The bully state in action

Earlier today I gave a short interview to BBC Radio London in response to a new initiative by the City of London Corporation to crack down on cigarette litter. Full story HERE.

As ever I made the point that while Forest doesn't condone littering, we don't understand why smokers should be singled out for fines and possible prosecution. Litter comes in many forms and includes chewing gum, sweet wrappers, newspapers, promotional literature etc etc.

If local authorities really want to reduce cigarette litter they ought to lobby government to amend the smoking ban to allow people to smoke indoors in designated rooms.

Anyway, I was walking back to my office in Soho (where smokers seems to outnumber non-smokers) when I passed a pub that had a number of cigarette bins on the wall.

Closer inspection revealed them to be property of Adbins, "a new unique and innovative product designed to benefit business owners throughout the UK since the introduction of the smoking ban".

Apparently there are 14,000 Adbins across 6,500 locations in Greater London and the number is growing daily (but not in the City of London, I'd hazard a guess).

It's a good idea but the problem is this: a lot of local authorities are reluctant to give planning permission for cigarette bins (nor will they pay for them to be erected on lamp posts or elsewhere) because they fear cigarette bins would "normalise" smoking - and we all know that it is official government policy to denormalise smoking.

Instead, they prefer to hire a small army of "street environment officers" with a view to fining smokers and prosecuting local businesses.

A prime example, I think you will agree, of the bully state in action.

Now that's what I call a result

In 2000 Forest kick-started what proved to be a successful campaign on cross-Channel shopping. At the time we were inundated with calls from aggrieved smokers who had had their tobacco, and sometimes their cars, siezed by Customs officials as part of the clampdown on smuggling.

Of course, there was plenty of smuggling going on - even students and OAPs were getting in on the act - but lots of innocent people were being harassed, quite unnecesarily. The guideline, then, was a paltry 800 cigarettes (compared with 90 litres of wine). It wasn't illegal to bring back more - you just had to prove they were for your own personal use.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, we helped one chap challenge Customs in court (by finding him a solicitor and barrister and paying his legal costs, around £5,000) and that led, eventually, to the government increasing the guideline to 3,200 cigarettes in, I think, 2002.

Smuggling is still rife (thanks to the high rate of tobacco taxation in this country) but as far as legitimate cross-Channel shopping is concerned, law-abiding smokers seem OK with the current guideline and it's no longer the major issue that it once was.

Incidents do still occur, however, and I'm pleased to say that, for once, I can report a happy ending. On Monday we took a call from a guy in Wales. He explained that Customs in Portsmouth had confiscated the 3,100 cigarettes he had brought into the country.

He decided to appeal and sought our opinion. (For legal reasons we don't offer "advice" - you need a solicitor or the Citizens Advice Bureau for that.) He told me that he smokes 25 cigarettes a day and we suggested that to prove it he needed evidence (receipts or credit card statements) of previous purchases. Needless to say, he didn't have any. After all, most people pay for tobacco with cash and don't keep the receipt.

Another tack, we suggested, was to ask friends, family or employer to write letters confirming that he smokes as much as he says. (We also suggested that he ask his doctor to write a letter but he hasn't seen his doctor in years - he hasn't needed to!)

On Tuesday, armed with several letters, he returned to Portsmouth for a meeting with Customs. Last night he called to say that his cigarettes (worth over £400) had been returned to him "and they even helped re-pack my case!".

Needless to say their generosity didn't extend to refunding his travel costs (£60) but, in this day and age, I consider that a result.

PS. We can't promise this outcome every time so buyer beware.

Liberal paternalism and the bully state

This evening I shall be at Balliol College, Oxford, addressing members of the Oxford Hayek Society. Inspired by my friend Julian Le Grand (left, HERE), I shall be talking about "Liberal paternalism and the bully state". If you have any personal examples of the bully state (other than the smoking ban) drop me a note NOW and I'll try and squeeze them into my speech. Deadline: 6.00pm

Senior health advisor agrees with Forest!

In September 2004 I was invited, with the late Lord Harris, chairman of Forest, to a meeting with John Reid, then Health Secretary. Apart from Reid, there were four other people present, who I took to be civil servants and advisors. One of them was Julian Le Grand (left) who has been making the news with his plan for a £10 permit for smokers.

Ralph Harris and I began the 30-minute meeting by outlining our objections to a ban on smoking in all enclosed public places. We spoke for five or six minutes, focussing on the issue of secondhand smoke. We highlighted the major studies and concluded that the evidence could not possibly justify a comprehensive ban. (Note: the meeting took place BEFORE Reid announced his plan to ban smoking in all workplaces except private members' clubs and pubs that don't serve food.)

