Smoking Outdoors Around Children Could Be Banned Under Revamped Bill

Smoking and vaping in playgrounds and outside schools could be banned, although the government has rowed back on its controversial proposal to make smoking in pub beer gardens illegal. Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the hospitality industry has “taken a real battering in recent years” and it is not “the right time” to ban smoking outside pubs, as was mooted earlier this year. He said, however, that smoking and vaping could be banned in other public places in England under Labour’s beefed-up version of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which was introduced to Parliament on Tuesday. In Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, where health is a devolved matter, it is already an offence to smoke on NHS hospital grounds. The new plans would see this also introduced in England....