How the harm principle was hijacked and weaponised against individual freedom

Letters on Liberty are exactly what they say they are.

Launched in December 2020 and published by the Academy of Ideas, they are short essays (less than 3,000 words apiece), each one dedicated to achieving a freer society.

Titles to date include Risking It All: The Freedom to Gamble (Jon Bryan), The Future of Free Speech (Jacob Mchangama), The Liberating Power of Education (Harley Richardson), and Freedom Is No Illusion (Frank Furedi).

Others include Liberty in a Narcissistic Age (Roslyn Fuller), Greens: The New Neo-Colonists (Austin Williams), and Beyond the Culture Wars (Jacob Reynolds).

Letters on Liberty are published in bundles of three and the latest titles, just out, are Against Reparations (James Heartfield), AI: Separating Man from Machine (Sandy Starr), and Beyond the Harm Principle (Rob Lyons).

All three are worth reading but it's Rob's essay that will arguably be of most interest to readers of this blog.

He takes John Stuart Mill's 'harm principle' – which first appeared in On Liberty in 1859 and is often quoted by libertarians – and demonstrates how it has been hijacked and weaponised against individual freedom.

According to Mill, the actions of individuals should only be restricted or punished if they harm others.

That, of course, was the justification for the smoking ban, which was introduced in the UK after it was claimed, but never remotely proved, that 11,000 non-smokers were dying each year as a result of passive smoking.

The problem, writes Rob, is that, 'If we take the notion of harm to its extremes, almost anything we don't like could be described as harmful', and that's exactly what is happening today.

Today the concept of 'harm' covers not just physical harm but anything that may cause offence and therefore 'harm' us in other ways.

But as Rob correctly points out, 'If we want to live in a free society, we have to tolerate things we don't like.'

How, then, can we rescue the harm principle from the 'meddlesome opponents of freedom'? According to Rob, there is a strong case for amending it as follows:

We should be free to do what we want as long as it does not harm others where they cannot avoid that harm.

Would that make a difference? In theory it might. In practice, I'm not sure. As Rob himself admits:

The trouble with trying to rescue the harm principle, by trying to find a more modest and reasonable version of it, is that reasonableness seems to be in short supply.

Nowhere is this more pronounced than in the war on tobacco.

As we know, anti-smoking zealots are never happy and as soon as they achieve one goal they immediately target another, regardless of whether it's fair or reasonable or based on proven physical harm to others. (Outdoor smoking bans, for example.)

Freedom of speech is also under threat because of perceived 'harm' to others, and Rob covers that issue too.

Beyond the Harm Principle is available to download free here.

Alternatively, to purchase or subscribe to the print edition of this and other Letters on Liberty, click here.

What’s in a name?

Writing in the Daily Mail last week, following the death of the former Scotland football manager Craig Brown, the writer and satirist Craig Brown wrote a piece about namesakes and sharing his name with someone in the public eye.

See ‘Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated …’.

By coincidence, I was recently embroiled - not for the first time - in a mix up with my own near namesake, former minister The Rt Hon Sir Simon Clarke MP.

What happened was this.

I turned up for an event to which I had been invited and got past the initial security checkers, who were confirming the names of guests on their iPads, but when I went to collect my name badge the one they tried to give me read ‘The Rt Hon Sir Simon Clarke’.

As an aside, it has always surprised me that most people assume the name Clark is spelt with an ‘e’.

Surely the shortened version is the more obvious way to spell it because the ‘e’ is silent and adds nothing to the pronunciation?

Nevertheless, unless I correct them, or spell it out, that’s the default spelling the majority of people seem to adopt.

But I digress.

Bizarrely, it took several minutes before it was accepted that I wasn’t The Rt Hon Sir Simon Clarke and I was allowed to proceed, albeit without a badge of any description.

On reflection, though, I now think I should have accepted the badge they offered and worn it with pride, if only as an interesting social experiment.

Would people (those I didn’t know) react differently to someone identified as a ‘Sir’ and a ‘Rt Hon’?

Would they hang on my every word? More important, would they laugh at my jokes and wry observations?

Another thought occurred. What if I had taken the badge and put it in my pocket for future use?

Would I get a better table if I discreetly showed it to the maître d' in a swanky hotel? Would I be fast-tracked through airports and offered complimentary upgrades?

Eventually I would be outed as an imposter, but until then?

