A few weeks ago there was a lively discussion on this blog concerning cross-Channel shopping.
Today the Government will publish Tackling Tobacco Smuggling – building on our success (a renewed strategy for HM Revenue & Customs and the UK Border Agency) and what I feared might happen has been confirmed – the Government is set to reduce the guidelines on the amount of tobacco you can bring into the country for your own personal use.
The Guardian has the story here – Treasury to cut duty-free tobacco guidelines in £2bn tax clawback effort.
I understand the Government's position. They want to reduce the £2.2bn lost to tobacco smugglers each year. But this isn't the way to do it. The people they should be targetting are the criminals who smuggle millions of cigarettes into Britain each year.
Reducing the guidelines won't stop some of our more determined friends who know the law, can prove that the tobacco is for their own use, and aren't afraid to argue with Customs officials. But many more people will have their luggage and their cars searched and I won't be surprised if a lot more law-abiding shoppers have their goods seized in the months and years ahead.
To put the 'new' strategy in perspective, it threatens to take us back to the days when thousands of cross-Channel shoppers were victims, we felt, of over-zealous officials whose heavy-handed attempts to crack down on genuine smugglers caused a great deal of anger among ordinary, law-abiding consumers.
The Government can't have it both ways. Having only recently increased tobacco taxation above the rate of inflation, it is only natural that more people will take the opportunity to buy their tobacco, quite legally, abroad.
I understand that cigarettes will keep for at least 12 months. A 20-a-day smoker will consume 3,200 cigarettes in 160 days; the same person will consume 800 cigarettes in just 40 days. The current guideline (3,200) is a reasonable compromise that most people can live with. The new guideline is unreasonable and, if history is a guide, will cause more problems than it solves.
Politicians never learn, do they?