Pub boss has say on potential smoking in beer garden ban

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said the Government will “take decisions” on a potential outdoor smoking ban in an effort to curb preventable deaths and alleviate pressures on the NHS.

Industry leaders have warned that the proposed plans would be another “nail in the coffin” for pubs and bars.

Lee Marshall - who runs The Woodlands Hotel on Mill Carr Hill Road in Oakenshaw - was baffled when he heard about the prospect of the ban.

"There is going to be absolute uproar," he told the Telegraph & Argus.

The beer garden at The Woodlands Hotel. (Image: Telegraph & Argus) "It is the most ridiculous thing that the government can bring in right now if that's what they are going to do.

"I was privy to the smoking ban back (in 2007). We had a number of businesses. When that was introduced it absolutely killed us."

Nationally, the number of pub closures increased to 80 per month over the first three months of 2024, up by 51 per cent compared with the same period last year, according to official Government data for England and Wales.

Mr Marshall feels the introduction of this would only accelerate these numbers.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer. (Image: PA)"It is absolutely ridiculous," Mr Marshall added.

"The amount of tab ends we clean up daily is crazy. We have a lot of smokers and vapers.

"From a smoking outside point of view, it is just stupid. It will cripple us.

"People come out for a drink and a cigarette. What are they going to do? These people rely on their cigarettes.

"It is part and parcel of them coming out. It is their enjoyment.

"How can you take that away from them? It is absolutely stupid."

Tim Martin, founder of JD Wetherspoon which has 10 pubs across the Bradford district, was less critical of the policy from a business point of view, instead calling it a “libertarian issue”.

He said Wetherspoon was the first pub group to open non-smoking pubs before the 2007 smoking ban, adding: “The rationale then was that non-smokers should be free to avoid passive smoking. That argument is diluted outside.”

JD Wetherspoon founder Tim Martin Mr Martin told PA: “The question is whether the Government should interfere in individual liberties where danger is involved.

“Mountaineering is dangerous, for example. Horse riding, statistically, causes many serious injuries.

“I don’t think it will have a big effect on our business, one way or the other, and is really a libertarian issue.”