Millionaire hires Cherie Blair to challenge smoking ban
A flamboyant millionaire nightclub owner has hired Cherie Blair in a bid to help him beat the smoking ban.
Dave West, who owns lap dancing club Hey Jo in Jermyn Street, London, is planning to let staff and customers smoke in the premises.
Mrs Blair is also mounting a legal challenge to the ban on his behalf on the basis that the new law is a breach of human rights.
Mr West said: “I’m not going to comply with it and the Government are not going to be able to do a thing about it.
“If we let the Government get away with this I can’t imagine where it is going to end.
“I’m a libertarian, I was born a libertarian and I will die a libertarian.”
Mr West, who said he has taken up smoking today as the ban came into force, claimed he would go to jail rather than pay fines for flouting it.
He said all the staff at the lap dance club were smokers and their safety would be put at risk if he made them go outside to smoke.
Mr West’s solicitor, Rodney Hylton-Potts said Cherie Blair had served proceedings on the secretary of state and a court hearing was expected in the next three months.
“The human right acts gives various human rights and it gives a reasonable expectation to a life,” he said. “When people come into this club they reasonably expect to be able to smoke.
“Cherie Blair practically told me that she would not put her name to a case that had no merit. She’s of the highest professional integrity.”
Mr West, 63, made his fortune through a booze warehouse in Calais called EastEnders. He started in business selling flowers and groceries from a stall in Romford market.
Martin Dockrell, policy manager for anti-smoking campaign group Ash, said: “There’s no question that the law applies to his club. There’s no serious prospect of a judicial review overturning that. It’s already the law in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
“He’s going to lose but Cherie Blair will make a tidy fee.”
