Clause 185 - Rates of Tobacco Products Duty

Part of Finance Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 5:45 pm on 19 June 2012.

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Photo of Mark Garnier Mark Garnier Conservative, Wyre Forest 5:45, 19 June 2012

I am yet another in the queue of many people who have given up smoking. On trying to affect behavioural change, in 2003 it was estimated that about £10 billion a year was lost to the Revenue through tax avoidance as a result of smuggling and so on. That has now come down, as the Economic Secretary has said, to about £2 billion. However, as taxes go up, people are pushed towards behavioural change and buy illicit tobacco from car boot sales, for example, which they would not otherwise have done. What efforts is HMRC making to tackle the illicit trade in cheap whites and so on, in order to try to recover money on behalf of taxpayers?