Cheshire East backs scheme to pay pregnant women to quit smoking

Cheshire East Council is going ahead with a pilot scheme to pay pregnant women to quit smoking, writes Belinda Ryan.

The women will be paid a total of £400 – over six instalments – and other smokers in their household will be paid £200 to give up.

During the programme, carbon monoxide tests will be taken at intervals to confirm the person has not smoked before they get their cash.

Dr Matt Tyrer, director of public health, told the adults and health committee on Monday: “We have 10.8% of pregnant women in Cheshire East smoking at the time of delivery, and that is higher than the England average.”

He said paying people to stub out the habit had worked elsewhere.

And he added it could have a knock-on effect for the next generation because if children had seen their parents quit and that they felt better for it, it is less likely the children would start to smoke.

A budget of £116,500 is being proposed for the scheme.

Of this, £95,000 from will come from the ring-fenced public health grant and £21,000 from the Champs Public Health Collaborative.

No funding will come from Cheshire East Council.

It is estimated the programme would lead to savings in the wider health and social care system of around £450,000.

Cllr Denis Murphy (Congleton East, Lib Dem) was the only councillor opposed to the scheme.

“I’m all in favour of supporting smoking cessation, very nice if we can do that, but I am fundamentally opposed to paying people to stop something that they voluntarily choose to do,” he said.

“I’m very impressed by all the data that’s been put in front of me and I suppose, if you want to crunch numbers and say that you spend £116,000 the return will be £450,000, the maths speak for themselves.

“But I am fundamentally opposed to providing financial incentives.”

Cllr Andrew Kolker (Dane Valley, Con) said: “Smoking is catastrophic to people’s health, and certainly the health of an unborn child, so anything that is proven to reduce smoking, absolutely 100% behind.”

But he asked what measures were being taken to prevent fraud.

He said if a pregnant woman filled in a questionnaire about her health history and didn’t smoke, she would tick the non-smoker box.

“But if word got round that the council are giving you £400 if you tick the box and say you are a smoker, then I would suspect that a lot of people would say ‘yes, I am a smoker, but I’m desperately trying to give up’, said Cllr Kolker.

He said then, presumably, the GP would refer them to the Cheshire East programme.

“You’re a success as far as Cheshire East is concerned because you’ve gone through the programme and you’re not a smoker, which means brilliant, we’ve achieved something,” said the Dane Valley councillor,

“Statisticians will be ecstatic because it proves their case that payments do indeed stop smoking.”

He said the woman would be delighted, having received her £400 but in reality she had never been a smoker in the first place.

“So if you could just reassure me that there are real processes in place to stop people defrauding the system, then that’s terrific,” he said.

Dr Tyrer said: “We will make sure that we are learning any lessons which come from the areas that have said set it up before.

“We will make sure that we have got robust processes around how we determine somebody’s eligibility, which will include breath testing at that point, so that you can’t have somebody who’s never been smoking before come in and say yes, I’m a smoker.”

The committee voted in favour of the pilot scheme, with one against.

(library pic by Sarah Johnson creative commons licence)