Ms Hewitt hardly needed a consultation to deliver this revelatory finding. Nor did the doctors need to be told. Yet this “discovery”, coupled with the instincts of wiser ministers and the weary protests of a public tired of being told how to live, has since induced the Health Secretary to shelve her long-term goal of turning the proposed partial ban into a complete one. Instead, she offered the compromise of dedicated smoking rooms in licensed drinking premises, while clinging to the notion that the ban should extend to members-only clubs. Both ideas were attacked at an ill-tempered meeting of the Cabinet’s Domestic Affairs Committee on Monday — the first by backers of a total ban, the second by justifiably indignant defenders of club members’ right to write their own rules. Last night the result was chaos. There will be a ban of sorts, but it remains unclear when, where or how it will come into force.

There is little question that sensible, new legislation to tighten restrictions on smoking in public places is an effective way of improving public health. According to the Royal College of Physicians it would also cut insurance premiums and NHS costs, and boost productivity to the tune of roughly £4 billion a year. But if the argument were that simple, a complete ban would already be in force, and it is not.

In this debate, the health rights of the majority must be balanced against the human rights of the minority. The previous Health Secretary, John Reid, made the same argument last year when he called smoking one of the few pleasures left to a single mother on a sink estate. The language was politically unacceptable; the point was more valid than most critics were prepared to admit. To many, whether in the pubs of Burnley or the cigar rooms of Mayfair, smoking is a source of pleasure. Jeremy Bentham would dutifully have quantified that happiness. The Government should at least take account of it.

Dr Reid’s approach to this, by exempting pubs not serving food from the ban, was misconceived. It risked creating blue-collar, grey-air ghettos in which every licensee stopped serving food, except crisps and peanuts. It is not too late to adopt the alternative, consistently championed by this newspaper, of licensing limited numbers of pubs to allow smoking with or without food, so that both workers and customers know in advance what sort of air they will be breathing. Instead, the Health Improvement Bill has become a victim of pointless dithering by Ms Hewitt, the physical manifestation of the nanny state. Her instincts are those of the meddling bureaucrat, and her tone that of the patronising matron. If there is a fug of confusion over smoking, how will she cope with an avian flu pandemic?

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