I DON'T know what's got into Dr John Reid, the Health Secretary. He says: "As my mother would put it, people from those lower socio-economic categories have very few pleasures in life and one of them they regard as smoking. All I say is be careful, please be careful that we don't patronise people."

Well, John, you can't get much more patronising than that! What is all this talk about the working class? I thought we weren't supposed to divide people up on the basis of race, sex or class. It's all a bit Old Labour: Stafford Cripps, The Road to Wigan Pier and Co-op divi numbers.

But the worst aspect of his speech is the suggestion that poor people are not merely poor but stupid. Plenty of poor people borrow books from the free public libraries. Others listen to classical music on Radio Three or take long walks on the hills or in the park. Has Dr Reid never heard of fishing or pigeon-fancying or watching football and cricket on TV? How about going for a run, or even sitting down and enjoying a conversation with your wife? There are subsidised evening classes in everything from Italian to Ancient Philosophy. I think there should be an embargo against government ministers gratuitously insulting sections of society.

In one respect Dr Reid is right: a free society should resist the temptation to ban or abolish those habits and pastimes of which the elite don't approve. The Government has no right to ban smoking in public places. It has no right to ban fox-hunting or fishing or dancing in the streets with a hula hoop. There is a misperception of what "democracy" means. It does not simply mean counting heads and then doing what the majority wants while banning the rest. As John Stuart Mill pointed out 150 years ago, democracy means tolerating opinions and practices you disagree with. If I were dictator, I would like to ban football and pop music - and eating in the street, sex education in schools and mobile phones while I was at it. But I realise that I have to live and let live.

Anyhow, a ban on smoking would never work. I would say that the decision to prohibit an activity almost always results in an increase in the activity. I was thinking about the disastrous years of the prohibition of alcohol in the US. The outcome was corruption, illicit stills, gangsterism and shooting in the streets. No, if you don't like some activity or other you just have to put up with it for the sake of those who do.

It's a constant source of amazement to notice that those parties - usually left-wing parties - who go on most about freedom and liberation are nearly always the ones who want to issue banning orders. It's the meddlesome attitude of the Commissar and Big Brother - the conviction that we have to be protected from ourselves. But if you insist on treating your fellow citizens as if they were babies, then you will produce an infantile society. There is ample evidence all around us that this babyfication of society is already well-advanced. Just listen to the way that so many people talk. Any group of twenty-something girls in the City of London pubs speak as if they are aged about eight. There are too many nannies. Dr Reid please note.

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.