Scottish Grocers Federation has welcomed the statement from the Local Government Association (LGA) highlighting the seriousness of illicit tobacco in England.
The LGA, which is the English equivalent of CoSLA, said that use of illegal tobacco was undermining efforts to stop smoking and that “Illegal tobacco being sold cheaply through the black market by rogue traders is funding organised criminal gangs, damaging legitimate traders and robbing the tax payer of more than £2bn that could be spent on schools, hospitals and caring for the elderly”. The LGA also pointed to a series of cases studies including Durham Council’s trading standards team seizing 456,320 illicit cigarettes and a series of operations which had seized more than 708,000 illicit cigarettes and 567kg of RYO tobacco in East Lancashire.
SGF is concerned that as plain packs begin to appear between now and the end of the sell through period in May 2017, the illicit trade in Scotland will show a marked increase.
SGF Chief Executive Pete Cheema commented: “We urgently need an accurate benchmark for the scale of the problem in Scotland so that we can effectively chart any increase in illicit trade linked to plain packaging. It would be extremely useful if CoSLA would undertake this work with local trading standards. We need to understand any effect plan packs are having if we are to develop effective solutions to this problem in Scotland”.
SGF is the industry-sector lead on the Scottish government Ministerial working group on tobacco control and will seek to raise this issue at this key policy forum. HMRC estimate that the cost of duty lost by the UK Treasury to the illicit trade in tobacco is at least £2bn per annum.
