Celebrity chef attacks smoking ban

Antony Worrall Thompson has said that the impending smoking ban is an "infringement of civil liberties" and that pro-smoking campaigners will "fight on" after the July 1 ban.

Speaking before the Revolt In Style Dinner at the Savoy hotel in London, the television chef and restaurateur insisted that smoking is a sociable activity and that the Irish ban had merely driven people on to the streets.

"If you go to Dublin, everybody is out on the pavement - including the non-smokers," he said, adding that the ban was the "start of a slippery slope".

"Tonight's a celebration, it's not a wake, and we intend to fight on and hope one day that we'll be able to get exemption licences. It's an infringement of civil liberties, really.

"What you're doing by banning people in clubs and pubs especially, you're driving people back into their homes. Low ceilings, windows closed, carpets, usually kids. It's a far more unhealthy environment to smoke in."

He added that he had found diners more likely to stay on after their meal for a coffee or digestif. "A survey in our restaurants showed that smokers spend 18% more than non-smokers."

Simon Clark, director of pressure group Forest (Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco), was telling the event's 400 guests that "we have won the battle but we haven't lost the war".

He said say: "We urge the Government to amend the legislation to allow designated smoking rooms in some pubs and allow private clubs to devise a policy on smoking in accordance with their members' wishes."

Claire Fox, director of the Institute of Ideas, was saying: "It is a sign of our small-minded times when the most exciting new idea to come out of politics is banning smoking.

"These new modern puritans demonise our behaviour and preach illiberalism. We are constantly hectored about how anti-social smoking is, but the real social killjoys are those who don't trust adults to make decisions on their own."

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