Thank you for raising that issue, which we feel strongly about. As you said, going to hospital as a patient or a visitor can be a stressful experience. It is also quite stressful for many members of staff. To ban smoking on all hospital grounds is totally inhumane and vindictive. It is petty—far pettier than banning smoking in pubs, because at least there people can still go outside. We are still firmly against the current comprehensive smoking ban, but to extend it to entire hospital sites is absolutely outrageous.
I accept that, when people go to hospital, it is not nice to see people standing and smoking around the entrance. That is not particularly nice for people who are walking past them, although that is often exaggerated. However, we have to look at the matter from a patient’s point of view. I am thinking not just of patients who are in for one or two days but those who might be in hospital for eight or nine weeks. That might, for example, include an elderly person who is in for a hip replacement. They might be in hospital for eight or nine weeks and have very limited mobility. They will be told that they cannot go outside to smoke anywhere on the hospital grounds.
For a lot of patients in hospital, having the odd cigarette provides a comfort factor; they look forward to it. To deny them the right to have a cigarette anywhere in the hospital grounds is totally and utterly wrong.
The ban will be quite expensive to enforce. We have read newspaper reports in recent months in Scotland that a lot of people are ignoring smoking bans on hospital grounds. That is fine for people who are mobile and can go outside. What about people who are immobile? I had a call recently from the daughter of a woman who is aged 67, suffering from dementia and at a psychiatric hospital in Edinburgh. Lots of other patients can go outside, but because this woman is suffering from dementia, she cannot go outside on her own—it is unsafe. The staff were being threatened with disciplinary action if they took pity on her and took her outside.
There is a long history of staff taking people outside so that they can have a smoke if that is what they want to do, but now those same staff are being threatened with disciplinary action. Somebody who has a fantastic record of 20 or 30 years working for the NHS could find themselves penalised in some way—they could even lose their job—because they have taken pity on a patient and taken them outside for a smoke. That has to be wrong.
To go back to Richard Lyle’s specific point, I do not see why hospitals cannot have smoking shelters. If they say that they cannot afford shelters, I would ask what is wrong with smoking 100 yards away from the building. I would not put a particular limit on that—people have to show a bit of common sense. Let us not have people smoking around the entrance, but anywhere else on hospital grounds should be allowed. People are not putting anybody else’s health at risk by lighting a cigarette in the open air. Why should they be forced off hospital grounds and have to walk perhaps a quarter of a mile to a busy main road?
We put in our submission a case from about eight years ago, which I accept was an isolated one, when a nurse—I believe that she was at a hospital in Essex—was forced off hospital grounds to have a smoke and was murdered. I am not saying that that will be a regular occurrence, but we have to bear it in mind. People could be put at risk if they are forced further and further away from hospital grounds just to light a cigarette in the open air. That is totally wrong and utterly inhumane, and it goes against the so-called caring NHS.