Smoking ban: Liz Truss takes aim at ‘unelected’ health department officials

Liz Truss has blamed “unelected individuals” in the Department of Health and Social Care for the government’s planned smoking ban as she launched an apparent attack on civil servants such as the chief medical officer for England, Sir Chris Whitty.

Truss launched her attack in an interview with the BBC as hostilities opened among Conservative MPs before the second reading of the tobacco and vapes bill on Tuesday, with another former minister rejecting her claim that the plans were “unconservative”.

“What I think about this smoking ban is that it’s something that the Department of Health... ie unelected individuals … have been pursuing for some time,” Truss told the BBC’s political editor, Chris Mason, in one of the latest in a series of interviews to promote her new book.

Truss, who has limited support among Tory MPs after her disastrous period in Downing Street but is one of the leaders of rebellion against the bill, claimed she was worried about where the proposals would lead, suggesting that people could end up with a “sugar allowance”.

Truss did not name Whitty, who uses an article in the Guardian on Tuesday to say that lobbying by big tobacco “needs to be addressed head on”, as email evidence emerged of campaigning tactics being used to put pressure on MPs to sink Rishi Sunak’s smoking ban bill.

“It’s a gradual long-term reform that doesn’t affect anyone now smoking, protects young people from a dangerous addictive drug, supports the NHS and saves the taxpayer and society a fortune.”