Sounds like a great way to rid pubs of the burden of their customers.
Busy-Possibility-341 on
Anything to break down society and to stop everyone talking to eachother .
LJ-696 on
This sound more like trying to put a plaster on a festering wound.
SlightProgrammer on
haha what? they’re still gonna burden the NHS they’ll just be smoking elsewhere, let the people have a cig!
TarrouTheSaint on
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.
Northernflav on
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!
Homicidal_Pingu on
Honestly they should just up the tax on tobacco to the moon and put in the ban which was the only good policy sunak had
tomskyyy on
Seriously there aren’t any more pressing issues that they should be looking at?
limaconnect77 on
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.
Any-Weight-2404 on
Don’t think he’s proposed one thing I like yet, but he seems to be proposing plenty I don’t.
ankh87 on
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.
Saint_Sin on
So more buildings go on sale so those that lobby the government (and MP’s of course) can continue buying up the lot.
test_test_1_2_3 on
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.
MultiMidden on
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?
MondeyMondey on
Smoking looks cool and I like seeing it. Let the people smoke.
Prestigious_Gap_4025 on
Mental Health is one of the biggest burdens on the NHS, how about we focus on that and stop trying to nanny adults.
ACO_22 on
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
Muted-Animal-8865 on
Why not ban drinking alcohol in the pub . That will help unburden the nhs too? Where does this crap end .
Sgt_Sillybollocks on
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
Alarmarama on
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_All_Seeing_Pi on
I am seriously considering stopping smoking if I can no longer smoke in pub gardens. Three cheers for Keith.
davemee on
I remember cars being ruined by seat belts and the first time all the pubs closed and went bankrupt because of the indoor smoking ban and how sugary carbonated drinks would be *ruined* by sugar regulations. And now there’s no cars *or* pubs *or* fizzy drinks!
Smoking isn’t going to stop unless we take measures like this. I think it’s necessary, and a positive. You can still smoke outside under these proposals.
brainburger on
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.
anondeathe on
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.
PalePieNGravy on
UK got the government they desrve. You need a revolution.
Optimism_Deficit on
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.
Xercen on
Smoking is a huge burden on the NHS, taxpayers and productivity.
I don’t understand why smokers have a “right” to smoke in public places when it involves taking away the rights of others to not passive smoke their death fumes.
If you’re an addict then go smoke somewhere else, away from the populace. We don’t need your death wish imposed on the rest of us – especially not our children.
If you enjoy having tar black lungs and cancer, good for you. Just don’t force the rest of us to breathe in black death fumes.
Life moves on with changes for the better. That is why we removed smoking in many places, and this is another step we need to take.
In the future, I hope we approach vaping in the same way. Children are suffering/dying because of vapes.
cityruss on
I mean, it’s not much of an effort to take a few steps out of the beer garden for your lung buster.
CrustyCally on
You know what actually would reduce burden on the NHS? Reducing the amount of illegal immigrants, reducing violent and sexual crime, increasing funding to the NHS, rather than the benefits that these illegal immigrants get or sending money overseas to countries that don’t need it
KilmarnockDave on
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.Â
Pavly28 on
It wont prevent anything. Now they’ll just smoke at the entrance and fill the pub with second hand smoke. Why not make smoking more expensive. increase tax rate massively. it’ll automatically make it unaffordable.
Thunder_Curls on
Is he going to exclude fat people from restaurants and take aways too in order to ‘Reduce the Burden on the NHS’?
Public_Growth_6002 on
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.
Macewol on
Cool just put people on pub corners to smoke cause they can’t in the garden
ImusBean on
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.
weedlol123 on
I love it when the gov announces authoritarian new laws that no one voted for or knew about before the election!
truniversality on
Really they just want people to DRINK less, therefore reducing the burden on the NHS.
madeleineruth19 on
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.
WholeBookkeeper2401 on
Increase the NHS budget? Nah. Let’s just make some daft rule that will have no meaningful impact whatsoever.
YakitoriMonster on
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.
40 Comments
Sounds like a great way to rid pubs of the burden of their customers.
Anything to break down society and to stop everyone talking to eachother .
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!
Honestly they should just up the tax on tobacco to the moon and put in the ban which was the only good policy sunak had
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.
I am seriously considering stopping smoking if I can no longer smoke in pub gardens. Three cheers for Keith.
I remember cars being ruined by seat belts and the first time all the pubs closed and went bankrupt because of the indoor smoking ban and how sugary carbonated drinks would be *ruined* by sugar regulations. And now there’s no cars *or* pubs *or* fizzy drinks!
Smoking isn’t going to stop unless we take measures like this. I think it’s necessary, and a positive. You can still smoke outside under these proposals.
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.
UK got the government they desrve. You need a revolution.
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.
Smoking is a huge burden on the NHS, taxpayers and productivity.
I don’t understand why smokers have a “right” to smoke in public places when it involves taking away the rights of others to not passive smoke their death fumes.
If you’re an addict then go smoke somewhere else, away from the populace. We don’t need your death wish imposed on the rest of us – especially not our children.
If you enjoy having tar black lungs and cancer, good for you. Just don’t force the rest of us to breathe in black death fumes.
Life moves on with changes for the better. That is why we removed smoking in many places, and this is another step we need to take.
In the future, I hope we approach vaping in the same way. Children are suffering/dying because of vapes.
I mean, it’s not much of an effort to take a few steps out of the beer garden for your lung buster.
You know what actually would reduce burden on the NHS? Reducing the amount of illegal immigrants, reducing violent and sexual crime, increasing funding to the NHS, rather than the benefits that these illegal immigrants get or sending money overseas to countries that don’t need it
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.Â
It wont prevent anything. Now they’ll just smoke at the entrance and fill the pub with second hand smoke. Why not make smoking more expensive. increase tax rate massively. it’ll automatically make it unaffordable.
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.