Council capers
Wednesday, September 23, 2020 at 10:12 The plot thickens.
On Monday Forest published a report, 'Smokefree Ideology: How local authorities are waging war on choice and personal freedom'.
It includes an analysis of the 283 responses writer and researcher Josie Appleton received following a Freedom of Information request to over 350 councils in England, Wales and Scotland concerning council policies on smoking during working hours.
The FOI requests were sent in March and the responses dribbled in between then and August.
We gave the key findings to the Telegraph in advance of publication and on Sunday the paper published an exclusive report that lead with the most newsworthy titbit – 'Council banned staff from smoking at their desks at home'.
The guidance may have been five years old but to the best of our knowledge it was still current policy. It was newsworthy moreover because very few people knew about it and since lockdown many council staff have been working from home.
Crucially - and this is important in view of subsequent developments - the policy (or 'guidance') was sent to Josie towards the end of April (ie well after lockdown was introduced in March).
On Saturday, however, in response to a fact-checking call from the Telegraph, Kensington and Chelsea told the paper that the policy had been dropped in February. This was duly reported by the Telegraph.
But wait, what’s this? Stung perhaps by the hostile reaction to the Telegraph report, Hammersmith and Fulham is also denying that it is their policy to "instruct people about smoking in their own homes".
The Telegraph has therefore amended the online version of its report.
To be clear, Josie asked the councils for their policy on staff smoking in working hours in March and what she included in her report is what she was sent on April 21 when lockdown was well established, so to say the story is "untrue" seems a bit disingenuous.
Either way, both councils appear to have abandoned or distanced themselves from talk of banning smoking in the home, which is good news.
In fact, I would call that a result!
Reader Comments (4)
How arrogant of the council to express it's opinion on what it's employees spend their hard earned money on.
What kind of employer has the audacity to declare that employees waste their money on legal consumer products - especially those so highly taxed it pays for their public health staff. They should be thanking their smokers for funding jobs in their organisations.
I would love to know what their managers buy so I can scrutinise it and express my opinion on what I think they should be spending their money on instead.
No doubt there is something unhealthy in there but then I would never be so patronising to tell informed adults that they are wasting their money on certain consumer products in their own leisure time when they have worked for the privilege to do so.
What next? Employment on the grounds that you only spend your salary on those things that your employer deems value for money? Authoritarianism has become so embedded in daily life that I wouldn't be surprised.
A good example of how well-placed scrutiny causes bullies to back off. Concerted efforts to expose tobacco control excesses and to push back against the suppression of dissent are essential to restoring the freedom to smoke and amending draconian antismoking measures and smoking bans.
Kensington and Chelsea? The local authority responsible for Grenfell?
Nice to know that, as ever, they thought a policy through before imposing the effects on innocent people.
I might be missing the point here, being a bit thick, people keep posting about how unfairly Local Authority's are treating their employees regarding smoking and, the smoking public in general - but aren't (sorry to be pedantic) Local Authority's our employees? Forgive my impertinence, shouldn't they wind their collective bloody patronising necks-in and do the job that we pay them for - manage the locale and stop managing us! Just a thought.