MSPs Blow £25,000 On Smokers

Jan 6 2008 By Bruce Walker

Stub-It-Out Firm Land New Deal

PARLY bosses are spending thousands of pounds of taxpayers' cash trying to get a handful of MSPs to quit smoking.

Private firm Easyway Scotland last month landed a new contract to help politicians and Parliament staff stub it out.

They are being paid from a £25,000 fund set aside in 2005 by parliament for their 1000 staff, including 129 MSPs, to quit.

MSPs who still smoke - almost two years after the public ban - include Nats Sandra White and Tricia Marwick, Labour's Cathy Craigie and Lib Dem pipe smoker John Farquhar Munro.

Ten-a-day White, who voted for the ban on party orders, said: "I like a cigarette but there are already ways that people can stop.

"The NHS offers people the means to stop smoking and there is also the publicly funded Smokeline service. So I don't think parliament should be spending more public money on this."

In 2005, parliament paid £3107 to meet about half the cost for 22 workers to attend £230-a-head Easyway "stub it out" sessions.

Last month, they agreed another year-long contract.

What's left from the £25,000 kitty will be available for staff to take up the subsidised scheme, which includes five hours therapy as well as phone support.