Ministers are expected to break a promise to announce an action plan to tackle smoking, in their latest controversial U-turn on public health, Whitehall insiders say.
The government had committed several times to publish a tobacco control plan “later this year”. However, the health secretary, Thérèse Coffey, does not intend to honour that promise, according to officials with knowledge of her intentions.
Coffey, who is also the deputy prime minister, smokes and has previously accepted hospitality from the tobacco industry. Since becoming an MP in 2010 she has voted in the Commons against an array of measures to restrict smoking, including the ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces, the outlawing of smoking in cars containing children and forcing cigarettes to be sold in plain packs.
Liz Truss, the prime minister – a close friend of Coffey’s – is also a longstanding sceptic about tobacco control who has often opposed legislation to clamp down on smoking. She has also appointed former tobacco lobbyists as part of her team of Downing Street advisers.
In February Sajid Javid, the then health secretary, first committed the government to bringing forward a tobacco action plan before the end of 2022. In April Maggie Throup, the public health minister at the time, reiterated that commitment and timeline. She stressed that the plan was vital to help the government realise its ambition of making Britain “smoke-free” by 2030 in order to cut the death toll from smoking.
However, Whitehall sources say the plan has been ditched since Coffey became the health secretary on 6 September and that it will no longer be published.
There is speculation that proposals that were due to feature in the plan may yet appear in some other form, possibly in the 10-year cancer plan that ministers do intend to publish.
Insiders also say there is “no chance” that recommendations to reduce smoking that the ex-Barnardo’s chief executive Dr Javed Khan made in a government-commissioned review will ever be acted on. They included raising the legal age of buying tobacco by a year every year and putting an extra £125m into efforts to encourage smokers to quit, possibly by imposing a new “polluter pays” levy on tobacco firms, and requiring sellers of tobacco products to have a licence.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said it was “inaccurate” to suggest that the tobacco control plan was being dropped – but did not say if or when it would publish it.
“This is inaccurate and no decisions have been taken,” a DHSC spokesperson said. The department also insisted that it may yet progress some of Khan’s suggestions.
“We are currently considering the wide range of recommendations set out in the Khan Review and how best to take these forward. We will set out our next steps for the plan in due course,” the spokesperson added.
The government first committed in 2019 to make Britain “smoke-free” by 2030. That is defined as getting the proportion of adults who smoke down from 14.1% to just 5%. Ministers are under pressure to take fresh action against smoking both because the number of people being diagnosed with, and dying from, cancer is going up and also because smoking-related disease is one of the major causes of avoidable death.
The DHSC remains committed to the 2030 target. However, Cancer Research UK warned last month that ministers were seven years behind schedule for delivering it.
Khan made clear in his review, published in June, that ministers needed to accelerate the reduction in smoking by 40% if they were to hit the 2030 target.
Labour and anti-smoking campaigners voiced alarm at the potential U-turn over the tobacco control plan. It follows a Treasury-ordered review of measures to tackle obesity, and Coffey scrapping Javid’s promised white paper on health inequalities.
“The Conservatives are on an ideological mission to rip up common-sense measures that benefit public health and ease demands on the NHS. The irony is that ditching prevention will end up costing the taxpayer more in the long run,” said Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary.
Deborah Arnott, the chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, said: “To ditch the Khan recommendations and for there to be no new tobacco control plan would be an own goal for the government.
“Smoking has a uniquely devastating impact on health. It causes illness and death on a huge scale, is the leading cause of cancer and costs the NHS £2.4bn every year to treat. Ministers should bring forward detailed plans to tackle this scourge on society as a matter of urgency.”
