Campaigners have vowed to fight plans to extend the public smoking ban to outdoor areas.

According to the Sun, the government is ‘plotting to drastically extend the indoor smoking ban to a raft of outdoor locations’ including pub gardens, small parks, and outside restaurants.

Simon Clark, director of Forest, said: “We will fight any attempt to extend the smoking ban to outdoor areas.

“Smoking bans must be evidence based and there is no evidence that smoking in the open air is a significant threat to the health of non-smokers.”

He added: “The indoor smoking ban did enormous damage to the pub industry. Extending the ban to beer gardens could force many more pubs to close.”

Accusing the government of adopting “bully state” tactics to stop people smoking, Clark said:

“If it’s true that the government intends to extend the smoking ban to a raft of outdoor areas, Britain will no longer be a nanny state.

“We will have crossed a line and become a bully state in which people could be fined and punished merely for lighting a cigarette outside a pub or in a park.”