Anyway, this is the fourth or fifth time I’ve been confused for the member of Parliament for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (and former Chief Secretary to the Treasury).

The first time was when another MP sent a text that was clearly not intended for me. (I replied, pointing this out, and he laughed, nervously.)

Better still was the text from yet another MP requesting an urgent meeting, a meeting I naively turned up for.

I wasn’t embarrassed, but he was! (You can read about it here.)

I’ve also been contacted with requests to appear on TV and radio when it was not immediately apparent that they wanted Simon Clarke MP rather than the director of Forest.

The strange thing is that, although Simon Clark(e) is quite a common name, it’s only been an issue (for me) since my near namesake was elected to Parliament in 2017.

Before that, nothing.

The surname Clark(e) has been around for centuries, as you might expect, and Simon was a popular choice during the post war baby boom era, but the only Simon I knew growing up was a younger cousin on my mother’s side of the family so we didn’t share a surname.

There are nevertheless lots of Simon Clarks, if you look for them, including a horror novelist from Doncaster, a videomaker and science communicator from Bath, a freelance sports photographer, a former English professional footballer, and many more.

And that doesn’t include the many Simon Clarkes.

Talking of which, several years after I broke up with a girlfriend (or, more accurately, she broke up with me), she sent me a birthday card addressed to … Simon Clarke.

Ouch, that hurt.

Whisper it, but the NHS was NOT universally welcomed in 1948

The National Health Service is 75-years-old next week.

The concept (providing universal healthcare free at the point of delivery) is hard to fault, but I find the nation’s almost religious devotion to this less than stellar organisation hard to stomach.

It was bad enough having it feature in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games, but having a children's choir sing 'Happy Birthday' to the NHS on Newsnight this week took the biscuit.

Have we gone mad?

I'm not going to debate the pros and cons here and now, but on its 75th birthday I thought I'd remind readers that not everyone was as keen on the birth of the NHS as we're led to believe.

Take my grandfather, for example. The details are a bit sketchy but this is what I can piece together from what my mother may have told me over the years. (Recollections may vary, to coin a phrase.)

I'm not sure the exact year he was born but my grandfather was born and brought up in Keswick in the Lake District and when he left school (at 14, I think), he got a job in a local pharmacy.

He then joined the medical corp and spent much of the First World War in Egypt, but it was only after the war that he went to Charing Cross Hospital Medical School in London where he qualified as a doctor.

Thanks to his pharmacy experience he was able to create his own medications for patients. (Can you imagine GPs being allowed to do that today?!)

After getting married, he and my grandmother (who was from Bannockburn in Scotland) moved to Wembley. I remember their house because they lived there until the mid Sixties when my grandfather retired and they moved to Colchester.

Ten years ago, following a meeting with Forest's accountants (who by coincidence are based in Wembley), I rang my mother and asked what my grandparents' old address was so I could drive past the house which I hadn’t seen for 50 years.

The address was Rosslyn Gardens, a short drive from the accountants' office which overlooked Wembley Stadium.

The reason I mention the stadium is because when it was opened in 1923 it was famously surrounded by fields and Wembley was very different to the rather ugly conurbation it is today.

That said, the tree-lined residential street was almost exactly as I remembered it, although it felt narrower.

The house looked smaller too, but that’s not surprising because I was only four or five the last time I was there so everything would have looked bigger!

When my grandparents lived in Rosslyn Gardens the surgery was on one side of the house and had its own entrance so patients didn't have to enter through the front door.

Which brings me back to the point of this post.

Many years ago I remember being told that my grandfather was not a fan of the NHS, especially the way it was introduced.

When the NHS was established in 1948 his patient list (ie the business he had worked hard to build up over 20 years) was commandeered by the state, for which he now had to work.

This isn't an argument against the NHS btw (that's a different debate), but the idea that it was universally welcomed is simply not true.

There were many doctors who were less than happy when their practices were taken over and effectively nationalised.

It's a story rarely if ever told, perhaps because it sits uncomfortably with the modern orthodoxy that the pre-NHS healthcare system in Britain was a blot on civilisation and the NHS represented a giant step forward.

That generation of doctors is dead now so everyone accepts, without quibble it seems, that the NHS saved the nation from health inequalities (which are nevertheless still with us) and avaricious private quacks.

