Rate of Duty on Beer

Part of Orders of the Day — Finance (No. 2) Bill – in the House of Commons at 4:45 pm on 28 April 1998.

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Photo of Nicholas Soames Nicholas Soames Conservative, Mid Sussex 4:45, 28 April 1998

I shall be brief. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Norman) on his excellent speech. I was shocked by the incontinent and wanton levity that some Labour Members showed toward what is not only a serious commercial problem but becoming, as my hon. Friend rightly said, a moral hazard.

It ill becomes the House of Commons, which has always been a gathering from every part of the land, from every interest and from every position of life, if its Committee does not listen carefully to someone who has run, with tremendous success, one of the biggest retailers in the country and who has a great and profound understanding, not only of the consumer's requirements and wishes, but of the difficulties that arise in putting together a pattern of legislation that enables us to have a fair system. I whole-heartedly congratulate my hon. Friend on his admirable presentation.

The interests of the much smaller brewers are often trampled, especially in the House and by the Labour party. I speak from experience of my part of the south of England, which my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells knows well and which the Financial Secretary also knows very well, because she is the distinguished alumnette of an excellent school in my former constituency and well knows the two breweries in the south of England, King and Barnes in Horsham and Harvey's of Lewes. Both breweries have seriously suffered as a result of the increase in smuggling.

We definitely support any steps that the Financial Secretary is taking to be tougher on this issue. I acknowledge the fact that she is building on the achievements of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory), the former Paymaster General, who was responsible for those matters, who, in a letter to my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) last year, wrote of the steps that customs has taken

to further imp rove the rate of detection at ports.

These include a programme of enhanced training, improvements to intelligence systems, increased staffing levels … together with redeployment elsewhere to reflect more accurately the degree of risk in each area. Without a shadow of doubt, the implementation of clause 1 will increase the amount of contraband smuggled into the country. The Financial Secretary knows that that is the case. It is pointless for Labour Back Benchers to talk about what the Conservatives did when we were in power; disappointingly, we are no longer in power. No doubt, when we were in power, we made many mistakes, but a Labour Government are now in power, and it is for them to resolve this tricky problem.

I shall make two or three respectful suggestions to the hon. Lady. First, the proper policing of the problem depends upon an increase in the amount of intelligence presented to Customs and Excise. My constituency used to comprise Gatwick Airport, and I know the work of Customs and Excise extremely well. I have immense respect for it: it is a remarkable uniform service whose officers do a very good job. Much customs work is based on intelligence, which is assessed and used wisely.

In this country, we have some of the best intelligence services in the world, and it might be worth while attempting to make available to Customs and Excise more intelligence facilities that will enable it to penetrate some of the large rings that are smuggling beer into Britain. My hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells was absolutely right: not just private individuals in white Transit vans, but gangs and vast organisations are involved in bringing in contraband, to the great disadvantage of companies such as the two brewers in the south of England that I mentioned.

That should be a matter of grave concern to the Government. We must not allow smuggling to become a way of life that is accepted as custom and practice. People should not think that smuggling the odd load in a Transit van is fair game. It is not; it is breaking the law, and it must be dealt with using the full rigour of the law. The Government cannot be allowed to say, "It is all very difficult because we do not have enough customs people or the facilities to do it, and only the smaller retailers are damaged, so we don't have to worry about it."

I hope that the hon. Lady will pass on to Customs and Excise my admiration for the number of detections that it has made in the course of the year. However, much more illegal contraband is getting through than Customs and Excise can detect. We must do more. I suggest that more intelligence work should be done to penetrate those gangs. I know that Customs and Excise does a great deal of work in that area, but I should like to see more.

Secondly, I should like to see more customs officers deployed at Dover. It is not good enough for the Government to defend their deployment policies by claiming that they must maintain a balance between the various threats and risks to this country and to our integrity. The fact is that Dover is clearly under-resourced as far as Customs and Excise is concerned—even though I know that more people have been employed in that area.

As I said at the beginning of my speech, I welcome any measures—this is not a party political matter—that the Government may take to pursue this crime. However, they should not believe that they can brush the matter aside lightly. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wells was correct to suggest that duty should be frozen, because that would hold the duty imbalance at a lower level. Parliament should deplore and vigorously oppose anything that encourages the wanton increase of smuggling into this country. If it is not deplored by the House of Commons, where else will it be so deplored?

I whole-heartedly support the views expressed by my right hon. and hon. Friends. I hope that the Financial Secretary will consider extremely seriously the knowledgeable and expert speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells.