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Simon McGee
Political Editor
A YORKSHIRE health trust has banned whole families from smoking in their own homes.
Patients receiving out-of-hospital treatment have been ordered to stub out their cigarettes and ventilate their houses before and during visits by health workers or lose their right to care.
The new anti-smoking rules have been introduced by health managers at Rotherham Primary Care Trust (PCT), which has stipulated that patients and their families should abstain for an hour before their staff attend smokers' homes to prevent their workers being exposed to passive smoking.
The trust insists it is simply pre-empting anti-smoking legislation coming into effect next year which protects staff in their workplaces and has made it clear that patients who fail to respond to "reasonable requests" for them to stop will simply have their services withdrawn.
The measure, one of the first of its kind by a public sector body anywhere in England, is part of a package of anti-smoking policies that also feature a complete ban on and around trust property – and even detailed instructions for staff when they are off the trust's premises, because they might "expose others to passive smoking".
Rotherham PCT's approach was condemned last night as overzealous by a Yorkshire MP and pro-smoking group Forest, which claimed the threat to withhold care could even be illegal.
The trust's "SmokeFree" regulations state: "To protect staff who visit clients in their own homes, line managers will provide a letter to the client requesting the client and their family not to smoke during the visit."
They add that if this is ignored, the worker's line manager will see if it is "reasonably practical" to arrange an alternative venue.
"Where clients continue to smoke in the presence of staff members then the PCT will withdraw services."
Given that many home patients are vulnerable – such as the elderly, infirm and young – the trust acknowledges that there are "special cases" where the smoking may not be the responsibility of the patient, and in these cases a certain degree of latitude is permitted.
A trust spokeswoman confirmed that it was asking patients to cease "one hour before the health care worker comes round and open the windows".
But Shipley MP Philip Davies, a patron of the Campaign Against Political Correctness, called the entire policy "an unbelievable scandal and outrage".
"I always thought that everybody, even the most intolerant fascists in the health lobby, accepted the principle that you could make a decision to smoke or not smoke in your own home. This is obviously no longer the case.
"Where is the evidence that someone who visits the home of a smoker is going to get lung cancer as a result? I would have expected health trusts to be more rational and scientific on this issue.
"This has nothing to do with health and everything to do with nannying people."
Forest spokesman Neil Rafferty said that refraining from smoking when a visitor was coming in to help someone should be expected as "common decency", but attacked the threat to withhold care.
"For the trust to say they will withdraw services unless they refrain is blackmail and I would question whether it's legal," he said.
"The trust is now making up rules as it goes along because it thinks it has the right to force people to quit.
"There weren't conditions attached when these old and ill people paid their taxes and they have a right to get their treatment regardless. It's an example of how extreme the anti-smoking lobby has become," he said.
But it is not only the patients that are under pressure from the trust's management.
The rules are just as strict for the staff themselves, with smoking barred "in any part of the trust premises or grounds, including offices, corridors, toilets and car parks."
They add: "Smokers are requested not to smoke immediately outside any trust premises. This applies to staff, visitors and patients."
And there are even instructions for when they are away: "When attending meetings or other events at venues where smoking is permitted, staff are expected not to smoke, both because they are representing the trust and therefore its strategy on tackling smoking, and because it is important not to expose others to passive smoke.
"For similar reasons staff should not be seen smoking in public while wearing uniform or trust badges."
It emerged last week that smokers in Staffordshire and Norfolk will be forced to agree to quit to qualify for life-changing operations.
They will have to try to give up to receive hip or knee replacement operations, although the rules will not apply for emergencies.
A Nottinghamshire health trust and a South London council have also imposed smoking bans similar to Rotherham's to protect their visiting health and social services staff respectively.
Comment: Page 10.