Ministers' ban 'deal' savaged

Ministers are close to reaching a deal on a smoking ban

Health professionals and campaigners have savaged the government's emerging deal on a smoking ban.

The BBC has learnt ministers are close to agreeing smoking rooms will be allowed in pubs not selling food.

Doctors said such a plan was unworkable, while anti-smoking group Ash said it was a "hybrid of two different bodges".

Smoking lobby group Forest also questioned the proposals, but said it was relieved it was not a full ban.

The proposals - also expected to say pubs selling food will be non-smoking, and private clubs will be exempt from the ban - are to be set out in the Health Improvement and Protection Bill.

Second-hand smoke kills, and it is unacceptable that any worker should have to risk their life for their job Dr Vivienne Nathanson, of the British Medical Association

Pubs not serving food were originally to be exempt from the workplace ban, but during the consultation it emerged many pubs would stop serving food to avoid it.

Groups campaigning for a ban said it was welcome that most workplaces would be smoke-free under the proposals.

But they attacked the exemptions that look like being brokered after weeks of cabinet-level discussions over how to introduce a ban in England.

Ian Willmore, from Ash, said they were a "hybrid of two different bodges dreamed up by timid and vacillating health ministers and cannot be made to work".

Protection

"The resulting legislation will be less effective than it should have been in cutting smoking rates and in protecting non-smokers. It will be harder and more effective to enforce.

"This typical New Labour attempt to find a point somewhere between right and wrong will just frustrate all sides and land the government in continuing and worsening trouble."

And Dr Vivienne Nathanson, the British Medical Association's head of science and ethics, criticised the plan to have smoking rooms, or "carriages", in non-food pubs.

"The 'smoking carriages' are both unworkable and will pose a hazard to health.

"It is questionable whether cleaning workers will really have the option to refuse to work in such rooms."

Maura Gillespie, of the British Heart Foundation, said: "The government appears to have blended two compromise solutions and produced a confusing hybrid.

"The inexplicable distinction between pubs that serve food and those that do not - which seemed dead and buried - appears to have returned, with the 'smoking carriages' idea bolted on."

Professor Alex Markham, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said he was "utterly dismayed".

"It is completely unrealistic to think that staff would not have to enter smoking rooms to clean them, or that smoke wouldn't drift into the rest of a pub."

Simon Clark, director of Forest, said: "I am relieved we do not have a full smoking ban, which seemed possible at one stage.

"This compromise reflects the need to still let people smoke in some public places. But how it will be introduced is still uncertain."