I’m sure there were some dodgy doctors but my mother was a child in those pre-NHS days and she remembers my grandfather having a strict daily routine that rarely changed:

9.00-11.00am – Morning surgery
11.00-5.00pm – Home visits
5.00-6.00pm – Bite to eat
6.00-8.00pm – Evening surgery
8.00-late – More home visits

His surgery was open six days a week and he was available for home visits every day if required.

At that time, even taking inflation into account, most doctors earned far less than they do today when many GPs earn well in excess of £100,000 a year.

I don't begrudge them the money (they work hard to become doctors and have a job that comes with huge responsibilities) but I'm not convinced the service NHS patients receive today is an improvement on the past.

Anyway, it was interesting to see the house in Wembley. The separate entrance no longer exists and you would never guess that part of it had once been a doctor's surgery.

I'm due to visit our accountants quite soon so I might pop by again. I don't know about the NHS, but I'll happily toast the memory of my grandfather who dedicated his life to helping other people and didn’t expect to be revered or applauded (with pots and pans) for doing his job.

Sign of the times

How’s this for a ‘no smoking’ sign?

It was in one of the galleries I visited at the Royal Academy of Arts on Tuesday.

Then again, looking at some of the weird and wonderful artefacts on display, I’m not certain it wasn’t one of the exhibits.

BBC misrepresents UK vaping industry position on single use vapes

On Monday I suggested that mixed messages are undermining the vaping (advocacy) industry.

The most recent example I gave was a comment last week by Doug Mutter, director of leading vape retailer VPZ, who was said to support a ban on disposable vapes as long as it didn’t create a black market.

Personally, I thought it was a stupid thing to say, a classic hostage to fortune, as evidenced by a BBC News report whose headline read ‘Vape store boss supports ban on disposables'.

As director of VPZ Doug Mutter can say what he likes, of course, although I don’t think supporting the prohibition of single use vapes is very helpful, even if it comes with an important qualification.

But Mutter is also a director and occasional spokesman for the UK Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA) which does NOT support a ban on disposable vapes.

Indeed, the official UKVIA position is that it is opposed to a ban on ANY category of vape device.

Despite that, the BBC today reported that:

The UK Vaping Industry Association has said it is not opposed to a ban on single-use vapes as long as it does not inadvertently create a black market.

Excuse me? The UKVIA has said nothing of the sort. Those were Doug Mutter’s words, but you can see how the mistake crept into the report.

The situation therefore is this. If the director of VPZ wants to make statements that contradict UKVIA policy, perhaps he should step down from his UKVIA role, if only to avoid similar confusion in future.

Update: Following an intervention by John Dunne, director of the UKVIA, the BBC has corrected its report. It now reads:

The boss of Edinburgh based vaping firm VPZ has said he is not opposed to a ban on single-use vapes as long as it does not inadvertently create a black market.

Doug Mutter, who is also a director of the UK Vaping Industry Association, welcomed the [Scottish government] report [into single use vape littering] and said the Scottish government needed to be more bold by introducing licensing and controls for selling vaping products.

It still leaves a question mark over UKVIA policy on disposable vapes, but at least it’s not factually incorrect any more.

See: Millions of single-use vapes littered on Scotland streets (BBC News)

Connections

Royal Academy of Arts

It's been a busy week.

Last Friday I attended a reception at the House of Commons to celebrate the (long overdue!) wedding of a former colleague, now an MP.

We were asked not to post anything on social media so I didn't, but it was nice to catch up with several people I hadn't seen for decades.

Regrettably there were one or two I didn't say hello to because it's been so long I didn't recognise them and it was only later that I found out they were there.

Anyway, I was back in London this week for two more receptions, the first at the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly.

The event, which included a private viewing of the RA's Summer Exhibition, was hosted by the tobacco company JTI and was called 'Connections'.

I didn't know a huge number of people but I enjoyed wandering round the galleries, stopping to chat with those I did know.

I also got to wear a virtual reality headset that had something to do with illicit trade but after removing my glasses to accommodate the headset it was all a bit of a blur, if I'm honest.

After some trial and error, I did however succeed in opening, with my virtual 'hand', a car boot that contained what appeared to be packs of counterfeit cigarettes. Success!

Hats off, btw, to the guest who, twelve hours after attending the RA event, was scheduled to appear before the Health and Social Care Committee in the House of Commons.

By all accounts he handled the interrogation very well so credit where credit's due!