When we finished, Reid turned to his senior advisor and asked: "What do you think?" Julian Le Grand didn't hesitate. "I agree with them," he said, nodding in our direction. Reid thought for a moment, then said (I paraphrase): "Yes, I've always been pretty dubious about passive smoking."

Less encouragingly, he went on to say that the threat of "passive smoking" was not the reason the government wanted further restrictions on public smoking. The real reason, he explained, was to encourage smokers to quit so the government could meet its target of reducing the smoking rate to 21 per cent by 2010. (That is why, despite our best efforts, the issue of passive smoking remains a sideshow to the main event.)

I am not aware of any official record of that conversation because it was a private meeting and Ralph and I felt honourbound to respect the confidential nature of our discussion. Sadly (to the best of my knowledge), neither John Reid nor his senior advisor ever went public with their true thoughts on secondhand smoke. 

Until last night.

On Radio Five's Stephen Nolan Show I reminded Le Grand of what he had said. He claimed not to remember but added, helpfully: "I don't actually think the arguments on passive smoking are all that strong."

So there we have it. Senior government advisor on health says:  "I don't think the arguments on passive smoking are all that strong." Who would have thought it?

PS. In interviews yesterday Professor Le Grand repeated the anti-smoking mantra that 70 per cent of smokers wish to quit. It's a figure that comes up all the time and it came up at our meeting in 2004. As I recall, John Reid was quick to dismiss it. In his opinion, the true figure was nearer 30 per cent. Now, who would you believe? A middle-class academic in his smoke-free ivory tower, or a former nicotine addict whose constituency has one of the highest smoking rates in the country?

A question of freedom

Yesterday, following the publication of Ronald Harwood's article about smoking on The Free Society blog, we  received an email from a (very) senior journalist at the Guardian.

It reads:

What a shame, he always seems such a nice, clever man, but he doesn't get it, does he? Of course there are bossy people around, there always are, it's very irritating, but at least they can't murder you. And more people have more freedom in 2008 than in history, recorded and unrecorded, have ever had ... in total, that is.

Before anyone jumps in with a knee jerk, anti-Guardian response, I think this is worth discussing because such comments are one of the major hurdles that genuine liberals (or libertarians) face each and every day.

It depends on your definition of freedom, but it would be foolish to deny that many people do not, in general, consider their "freedom" to be under serious threat. This is certainly true on a macro level where the threats posed by the Nazis (before and during the Second World War), the Soviet Union (post war), poverty or disease have either disappeared or been significantly reduced.

There may be a terrorist threat to our freedom but, at the moment, it remains relatively small. Few people, even in London, get up in the morning worrying that they may become a victim of a terrorist atrocity. Likewise, the chances of most of us being murdered are so small it's not something you would lose sleep over. (That, I think, is what he means when he writes "at least they can't murder you".)

So what we're left with is all those micro freedoms that many of us DO believe are being taken away from us, bit by bit. And even then it's not that simple, because alongside some new restriction people can always point to some form of de-regulation (licensing hours, for example).

Our job is to convince people that "small" freedoms - the freedom to smoke in some public places, the freedom to make informed choices about what we eat and drink, the freedom to be offensive (see below) - DO matter and are not bargaining tools to be given away in return for some other "freedom".

Sure, they're not on a par with being invaded by a foreign power, but - in a democracy - if they matter to a substantial number of people (even a minority) they still matter. So I appreciate what our Guardian correspondent is saying, but real freedom has to start with little things. If we forget that we are in danger of losing some of the more important freedoms that we currently take for granted.

Former MSP joins The Free Society

I may have mentioned this before but now it's official. Brian Monteith, former member of the Scottish Parliament, has been appointed policy director of The Free Society. Brian will advise on strategy and implementation, with special emphasis on ways to tackle the bully state.

For eight years (1999-2007) Monteith was one of the Scottish Parliament’s more outspoken and colourful members. He was Tory spokesman for education, culture and sport, and then finance and public service reform, before becoming an independent member in 2005. He was also Convenor of the Parliament’s powerful Public Accounts (Audit) Committee for four years.

In 2006 he announced he wouldn't stand again as an MSP, saying he “would rather return to commerce than be a one-man band swimming against the treacly tide of collectivism in the Scottish Parliament”.

A former spokesman for Forest, Brian writes regularly for several newspapers and has a weekly column in the Edinburgh Evening News. Writing for The Free Society website, to be launched on Monday (February 4), he says:

Thank goodness for The Free Society. The idea of the nanny state where nanny – who of course knows best – can attempt to shape our lives in our ‘best’ interests is long past. It is now the bully state.  That’s why this campaign is so important. It is long overdue and I look forward to helping it provide solace, inspiration, leadership and a generous helping of common sense and humour.

Brian is currently writing a book about the bully state to be published by The Free Society later this year. If you have any examples, anecdotes or stories you would like him to consider, email info@thefreesociety.org or comment below.