party does "Curley" support?

This kind of fascism suggests the BNP

[Bill]

I've reached an age now when I've become to appreciate why my father didn't frequent pubs.

[Chelloveck]

So we'll have the smoking police and warnings on alcohol, but Cameron won't seek to stop this slide into authoritarianism by repealing these new rules because that would be "bring backery".

Cameron should be consistent with his pledge to repeal ID cards (that's bring backery too remember) by pledging to repeal the warnings on alcohol and these authoritarian anti-smoking rules.

If he did that, I'd vote for him but I can't help but fear that he is as bad, and is too afraid of likely Labour attacks on him for being "pro smoking, anti health" blah blah and the potential media fall-out from his new pc friends to do anything about it.

[Downsize the NHS]

Chelloveck my theory is that the top Tories have actually become POLITICALLY CORRECT!

How can this be? Can anybody explain?

Id like to see an explanation from a supporter of the present leadership.

[Bill]

I think you are right, Downsize. There were so useless in opposition that they just decided to rollover.

[John Allen]

Am I alone in thinking that every day that Blair is in charge is another April fools day?

Cannot every Conservative controlled Authority just ignore this madness?

Smile, you'r on camera and the fine will follow automatically.

[John Allen]

Am I alone in thinking that every day that Blair is in charge is another April fools day?

Cannot every Conservative controlled Authority just ignore this madness?

Smile, you'r on camera and the fine will follow automatically.

[Curly]

I wish to publicly disassociate myself from all comments made by one Curly Peterson, who has the nerve to choose half of my moniker to make his/her opinions!

I strongly suggest that most of these minions trained by our local authorities will not be needed, the British smoking and non smoking public have enough reason and responsibility to police the smoking ban without the aid of a publicly funded secret police force.

[William Norton]

Poor traffic control in supermarket aisles. That's the real evil facing the country at the moment: we should ban that.

I mean, haven't you ever been annoyed by some idiotic chav weaving her trolley around all over the place, blocking your way to the organic aubergines? And if - quite rightly!! - they've stamped out the old fashioned London double deckers (so passe) because there's a 0.0000000001% chance they'll overturn going round a hairpin bend think what potentially lethal risk is created by an out-of-control over-loaded trolley some of which contain child passengers or peanuts and which could run over a sleeping geriatric. Frightening, isn't it?

Here's the real clincher: think of all the lovely fines your local council could rake in from speed cameras in the check-out queue - special double-rate for misuse of a mobile phone in a confined area.

It's the only way forward.

[Matt Wright]

Everything fine here in Wales where the bans been in place for a while. Great to come home at night and not stink of cigs and to enjoy a meal without smoke,

Matt

[Chelloveck]

Everything fine here in Wales where the bans been in place for a while. Great to come home at night and not stink of cigs and to enjoy a meal without smoke, or friends.

;-)

[Traditional Tory]

Is it my imagination or is it a fact that most of the pro-Nulabour anti-freedom, controlfreaks on this thread are notorious 'Roons?

Could this possibly tell us something?

[Matt Wright]

On the issue though the vast majority of people are saying they prefer the situation. I've also had smokers say to me that they now have a real motivation to pack smoking in and they really are stopping. Normally I hate the idea of bans but in this case its not a full ban, just a restriction in smoking in public places where the habit is totally anti-social and presents health risks to others. As for the issue about draconian monitoring etc, well thats over the top and uneccessary,

Matt

[Chris Hughes]

Non-smokers already have a place they can enjoy a quiet drink (its always a "quiet" drink isn't it? How revealing) without smoke. Its called a Cafe. Go there to drink your warm orange juice and your fruit salad, or whatever non-smokers do for fun. Why do you have to bother people who like a good time?