The minister for primary care and public health, Neil O’Brien, recently announced a curious policy to make the country ‘smoke free’ by 2030. The answer to the age old problem is, apparently, to give away one million vapes and offer pregnant women (or should that be pregnant ‘people’ in the current climes?) £400 to quit the habit.

As an ex-smoker (20 a day for 20 years) and an avid vaper, I read the latest government soundbites with interest.

Firstly, the free vapes: Now I see myself as something of a connoisseur. When I started the majority of vapes were horrid little devices where you had to suck so hard your cheeks were permanently sunken as you tried and failed to find a flavour you liked.

On the face of it, a welcome gesture by the Government, although no doubt red tape will squeeze the ease of access and culminate in having to fill in a score of forms and numerous trips to the GP, who never have any appointments anyhow, to ascertain the freebie. I would surmise most will give up and continue with the B&H instead. As usual, the devil is in the detail with such schemes and, again, as usual, successive governments provide no detail and thus the plans never really work in any shape or form.

The most curious aspect of their vague scheme however is the offering of ‘up to’ 400 quid to pregnant women to quit the habit. Unanimously, and rightly, most social media commenters have surmised that to continue smoking when pregnant is a feckless, selfish act which causes no end of harm to the foetus resulting in premature births and no end of health implications that will affect the child, and therefore the NHS, for years to come.

The 'logic’ therefore is that by paying a sum of money as a carrot to quit the habit, the NHS will, in the long run, save money, seems noble at face value, but again the devil is in the detail of which, you guessed it, they have provided none.

Don’t smoke? May as well pretend you do and go for the cash grab. How will it be administered? How will you evidence you are now an ex-smoker? At what date would you have to stop? If you stop during pregnancy would you be eligible for the payment and, well the questions go on as long as a minster does when announcing such an intervention.

But my issue is where does such bribery, for that’s what it is, stop? I think back on the thousands I personally have cost the NHS over the years. I broke my ankle playing football: Should we pay people to stop undertaking such activity?

A couple of years ago after a nasty downhill mountain bike crash, I attended Merthyr Tydfil A and E. The estimated cost to the NHS of that single trip was £419. On top of that I have had numerous bouts of what could loosely be termed as physiotherapy, trips to the doctor (when they could be seen in their natural habitat) and a visit to the specialist who surmised the hip swelling, three years on, was untreatable. In total, using the £419 figure a visit as a loose gauge, I reckon this one injury alone has cost around £4,500. And so, I think, if I had been offered £400 cash to not go that day to bikepark Wales, would I have taken it? And the answer would resoundingly have been yes.

Usually, we pay folk to do things, be it a job or work, but it's rare to pay them to do nothing, or to become inactive. The only precedent I can think of is the EU set aside scheme where large scale farmers became richer by doing nothing with their land with the threat of housing being their bargaining tool.

Should we pay people not to drive to stop injuries and death? How about DIY which is the fifth most common reason for a trip to A&E? Maybe we should ban kitchen knives or rugby or flying or anything else that carries an element of risk and instead gild individuals financially for reducing the burden on the NHS.

The Government has enjoyed halcyon decades where they gleefully hoovered up tobacco tax as the NHS morphed into the most inefficient and badly run institution in history. By offering folk money to not do something we are doing little but immersing ourselves in bribery on an epic scale where the system will be abused once more, with no tangible financial effects come the end game.

We really are a nation of silly sausages, and this is yet another exhibit your honour. A feckless mother will remain feckless with £400 in their back pocket or nay, as we console ourselves once more by saying well, at least we tried, despite failure once more being the only end result as we lurch from one crisis to another…

  • Brett Ellis is a teacher