I don't need to tell smokers how expensive it is to buy tobacco.
The UK is currently the second most expensive place in Europe to buy cigarettes and hand-rolling tobacco.
Ireland is the most expensive (their recent Budget pushed a pack of 20 cigarettes up to €12) but the UK isn't far behind.
Next month Philip Hammond will present his first Autumn Budget, having switched the Budget from the spring.
At the last Budget in March he announced that duty on tobacco products would increase by two per cent above inflation (the so-called tobacco escalator that was reintroduced by George Osborne in 2010).
As a result a packet of 20 cigarettes went up by 35p and the price of a 30g pack of rolling tobacco (which is now the minimum pouch size) went up by 42p.
At the same time Hammond announced the introduction, from May 20, of a minimum excise duty based on a packet price of £7.35, pushing the minimum price for a packet of 20 cigarettes up to £8.82.
Premium brands meanwhile went up to £10.26 (or more) per pack.
The fear is Hammond will take advantage of the new Autumn Budget to hike tobacco duty for a second time in nine months, which would be almost unprecedented.
Yesterday Forest published two briefing notes. The first highlights 'The effects of tobacco duty on households across the income distribution'. The second notes the 'The impact of using the retail price index in the tobacco duty escalator'.
Neither are what I would call bedtime reading but the press release offers a basic explanation:
Chancellor urged to reject a second tobacco duty increase this year
AUTUMN BUDGET – Campaigners have urged the Chancellor to help consumers who are “just about managing” and reject a second increase in tobacco duty this year.
According to the smokers’ group Forest, tobacco duty costs those with low incomes a far larger proportion of their income than those on higher incomes and further hikes would only exacerbate this unfairness.
Measuring expenditure on tobacco duty as a percentage of disposable income, in 2015/16 tobacco duty cost the average household in the lowest income bracket almost eight times what it cost the average highest earning household.
Although the average household among middle earners spent 38 per cent more on tobacco duty than the poorest households, as a percentage of disposable income the poorer households were still worse off.
Tobacco duty, says Forest, costs the poorest households 2.3 per cent of their disposable incomes compared to 0.3 per cent in the wealthiest households.
Simon Clark, director of Forest, said: “Tobacco duty is a regressive tax because it hurts low income households more than the average household and far more than the wealthiest households.
“In order to help those who, in Theresa May’s words, are ‘just about managing’, we urge the Chancellor to resist the temptation to increase tobacco duty for a second time this year."
Forest also claim the use of a “flawed” measure of inflation has cost smokers an additional £1.35 billion in tobacco duty since 2010.
According to the group, the practise of increasing tobacco duty using the retail price index (RPI) rather than the consumer price index (CPI), which experts believe is a more accurate measurement of inflation, has resulted in smokers being unfairly overtaxed.
The duty escalator, which was reintroduced in 2010, increased the price of tobacco every year by inflation plus two per cent. Inflation, says Forest, was calculated using the RPI not the CPI. This, says the group, has resulted in smokers paying even more duty than they should reasonably have been expected to pay.
Forest estimates that smokers were overtaxed by almost £46 million in 2010/11, rising to £252 million in 2016/17. The forecast for 2017/18 is almost £310 million which means smokers will have been overtaxed by over £1.35 billion since 2010.
Clark added: “Smokers have been punished enough for their habit. Tobacco duty is already scandalously high without the Chancellor using a flawed measure of inflation to extract even more money from the pockets of law-abiding consumers.”
Let's hope the PM and her Chancellor are listening.