And so to last night and a packed event – on the terrace of the House of Lords – to mark the 300th birthday of the Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith.

Hosted by Lord Borwick, it was organised, naturally, by the Adam Smith Institute and was quite a nostalgia trip for someone like me.

Madsen Pirie and Eamonn Butler, who founded the ASI in 1977 having previously studied at St Andrews (where I went to school), were partly responsible for getting me my first job after I graduated from Aberdeen in 1980.

It's a story I have told several times before, but I was first introduced to Madsen and Eamonn by a mutual friend (Peter Young) in a pub in Victoria Street, London.

Michael Forsyth was a friend and fellow alumni of Madsen and Eamonn’s at St Andrews and he later joined us for a drink because the pub was close to Westminster City Hall and Michael was, at that time, a Westminster City councillor.

Two days later, after a short interview, he offered me a job at KH Publicity, the PR company where he was already a director in his mid twenties.

(My initial salary, since you didn't ask, was £3,500 per annum, rising to £5,000 after six months.)

I worked for Michael for a little over two years, including 18 months at Michael Forsyth Associates which he set up after leaving KH Publicity and taking two of his colleagues (including me) with him.

Last night Michael (now Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and a former Secretary of State for Scotland) was one of three guest speakers, the others being Lord Borwick and Foreign Secretary James Cleverly.

There was time for only a few words with him before he had to rush off in response to a division bell, but I reminded him that the last time we met was at the wedding of a mutual Scottish acquaintance.

I was convinced it was only ten years ago but I've just looked it up and it was, in fact, in 2007.

Either way, Michael had no recollection of the wedding at all, although I remember it well and I know he was there because we shared a table in the marquee where the reception was held in what I think was a farm steading in rural Stirlingshire!

Last but not least, I had lunch this week with an American friend, writer and economist Todd Buchholz, who I first met in Washington DC in 1983 and whose musical Glory Ride (which he wrote with his daughter Victoria) is currently at the Charing Cross Theatre until the end of July.

The story of Glory Ride deserves its own post (and I shall write about it later), but I can tell you that we had lunch at Boulevard Brasserie, a French restaurant in Covent Garden.

I didn't book the restaurant, or even suggest it. Todd did, and here's the thing.

Shortly after Boulevard Brasserie opened in 1991, I interviewed the owner and proprietor for a magazine I was editing.

A short while after that I organised a party there for 100+ people.

Again, I remember it well because was a hot summer evening and guests were spilling out on to the pavement because it was cooler outside than in.

Connections? I’ve got a few!

See also: A day to remember, the unveiling of a statue of Adam Smith in Edinburgh in July 2008.

Ann Leslie RIP

Sorry to hear that Ann Leslie, one of the great foreign correspondents, has died, aged 82.

I loved her book Killing My Own Snakes (“The extraordinary life of a Fleet Street legend”) which stands alongside the best Fleet Street memoirs and makes me nostalgic for an era I missed by a generation.

It also prompted this blog post, written in 2009 - ‘What did you do in the (Cold) War?’.

Tributes to Leslie include this from author and broadcaster Steve Richards:

I’m sad to hear Ann Leslie has died. We used to do a programme called Head to Head when the BBC allowed discussion to breathe. This fearless war reporter once told me she was terrified about her next assignment the following day: a health farm where she couldn’t smoke or drink.

And from Guardian columnist and writer Gaby Hinsliff (via Twitter):

Ann Leslie was a force of nature, a trailblazing female foreign corr & the only person I have ever seen respond to being asked not to smoke at breakfast in a party conference hotel with the words ‘darling, if I’ve smoked in a tank …’

See also Obituary: Ann Leslie (BBC).

How mixed messages are undermining the vaping advocacy industry

I sometimes think the biggest threat to vaping are vaping advocates.

I've previously highlighted several examples of foot in mouth syndrome, so before I record the latest let's recap.

In March 2021, Edinburgh-based VPZ, the UK's largest vape retailer, launched a campaign to 'Ban smoking for good' in Scotland.

Commercially you can see where VPZ was coming from. Ban a more popular rival product and, hey presto, millions of potential new customers will be forced to switch. Ingenious!

Or perhaps not. As I wrote at the time:

Calling for a ban on a rival commercial product enjoyed by millions of consumers is not a good look.

