Should Government legislate against people smoking in their homes? Does it even need to?

These were questions addressed by former public health minister Caroline Flint, who argued last night that the range of measures taken by the previous Government were already having a wider impact on smoking behaviour.

The Claim

Appearing in a debate on anti-smoking for BBC2's Newsnight programme, Ms Flint insisted that smokers with children had already been changing their behaviour.

She said: “When were talking about private space it is more difficult. I have seen evidence myself some of the information - messages that government provided, working with health organisations - is getting through to parents.

“I think fewer parents are smoking in front of their children than ever before.”

Is there evidence to back up her claim?

Analysis

Figures published by the Department of Health, while not a perfect fit for Ms Flint’s claim, do at least appear to point in the same direction.

The survey of attitudes to smoking produced by the Office of National Statistics records the way smokers alter their behaviour around children.

The most recent data, for 2008-9 shows that there was a steady rise in the proportion of adult smokers who would not smoke around children, rising from just over 50 per cent in 1997 to over 75 per cent in 2008-9.

Clearly this doesn’t specifically cover parents smoking only in front of their own children, but raises the possibility of such a trend.

Likewise, another set of figures that go some way to further illustrate the point without ever directly addressing it are figures for the proportion of households with children under 16 in which smoking is not permitted.

In both 2008-9 and 2007 the proportion of households with children in which smoking was not permitted was 75 per cent – a marked rise from the 65 per cent in 2006.

Anti-smoking campaign group Action on Smoking Health (ASH) has commissioned polls with YouGov to assess attitudes towards the potential harmful effects of passive smoking on children.

For instance, in 2007 17 per cent of respondents felt smoking had a big impact on the likelihood of the occurrence of cot death, but this had risen to 26 per cent 2009.

While such findings do not directly match up with Ms Flint’s claim they do provide a useful context.

Full Fact contacted the Don Valley MP’s office, and we will update if we are provided with more relevant detail on the topic.

Conclusion

From the data available it appears that the claim made by Ms Flint could plausibly check out. Separating the two parts of the claim, it can be seen that the figures analysed above do suggest a change in attitudes that chimes with Ms Flint's claim that the message was "getting through to parents".

Yet without more details on the source of the second part of her claim, it is impossible to say with complete certainty that the number of parents who smoke in front of their children is lower "than ever before".

If this claim is based on the official attitudes towards smoking survey, it would appear that there is no data available to specifically validate the claim, despite the circumstantial evidence.

When we spoke to ASH, they also suggested that the claim by Ms Flint could be hard to verify.  Despite Ms Flint’s optimism, Amanda Stanford, Research Manager at ASH told us that while significant progress had been made by the last Government on the exposure of children to smoking there was still a long way to go.