‘Give workers right to smoke-free zone’

Home care workers should have the right to refuse to enter premises where residents are smoking, MPs say.

In a report on the government’s plans for a part-ban on smoking in enclosed public places, they also call for proposed exemptions on care homes, psychiatric units, hospices and prisons, including young offender institutions, to be scrapped.

The report, by the health select committee, states that the case for protecting workers from inhaling other people’s smoke applied to these premises as much as pubs and restaurants.

However, the smoking ban in Scotland from next year, which the committee describes as comprehensive, will also exempt people’s homes, residential care premises, psychiatric units and hospices.