HATFIELD HEATH, England – The government intends to give England’s pub managers an unappetizing choice: ban smoking or stop serving food.
“Many pubs, particularly the isolated ones with no passing trade who rely on local people, are going to see their income drop,” said landlord Ben Millard as he poured drinks Thursday in the smoking section of his newly revamped 17th-century pub, The White Horse.
Down the road at The Stag, landlord Stuart Allen had just started serving food after remodeling his kitchen at great expense. But 95 percent of his regulars are smokers, and he is considering converting an old forge into a smoking room. “It’s either that or make no profit,” he fumed.
After lengthy Cabinet discussions, Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt on Thursday published a bill to ban smoking in nearly all workplaces in England, after yielding to objections from some Cabinet ministers who demanded exemptions for private clubs and pubs that do not serve food.
“There is total agreement on 99 percent of the policy. On the 1 percent, not only in government but I think across the country, there was real disagreement,” Hewitt said.
“Many of us,” she said, “would have liked to go that little bit further and faster.”
News reports indicated that Defense Secretary John Reid, Hewitt’s predecessor as health secretary, led the revolt against her plans for a comprehensive ban.
A survey of 209 pubs by The Publican magazine, a trade publication, found that 65 percent of managers intend to continue serving food and ban smoking, while 20 percent intend to stop serving food. The remaining 15 percent did not respond.
Some landlords, including Stuart Allen of The Stag, will convert outdoor rooms or invest in heated outdoor smoking terraces – a popular innovation in Ireland, which last year banned smoking in enclosed workplaces including pubs.
Norway and Sweden also banned smoking in public buildings last year, and Scotland is expected to ban smoking in all enclosed public places in March. A separate smoking ban is planned in Northern Ireland.
Associated Press
A man lights his pipe Thursday at a pub in Hatfield Heath, 30 miles east of London.
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