Tetchy Rishi Sunak defends smoking ban and HS2 U-turn

The prime minister said smoking is ‘unequivocally the single biggest preventable cause of death, disability and illness in our society’

A tetchy Rishi Sunak has defended his decision to ban smoking but not impose restrictions on junk food, saying cigarettes are “different to a pack of crisps or a piece of cake”.

The prime minister said smoking was “unequivocally the single biggest preventable cause of death, disability and illness in our society”, after announcing a ban for future generations in his first Tory conference speech as leader on Wednesday.

He said it was “chemically addictive”, praising his own plan to ban it as “the single biggest intervention in public health in a generation”.

But pressed on why he undid plans to tackle obesity, on the grounds of protecting people’s freedoms, Mr Sunak told the BBC smoking was “fundamentally different”.

“There’s no safe level of smoking that can be part of a balanced diet. It’s also obviously highly addictive, and it is responsible for one in four cancer deaths in our country,” the PM said.

It follows Mr Sunak delaying measures from the government’s anti-obesity strategy by two years. The rules, which would have banned two-for-one junk food deals, had already been pushed back and would have come into force this month.

But Mr Sunak said he “firmly believes in people’s right to choose”, delaying the plans until October 2025.

The government’s chief medical officer, Sir Chris Whitty, backed the plan, which will see the smoking age raised by one year every year, effectively barring today’s 14-year-olds from ever legally buying cigarettes. He said: “Most people who smoke wish they had never taken it up. They try to stop and they can’t.”

Former Tory health minister Lord Bethell also welcomed Rishi Sunak’s smoking ban but said the measure should be “the first step in several”. He urged Mr Sunak to go further with new measures to tackle obesity.

Contradicting Mr Sunak’s claim, research from BioMed Central in 2021 showed obesity now accounts for more deaths in England and Scotland than smoking among people in middle and old age. National strategies to address adiposity should be a public health priority, it said.

Mr Sunak was also grilled over his decision to scrap the northern leg of HS2, spending the money saved on investments in local transport links.

In his conference speech on Wednesday, the PM finally announced he was cancelling the development of the high-speed rail link north of Birmingham – as first revealed by The Independent.

But he was quickly condemned by former prime minister David Cameron, who denounced the decision to axe the high-speed line beyond Birmingham as the “wrong one”, saying that a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” had been lost. Boris Johnson piled in, adding: “I agree.”

Pressed on whether the U-turn, after 13 years of cross-party support for HS2, would undermine confidence among investors in the UK, Mr Sunak said he speaks to global leaders “all the time”.

He said they want to know about the UK’s post-Brexit regulations, skills and the tax regime.

“I can tell you, they do not talk to me about the railroad between Birmingham and Manchester,” he added.

Elsewhere in the wide-ranging interview, Mr Sunak refused to repeat Suella Braverman’s claim that a "hurricane" of mass migration is coming to the UK.

Asked whether he agreed with her words, the prime minister said: "Illegal migration is putting unsustainable pressure on our country and, for me, it is non-negotiable that it should be the British people who decide who comes to our country and not criminal gangs.”

But Mr Sunak refused repeatedly to say whether he was “happy” with the home secretary’s language.

And, pressed on whether he was the right candidate to bring “change” to Britain – after 13 years of Conservative governments - Mr Sunak said he was “doing politics differently”.

He said: “This is about leadership. I’ve been prime minister for less than a year.

"The choice at the next election is between me and Keir Starmer. I’m the person that’s doing politics differently. I’m the person making the big decisions that are going to change our country for the future."