I’m not sure it does much for the reputation of the wider vaping industry either. I certainly don’t see it impressing the Scottish Government, not even one as anti-smoking as Nicola Sturgeon’s.

In fact, the 'campaign' (launched on No Smoking Day, natch) was quickly abandoned following the failure of a petition to 'Ban smoking for good' that was signed by just 103 people.

Eleven months later, whilst giving evidence to the Irish Parliament's Joint Committee on Health, a representative of the Irish Vape Vendors Association (IVVA) conceded that "Nothing is better than fresh air" while another said not vaping is always better if you are a non-smoker.

The same person agreed that some e-cigarette packaging is "overly colourful" and a third said, "I would have no problem increasing the age [of sale] to 21."

As I subsequently wrote ('Own goal?'):

WTF?! It's one thing to give an inch but a mile?!

Raising the age of sale of e-cigarettes (and tobacco) to 21 sends entirely the wrong message. As I have argued in relation to tobacco, it infantilises young adults who should be allowed (and encouraged) to make informed choices for themselves.

Specifically it sends the wrong message about e-cigarettes which, if nothing else, is a harm reduction product, not something to be feared or unduly restricted.

I also noted that after admitting that he was "addicted to nicotine", the principal IVVA spokesman added, "I would prefer not to be addicted to nicotine", which is hardly a great endorsement for the nicotine-based consumer product he was supposed to be defending!!

At the time I wasn't alone in thinking that some of those comments beggared belief and were potentially counter-productive if not damaging to vaping, but foot in mouth appears to be endemic within the vaping industry.

In the last week our old friend Doug Mutter of VPZ in Edinburgh was reported to be backing a ban on disposable vapes. Seriously.

To be fair he qualified this by saying the company's support for a ban was dependent on "proper punishments and policing" so it didn't create a black market (which of course it will!), but that nuance was lost on the BBC whose report was headlined 'Vape store boss supports ban on disposables'.

Doh!

The thing is, why risk a headline like that? Had it been me (and I have done this several times in interviews) I would have firmly rejected any suggestion of a ban and added, "Banning disposable vapes will create a huge black market and drive consumers into the hands of illicit traders."

But instead of that Mutter and VPZ appear – deliberately or not – to be on the side of the prohibitionists, which is extraordinary considering he is both a director and occasional spokesman for the UK Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA) whose principal spokesman, director John Dunne, is adamant that a ban on disposables is a BAD idea!

A quick shout out too to Louise Ross who was quoted by the Guardian on Friday in a feature headlined 'No need to rush': How to give up vaping:

Unlike cigarettes, where official advice is to completely stop smoking, going cold turkey is not recommended when giving up vaping.

Louise Ross, a clinical consultant at the National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training, says the most important thing is to be ready to give up. “If you stop too quickly, the risk is that you go back to smoking.” She advises reducing the strength of the vapes gradually, vaping less often and in fewer places, and making sure your vape isn’t always in your hand. “It’s about setting controls,” she says.

Nothing wrong with that advice. But it's worth noting that Louise is still interim chair of the New Nicotine Alliance, a vaping advocacy group that, if I'm not mistaken, was originally launched to represent 'new nicotine' consumers, including those who, having quit smoking, discovered they enjoyed vaping so much they had no intention of quitting.

Today the current chair of the NNA is a former smoking cessation professional who offers advice on how to quit vaping as well.

To be clear, I am not questioning Ross's integrity because she is obviously well-meaning, but I do find it odd that some of the vaping advocates most often quoted by the media are increasingly minded to talk about quitting, or not starting (to vape).

At risk of repeating myself, is this really the best endorsement of a product we are continually told (by the same people) carries a fraction of the risk of smoking?

But that's not all:

And for teenagers who have never smoked, Ross advises them to consider the environmental benefits of stopping vaping, as well as the health benefits. Vape batteries contain lithium, aluminium, steel, copper and plastics.

Question: Why stop at teenagers who have never smoked? Surely the same message applies to anyone who vapes, or is thinking of switching to vaping (ie current smokers)? Think of the environment, people!!

If you're confused by these mixed messages, join the club. The most extraordinary thing, though, is the fact that they are coming not from opponents of vaping but from within the vaping advocacy industry itself.

As the saying goes, with friends like these who needs ....

Update: UK vaping industry called to account following rise in use among children (UK Parliament, Wednesday June 28)