Cigar-chomping new Health Secretary Therese Coffey voted to repeal the smoking ban and has accepted hospitality from Big Tobacco.
The new Deputy Prime Minister has taken a long-held stance against anti-tobacco legislation and supported a motion calling for a review of its impact on private members’ clubs.
The best pal of new PM Liz Truss also in 2011 opposed a ban on smoking in vehicles where there are children present.
That year she received £1,100 in gifts and hospitality from Gallaher Ltd, a multi-national multi-billion pound tobacco company
Phil Chamberlain, associate professor at Bath University and leader of its Tobacco Control Research Group, said: “Liz Truss is promising to deliver on the NHS, but the only thing she is delivering is the NHS gift wrapped to the tobacco industry.
“ Therese Coffey hasn’t just accepted tobacco hospitality but voted against tobacco regulations which save lives.
“The science was clear, the evidence was sound and public health experts in favour - but Coffey still voted no.
“It is deeply worrying to think what Coffey will do the next time vital public health proposals cross her desk. Unless she changes her track record the burden on the NHS is only likely to increase.
“Regulations require the tobacco industry be kept well away from any government decision-making but thanks to Liz Truss, they’re already inside the Cabinet.”
Smoking still causes almost a third of all cancer deaths in Britain.
The 2007 tobacco ban in indoor public spaces triggered the biggest fall in smoking ever seen in England. It was estimated to have saved 40,000 lives in the following decade alone.
Similar bans were introduced in Scotland in 2006 and in Wales in 2007.
Ms Coffey supported a failed 10 minute rule bill in the House of Commons in 2010 to reverse the smoking ban in pubs and private members clubs.
In 2015 both Liz Truss and Ms Coffey voted against plans for cigarettes to be sold in plain packets.
Ms Coffey takes over responsibility for the nation’s health with the NHS buckling under unprecedented post-pandemic pressures and with record waits after a decade of Tory underfunding.
Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said: “The new Health Secretary had vowed to deliver for patients.
“Sadly for cancer patients, who today face some of the worst waits for diagnosis and treatment on record, we’re a long way off.
“When 1 in 2 of us will be diagnosed with cancer in our lifetime, tackling the crisis currently facing cancer services must be at the top of Thérèse Coffey’s in-tray.”
Before the pandemic for former Work and Pensions Secretary was reportedly the host of notorious late night “karaoke sessions” in the Houses of Parliament, which would regularly take place in her Commons office.
Before being elected to Parliament she studied chemistry at Oxford and worked for chocolate giant Mars.
Deborah Arnott, chief executive of ASH, said “The Secretary of State’s history on tobacco may not seem encouraging, but our experience is that ministers, once in the hot seat in the Department of Health, soon understand the need to get to grips with smoking.
“Achieving the Government’s smoke free 2030 ambition will reduce pressure on the NHS and social care, increase productivity, and at a stroke increase healthy life expectancy by more than five years, the government’s levelling up ambition.”
The Department of Health and Social Care declined to comment.
