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Mrs. Lait: I am somewhat uneasy in this debate on tobacco because I am not a smoker--I loathe smoking--and I believe that the most effective policy is a high tax policy. The problem is that the level of smuggling and bootlegging means that we do not have a high tax policy. Trying to get organisations such as Action on Smoking and Health, and the Government, to recognise that we do not have such a policy is a bit like beating one's head against a brick wall, but I will continue to do so in the hope that eventually the penny will drop.
I am concerned that the Treasury does not grasp the scale of the problem. The Financial Secretary is aware, because she answered them, that I have tabled a series of questions on tobacco and alcohol smuggling and bootlegging. I was chilled by the apparent lack of interest in grasping the problem.
I have asked questions about what action the Government are taking in their EU presidency to try to end the subsidy to tobacco farmers and what progress they are hoping to make in ECOFIN. I have also asked Departments to estimate the number of people whose benefits have been withdrawn because they were found to be smuggling and bootlegging. I have asked the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency what has happened to licences, and cars and vans involved in smuggling and bootlegging. I have asked how many licences have been withdrawn from licensed premises because they were retailing smuggled and bootlegged goods.
I accept that not all those issues are the responsibility of the Financial Secretary, but answers have come there none, so it is difficult for the Treasury, let alone the poor Back Bencher, officially and graphically to describe the effects of smuggling.
I found in the Red Book an interesting point, which I followed up with a question to the Financial Secretary, about the forecast excise receipts. They showed that, for both alcohol and tobacco duties, the Treasury was
expecting a reduction in income of £100 million in each case. I sent the Financial Secretary a note asking whether she could explain that, and answer has come there none, so perhaps the Treasury does not understand what is happening.
Other organisations--for example, customs, which is on the front line--know exactly what is happening and are trying hard to cope. An incident in Dover in October was reported in the Sunday Mirror, which said that Customs made a raid in which
The police have conducted an analysis of people involved in smuggling and bootlegging whom they have caught. They are not members of big gangs, but poor mules. The analysis shows that 90 per cent. of those involved are unemployed and drawing benefit, so the Department of Social Security should be able to answer my questions. Seventy per cent. of those involved have a criminal record; 40 per cent. are from outside Dover; 25 per cent. of crimes such as burglary and car theft in the Dover area--
The Chairman:
Order. The amendment does not relate specifically to smuggling. The hon. Lady must relate her remarks specifically to the proposals in the amendment relating to the duty on tobacco.
Mrs. Lait:
Indeed, Sir Alan, I will. I accept your guidance, but I am trying to build up a case to show why the amendment will help to reduce smuggling.
The Chairman:
Perhaps the hon. Lady should accelerate the build-up.
Mrs. Lait:
I will, with pleasure.
The police have analysed the problem, and it cannot be beyond the wit of the Treasury to do so.
Another point of which the Government have made great play and with which I have great sympathy is the effect on health of increased smoking. High levels of duty mean that, when youngsters can get hold of cheap tobacco, they are likely to do so. I asked the Library for information about the worrying increase in the number of young smokers. We must remember that the single market started on 1 January 1993. The number of young smokers peaked in 1984 and dropped until 1988. Between 1988 and 1993, the figure was stable. In 1996, the level of smoking among youngsters was as high as it had been in 1984. I suggest that, although there are complex reasons why youngsters smoke, there is a clear correlation between the opening of the single market and the subsequent availability of cheap tobacco, and the number of youngsters who smoke.
All those factors show the need to deal with the problem caused by the high levels of taxation of tobacco. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) said, the problem is worsening. There has been a noticeable increase in the smuggling and bootlegging not only of hand-rolling tobacco, which the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) mentioned, but of cigarettes.
Dave West, who runs the Smoking Warehouse in Adinkerke in Belgium, said that before last December's rise in cigarette prices, he was selling a negligible number of cigarettes. He is now describing what happened on 1 December as a gold rush, and he is looking forward to his second gold rush this December.
Mr. Cranston:
Can the hon. Lady explain the results of a 1996 MORI survey, which showed that the preferred cigarette brand among young people was Benson and Hedges--the most expensive--and that consumption by young people was attributable more to advertising than to smuggling, which was not even considered in the survey?
Mrs. Lait:
The hon. Gentleman may care to know that the cost of UK cigarette brands from Dave West is £1.80. Compared with the cost in the UK, that has a much more significant effect on people's consumption of cigarettes than advertising. As I have already been called to order on the issue of smuggling, I dare not go down the route of the advertising debate.
