Philip Hensher: The ban on smoking has become a vendetta

Last night, the Government launched a major new advertising campaign designed to inform the public that a ban on smoking in public places comes into force on 1 July. Even though 90 per cent of people in a recent survey knew perfectly well that a ban was shortly to be introduced, and most people knew, fairly surprisingly, what the date was to be, the Government has decided to spend £1m per week from now until 1 July on an advertising campaign.

It seems a curious thing to undertake, since people will become aware pretty sharply when the laws come into effect anyway. One can't help comparing this kind of health expenditure with another area where information might actually make a difference to behaviour: that of sexual health. The Government promised to find £50m over three years, a sum which turned out to mean £4m over the first year, with nothing specifically directed towards information about HIV and no commitment beyond that. A hollow laugh might be justified at a campaign which tells the public what most of them know already - certainly what most smokers know already - at a cost of more than £6m.

It all looks very much like a demonstration of smug complacency on the part of the Government, something that we have all had plenty of time to get accustomed to. The forthcoming smoking ban has come, however, to occupy a talismanic place in the thinking of this government; something that they are jolly well going to spend £6m on congratulating themselves on, since there's not much else they can be admired for.

The skewed thinking and bizarre sense of priorities which has driven so many of this government's initiatives was beautifully captured when Patricia Hewitt, commenting on the capture of the navy personnel in Iran, said: "It was deplorable that the woman hostage should be shown smoking. This sends completely the wrong message to our young people." Quite a lot of people went on wondering, in the light of this comment, whether Mrs Hewitt might actually not be human at all. There were rather a lot more important questions to raise about the conduct of the marines and sailors, and it didn't seem to occur to the Secretary of State that a human being, when captured by a foreign power with no reason to be generous or humane, might want to soothe their nerves in some way.

The smoking ban has its comic aspect, of course. Churches and cathedrals are to be obliged to deface their interiors with hideous "no smoking" notices, although few have ever had to deal with attempts to light up in the pews. The anti-smoking industry is now reduced to casting around for new targets, and it is shortly to be illegal to smoke at the wheel of your own car. No doubt soon it will be illegal to smoke when answering your front door, in case the bell has been rung by somebody carrying out his official duties.

There must be some limit to the expansionist ambitions of the campaign - I would think that they must concede that it isn't actually reasonable to demand that people be prevented from smoking in the open air, or when they are alone at home. But who knows? Perhaps only when our pleasures are exactly those deemed acceptable by Mrs Hewitt will the frenzy die away.

The most ludicrous aspect of all of this is that Mrs Hewitt claims to have been the head of an organisation called the National Council for Civil Liberties. Nothing could more demonstrate the decline in civility and the gross imposition of official restrictions in our lives than the development of relations between smokers and non-smokers. Once, one asked those around if they minded if you lit up, or offered to go outside. With the intrusion of the official sphere of life, smokers started to insist on smoking where they could; non-smokers started to see it as something they ought to refuse.

Where permission would once have been requested and granted, and moderation presided all round, subsequently a sullen form of "I know my rights" drew up battlegrounds in public and private spaces. It's not smoking that has created this situation, but priggish rule-making, which will persist beyond the smoking ban. I write this as a fairly new ex-smoker, having given up three months ago. It was nothing to do with these edicts; I just got bored with the coughing and its costing £50 a week. (It's all my eye about it being hard to give up, by the way; I lapsed once and then succeeded quite easily, without gum or patches or any of the paraphernalia). I don't miss it, but I can well summon up the lovely pleasure of a cigarette with a pint and a book, or one with a cup of good coffee and the newspapers. That particular avenue of pleasure has now been closed off to me, but I don't see any justification for me to start telling people that they ought to give up a pleasure that they have probably considered quite thoroughly.

What is really a little bit worrying is the sense, from every angle, that this government doesn't have an instinctive sense of the limits of public concern, that some things are simply there for an Englishman to make his own mind up about. In the 19th century, the Irish divine William Magee, talking in a debate about abstinence, observed that he would "rather see England free than England compulsorily sober".

Would we not, even now, rather see an England wheezing and coughing and with fag ash over its trousers than one with the disapproving pursed mouth of Mrs Patricia Hewitt?

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