I WAS horrified to read in the Mail on Tuesday that NHS officials are trying to gain permission to pay for 12 new smoking shelters at hospitals in the county.

How dare they consider spending money that should go to saving lives on encouraging reckless idiots to carry on killing themselves with nicotine?

The excuse they use is frankly pathetic. Oxfordshire University Hospitals NHS Trust says it accepts it has not been “practical or enforceable” to prevent patients and visitors from smoking on site.

What rot! The solution is easy: dismiss all staff who insist on smoking anywhere in the vicinity of the hospitals.

And all visitors who light up in the grounds of the hospital in contravention of the regulations should be evicted and banned.

If this isn’t legally enforceable, then the law should be changed to make it so. Smoking supporters will doubtless moan this will infringe their human rights. But what about the human rights of others to stay healthy and clean in a smoke-free enivronment?

Meanwhile, I would further suggest threatening to refuse treatment to any patient who repeatedly ignores the rules and smokes in or around a hospital.

If they want to be treated by the state, then they simply have to abide by the rules of healthy commmon-sense.

Yes, this would be a harsh last-resort move and some would say it would it would endanger lives.

My view, however, is it would actually do the opposite, because it would save lives by saving smokers from themselves.

It’s a sick joke to encourage, even indirectly, smoking near hospitals or, in this case, a cancer centre. The sooner the NHS takes a zero tolerance on this issue, the healthier we will all be.

P DEAN, Westminster Way, Botley, Oxford