Visit the Telegraph's Smoking Ban Homepage Young children are to be mobilised to heap pressure on their parents to give up smoking, in a continuing drive against the habit.
As England awakes to a ban on lighting up in pubs and restaurants today, plans have been drawn up for "smoking cessation support workers" to visit schools to "educate" children about the dangers of passive smoking.
The children will then be urged to return home and "stand up for their rights" by telling their mothers and fathers to stop smoking at home.
Details of the initiative, branded as "disgraceful moral blackmail" by critics, come as Caroline Flint, a health minister until last week's reshuffle, has told local authorities to adopt a softly-softly approach in the early days of the ban on smoking in public places, which came into effect at 6am this morning.
Calling for breaches to be settled with a quiet word rather than a fine, she said: "We are saying, 'Don't come down like a ton of bricks'. There may be some smoking martyrs, but only when people are flagrantly breaking the law should matters be taken further, as a last resort."
The initiative to use children to persuade their parents to stop smoking is being pioneered in London by the North Fulham New Deal for Communities (NDC) project, backed with £15,000 of government money. Other groups, including NHS primary care trusts, are expected to adopt similar measures.
A spokesman for North Fulham NDC said: "It's about getting children to fight for their rights. Workers will visit schools to educate children about the dangers of second-hand smoke, so children can then ask their parents to respect their right to grow up in a smoke-free home."
She said that the focus of the campaign would be persuading parents to stop smoking at home, but added: "Lots of kids will want their parents to give up totally when they realise the dangers. It is not necessarily down to the children to tell parents to give up now, but the ideal is for them to explain, 'Mum, I don't want you to smoke at all'."
The British Medical Association said: "If children come home and say, 'I think you should give up for my health and for your own', that can only be a good thing. If doctors were happy, we would support primary care trusts doing something similar."
The campaigns group Ash, Action on Smoking and Health, said the initiative was "very sensible - if it works, we would like it replicated nationwide".
However, the project was condemned by others. Simon Clark, the director of Forest, the Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco, said: "It is disgraceful that children should be used to morally blackmail their parents. The authorities are losing all sense of proportion."
This weekend, there were dozens of events to mark the introduction of the ban, such as The Last Gasp Masked Ball at 9 Adam Street, a private members' club in London.
At a speech to the Last Gasp Dinner, at the Garrick on Friday, Ronald Harwood, who won an Oscar for his screenplay of the film The Pianist, compared the politicians introducing the ban to Nazis.
He said: "Smokers form the last bastion of individual freedom. Politicians, our elected representatives, have a savage impulse to control and they have taken this to extremes.
"Communists, fascists and Nazis were also fanatical in their desire to control."
In Bolton, Nick Hogan, publican of the Swan, was today due to hold "a day of defiance" involving up to 700 people gathering in his pub from all over the UK. "It is about the freedom to choose," he said.
About 3.7 million workplaces, including 200,000 pubs and restaurants, will be affected by the ban. Individuals breaking the rules risk a £50 fine, and landlords or employers allowing smoking could be fined up to £2,500.
More than 1,000 council monitors are thought to be enforcing the ban, but since many are environmental health officials who work a standard nine to five week, it is unclear how many will be actively policing the rules.
