Health Department secretary Jane Halton encouraged all agencies yesterday to adopt similar bans to improve staff health and the public service's ''professional reputation''.

From February 1, Health employees will not be allowed to smoke during work hours or ''when representing the department in any capacity''.

Australia's chief medical officer, Professor Jim Bishop, backed Ms Halton's call to outlaw cigarette breaks, saying it was the ''next major step'' needed to further cut the nation's smoking rates.

Professor Bishop said most Health staff supported the initiative, including smokers. ''To help people who are trying to quit, you have to reduce their opportunity to maintain the habit,'' he said yesterday.

''There's a camaraderie among smokers outside buildings, and to some extent you could look at that as an anti-quitting support network.''

He said a bureaucracy-wide ban on smokos would be a similar breakthrough to efforts in the 1970s to end smoking inside offices.

But Civil Liberties Australia's chief executive, Bill Rowling, said the policy was a ''completely over-the-top intrusion into people's private lives''.

For more on this story, see today's Canberra Times.