MPs’ vote on gradual smoking ban set to expose Tory splits over key Sunak policy – UK politics live

Anyone not registered to vote in the local, mayoral and police commissioner elections on 2 May has only a few hours left to apply, amid signs of a late surge in interest, PA Media reports.

The two parties have a power-sharing agreement at Holyrood, and two Green MSPs are Scottish government ministers, but, as PA Media reports, cracks have been beginning to show in the pact in recent weeks as they gear up for the election.

Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock Opinion polls rarely offer Rishi Sunak any comfort these days but, on the proposed gradual ban on smoking, they provide welcome reading for No 10, because they have consistently shown high levels of public support for what the government is doing.

Liz Truss has blamed “unelected individuals” in the Department of Health and Social Care for the government’s planned smoking ban, in apparent attack on civil servants such as the chief medical officer for England, Sir Chris Whitty.

She is yet to decide how to vote but has previously spoken of her discomfort with bans and wrote in The Times during her 2022 leadership campaign: “Too often people feel that whoever is elected, the answer is more government.

But Sunak will soon be fighting an election, and this shows that on at least one key issue (and one with which he is strongly identified personally – no one else in government is pushing this), he is not fundamentally aligned with the instincts of many people in his party.