I shall draw my remarks to a close in the hope that some of the information that I have provided to the Financial Secretary will bring home to her the scale of the problem of tobacco smuggling and bootlegging. We need a clear policy on reducing the profit from smuggling and bootlegging tobacco. The policy that affects duty on tobacco in this country comes from Belgium, not from the British Government, and we need to take that fact into account when thinking about how to deal with the problem of the nation's health.
I shall sum up by quoting Adam Smith, who was a customs commissioner. He said:
Dawn Primarolo:
The right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) ignores all the health arguments and proposes that, to help the poor, the escalator on cigarettes should be reduced from 5 per cent. to 3 per cent.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Mr. Leslie) said, the health consequences of smoking are at the heart--if hon. Members will excuse the pun--of our strategy. It is worth reminding the right hon. Member for Wells--who clearly needs reminding--of them. Some 80 per cent. of the 40,000 deaths from lung cancer each year are attributed to smoking, and 20 per cent. of the
180,000 deaths from heart disease each year and 80 per cent. of the 30,000 deaths from bronchitis, chronic obstructive airway diseases and other types of illness are attributed to smoking. There is a 20 per cent. higher risk of death to babies born to mothers who smoke. Women who smoke run a ten times higher risk of heart attack, stroke or cardio-vascular disease, and smoking may affect fertility.
We know that babies born to mothers who smoke are lighter, and that paternal smoking also makes babies lighter through passive smoking once the baby is born. Smokers lose, on average, more than one day of their life each year. About half of all regular smokers in developed countries are eventually killed by cigarette smoking. The growth in smoking among teenagers and young adults has a dramatic impact on their life expectancy. The risk of dying from lung cancer is associated with the length of time a person smokes, as well as with the amount that he or she smokes. Even when a person has given up smoking, the consequences to his or her health remain higher than for those who have never smoked. That is the context in which the Government set their policy of raising the escalator on cigarettes and tobacco products excluding hand-rolling tobacco.
Opposition Members referred to smuggling. I take your guidance, Sir Alan--this is not the subject of the clause--and I do not intend to speak at length on it. The Government recently announced their intention to deal with persistent offenders, to ensure that more people face disqualification from driving and that the criminals who smuggle pay compensation for the revenue evaded through smuggling. Publicans and off-licence and restaurant owners could, after prosecution, find their liquor licences revoked.
I cannot give the hon. Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait) answers about the consequences of those actions, because the Conservative Government did not pursue such policies. I feel a little frustrated by today's debate because Conservative Members cannot, or perhaps will not, understand that this Government have a strategy that their Government failed to put in place. We should be clear about the scale of the problem. The right hon. Member for Wells pointed out that the Government of which he was a member were committed to using taxation as part of their health policy. The then Secretary of State for Health repeatedly referred to the importance of taxation in deterring people from smoking. I agree that it is important, but it should not be done in isolation. We need health education and strategies to ensure that not only tax but other methods are used to encourage people not to start smoking or, if they already smoke, to stop.
The hon. Member for Beckenham referred to reducing smoking among young people. We absolutely agree with her about the importance of that. The Government's strategy moves in parallel with our tax strategy to reduce smoking among young people. It is set out in detail in the tobacco control White Paper, which will be published later this year. Opposition Members complain that we have not done enough in 12 months, not that we are moving in the wrong direction. I presume that tonight's discussion is to fill up time on the Floor of the House rather than to make genuine suggestions about an alternative strategy.
I shall not be tempted to discuss whether Opposition Members care about the poor. It is an insult to poor people that, having been in power for 18 years, Conservative
Members have only just noticed that they exist and that taxation policies have an impact on them. The right hon. Member for Wells was a Minister in both the Foreign Office and the Treasury. His sudden discovery that policies might impact on the poor is breathtaking. Where has he been, not to have noticed after all this time the impact that the Conservative Government's policies had on the poor?
"the bootleggers fled as £70,000 of illegal booze and cigarettes were seized. But after a heavy drinking session at a nearby pub, the gang returned . . . and tried to get their haul back. 'We were cataloguing everything we had seized, when the smugglers stormed the place,' said one Customs official."
The history of smuggling and bootlegging immediately brought to mind a parallel situation in 1747, when smugglers tried to regain bootlegged goods in the Poole customs house. We are reverting to what happened 200 years ago, and there are strong parallels to show what should be the proper response.
"The high duties which have been imposed upon the importation of many different sorts of foreign goods, in order to discourage their consumption in Great Britain, have in many cases served only to encourage smuggling; and in all cases have reduced the revenue of the Customs below what more moderate duties would have afforded."
I hope that the Financial Secretary will put in train some of the inquiries surrounding the broader issue of the health of the nation, which have been brought about by high tobacco duties, and look favourably on our amendment.
8.30 pm
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