Amend the smoking ban to help save the great British pub
Wednesday, December 10, 2014 at 10:02 The IEA has published an excellent report by Chris Snowdon.
Closing Time: Who's killing the British pub? doesn't hide the fact that the number of pubs has been in long term decline since the late nineteenth century.
Between 1905 and 1969 the number of licensed premises fell from an estimated 99,000 to 75,000. By 2003 the figure was below 60,000 and in recent years "the trickle of pub closures has become a flood".
In fact, between 2006 and 2013 the number of pubs fell from 58,200 to 48,000, a drop of 18 per cent in just seven years.
Closing Time looks at why this has happened and addresses a number of issues including cultural change, economic factors, the pubco beer tie, and the smoking ban.
Uncomfortably for government, Snowdon concludes that excessive taxation and regulation have played a significant part in the demise of many pubs. He therefore proposes a number of measures including a reduction in alcohol duty and a reduction in VAT and a lower rate for cooked food.
Echoing Forest's long-held position, he also supports an amendment to the smoking ban:
The Labour Party's 2005 manifesto contained a pledge to ban smoking in pubs that sold food while promising that 'other pubs and bars will be free to choose whether to allow smoking to be smoke-free' (Labour Party, 2005). After intense lobbying from anti-smoking groups, this pledge was abandoned and the UK was given one of the most uncompromising smoking bans in the world. This has been devastating for many pubs and there is clearly a market for indoor venues that allow smoking in one or more rooms. The UK should follow the lead of the many European countries that allow the hospitality industry to accommodate smokers.
Not everyone agrees, of course, and today's Eastern Daily Press features comments from two Norfolk publicans who believe the impact of the ban is small compared to "more traditional reasons" and don't want it changed (Impact of smoking ban on pubs less than claimed, say Norwich publicans).
But they would say that, wouldn't they? After all, they're still in business and may have profited from the closure of rival pubs.
No amendment would force publicans to allow smoking on their premises. It would merely give them the option to introduce separate, strictly regulated smoking rooms. You would only want to deny others that option if you feared competition, right?
Truth is, many people in the hospitality industry are in denial. As this 2010 report demonstrated, there is incontrovertible evidence the ban had a huge impact on pubs – and not in a good way.
Snowdon's IEA report has been covered by the Daily Mail. The Telegraph's deputy editor Allister Health has also written a very good piece here – The real reasons for the tragic demise of the British pub industry.
The BBC has of course ignored it, though I'm willing to be corrected. (An interview with Snowdon on BBC Radio Cornwall doesn't count!)
Meanwhile you can download it here. As with all of Chris's work it's full of interesting facts but it's also very easy to read.
Warmly recommended.
PS. One of the reasons I enjoy reading Snowdon's reports is he's not afraid to have a dig at those he disagrees with. In Closing Time, for example, he has a pop at both CAMRA and the IPPR, a left-wing think tank that supports state aid for "community pubs" without addressing the underlying reasons why fewer people want to go to their local.
You can tell too what he thinks of Professor Linda Bauld's 2011 report for the Department of Health – Impact of Smokefree Legislation in England: Evidence Review – which produced an unexpected but superbly written response from Imperial Tobacco, The Bauld Truth.
Ironically Prof Bauld is now "one of us" because she supports light touch regulation on e-cigarettes.
There is nothing light touch about the smoking ban which can be easily extended to include e-cigarettes. Reap what you sow and all that.
Reader Comments (13)
A survey by TMA back in 2010 shows that 64% of smokers had stopped using pubs entirely then and or went less often, probably about five million people.
http://www.the-tma.org.uk/2010/07/three-years-on-industry-calls-time-on-a-complete-smoking-ban/
With about 200,000 job losses and more than 14000 pub closures isn't it about time something was done ?
I've rarely been out since July 1 2007 and then only when I've had to - such as family occasions I couldn't avoid. I have chosen to go to Forest dos because venues they use treat smokers as valued consumers rather than scum to be tolerated out back, by the bins, "with the other addicts."
Until these smokerphobic pub owners fight for the right of all their customers to be treated properly, then I won't go within a mile of their pubs which these days lack atmosphere, ambience and that once famous warm welcome.
Smokers have their own untaxed smokey-drinky places to go now so pubs might not get us back. After all, they hardly deserve us given they've never once stood up for us.
Prior to the ban I went to the pub at least once a week, often two or three times. I've visited a pub about 5 times since 2007, the last two in the last two years when I switched to vaping and could get away with it in the pub. I could probably now find a vaping pub, but I've got out of the habit and people I know, even non smokers, don't seem to go to the pub. It seems too much bother to go out of the house. Once you get out the habit of going out, it doesn't seem that inviting any more.
I used to visit the UK on holidays, but stopped after the ban. Change things and I'll be back.
I too have hardly been in a pub since the ban, there is no atmosphere any more. Even my never smoking son agrees it is just not the same, I think because smokers tend to be more sociable. I remember before the ban on trains a guy coming in and we were chatting away when I offered him a cigarette and he said he didn't smoke. Asked why he was in the only smoking carriage he said it was the only place people talked to you.
The smoking ban should be modified to allow smoking in separate rooms in pubs. I would even like to see full smoking pubs allowed and of course I would like to see smoking patios allowed. The smoking ban needs to be relaxed.
@emma2000
I remember years ago, before the pub bans but shortly after they had banned smoking on planes there was a letter to the Daily Telegraph from a multiple flights a year businessman who said that although he was a non-smoker, he always booked a seat in the smoking section because the people back there were much friendlier and enjoyed a laugh. He said he found most of the people at the front of the plane pretty dour.
Politicians do not understand how unpopular they are.Deliberate or stupidity?
"today's Eastern Daily Press features comments from two Norfolk publicans "
The EDP is the paper for green-welly-wearing-tofu-eating Guardian readers who have bought 2nd homes in Norfolk and the Editor is well known for his rigid policy of only allowing comments that are on message-whatever the message of the day is.
Could they really only find 2 Norfolk publicans to comment for the 'story'? Kinda says it all.
” … Prof Bauld is now "one of us" because she supports light touch regulation on e-cigarettes”
No, Simon. Bauld will never, ever be “one of us.” Certainly not because she happens to share a similar opinion to Forest and many others on here about a completely different activity! She may share opinions with Forest on all sorts of things from the voting age to climate change, but that wouldn’t make her “one of us,” either. She’s an anti-smoker through and through and, just like you yourself pointed out on here some while ago, like her contemporaries in ASH, she’ll turn on vapers as quick as a flash once she’s lulled them into a false sense of security that she’s “on their side” just because she hates smokers. Make no bones about it, vapers, to her, are just useful idiots for ensuring that there’s no unity between smokers and vapers which might cause some problems to her beloved anti-smoking crusade. That kind of duplicity just isn’t found amongst smokers, although sadly it’s in fairly wide evidence in the vaping community (notable exceptions on here and elsewhere, excepted, of course). So no. “One of them” she might be, but “one of us?” No way!
I started my blog to share my delight at vaping.But it changed to be a blog mostly defending smokers. I am a smoker that vapes. I have said over and over again, that the CORE of vapers' problems is the smoking ban. I have even been told that demanding a review of the smoking ban is "old history" in the face of the plain packs drive - by a well known smoker activist. If we dismiss the smoking ban as being "old history", we have lost the plot. The CORE of many, many problems, from pubs, to lonely people, to the creation of sanctioned hate against a minority, whether smokers or vapers, the core of it all, IS the smoking ban. A review of it needs to be encouraged politically. We should never surrender - it is not old history.
The smoking ban was the first domino that knocked all the others over that have gone since. The antis knew it would which is why they went to protect drunken adults in pubs from smoke first before then moving to the home to "protect" the "vulnerable" children from their own loving parents at home just because they might smoke.
The smoking ban is clear evidence of how stupid our politicians are and how fascist our society has become.
Of course it must be fought and always fought. Does the alleged smoker activist who moans that the ban is old news now vape too by any chance Liz?
I never went to stinking pubs before smoking was banned. Couldn't afford to dry clean my clothes. Now I go most days. Lovely. And the coughing bores have left, mostly. Pub's fuller too.