Two cheers for the Chancellor
Wednesday, March 11, 2020 at 19:19 It could have been worse.
As expected the Chancellor re-committed to introducing the tobacco escalator (inflation plus two percent annually) for the duration of this parliament.
The rate on hand-rolling tobacco will also increase – by inflation plus six per cent for this year.
In practice that means an extra 27p for a pack of 20 cigarettes from tonight with with hand-rolling tobacco going up by 67p per 30g pouch.
In theory that should have left ASH, Cancer Research, the British Lung Foundation and the British Heart Foundation feeling pretty smug.
After all, it was they who lobbied the government to reintroduce the tax escalator and close the gap in tax between hand-rolled tobacco and manufactured cigarettes.
However the escalator is still well short of the inflation plus five per cent target that ASH has demanded in previous years.
Nor was the Chancellor minded to agree to tobacco control's Holy Grail – the imposition of a levy on tobacco companies to pay for further anti-smoking measures.
Several years ago George Osborne rejected the idea - using the same argument as Forest, that it would be passed on to the consumer – and Rishi Sunak shows no sign of reversing that position.
Nevertheless we know that ASH and co won't rest until the policy has been adopted so I expect this to run and run.
Meanwhile I take further solace from something Chris Snowdon tweeted:
That the Chancellor chooses not to mention the rise in tobacco duty on National No Smoking Day shows that governments are no longer proud of this regressive tax. It’s just a revenue raiser.
He's absolutely right. This wasn't a short statement by the Chancellor (he spoke for over an hour) yet the increase in tobacco duty wasn't mentioned.
Instead, after he sat down, those of us with an interest in the subject had to feverishly search the entire Budget document (which was posted on the Treasury website) before we found the relevant details on page 67.
No Smoking Day, as I pointed out on Monday, may not be a shadow of its former self but it would have been very easy for the Chancellor to provoke a few cheap cheers by mentioning it in conjunction with an increase in tobacco duty.
Instead he chose to bury the policy online and ignore what many previous chancellors would have considered an open goal. I bet ASH were gutted.
So while I am disappointed (but not surprised) at yet another tax increase on tobacco, my overall reaction is one of mild relief.
That was a little too nuanced for a press release, though, so here is Forest's official response as reported by The Sun, among others:
"This is another kick in the teeth for poorer smokers in particular.
"If the Conservatives want to keep their ‘red wall’ seats they need to show a lot more empathy for ordinary working people, including the millions of adults who enjoy smoking.
"Further increases in tobacco duty discriminate against those who are less well off.
"In addition to forcing some smokers further into poverty, it will encourage illicit trade which puts smokers at even greater risk from counterfeit tobacco."
"The Chancellor had an opportunity to stand up for consumers who are willing to pay their fair share of tax but object to being punished for a habit that already earns the Treasury over £10 billion a year. Sadly he flunked it."
Update: It turns out ASH wanted an inflation plus 15 per cent tax increase on hand-rolled tobacco. And they have the cheek to complain about smoking pushing more people into poverty.
Reader Comments (2)
Our Government bullies smokers for ASH and their stooges and happily thieves as much tax as it can from us while continuing to deny us any rights for services back for the unfair amount we pay them to allow us to consume a legal product.
It could be worse but not much. The government is a coward and as there is no sign of it standby up to the bullies at ASH, I can only assume the bullying will continue and so will the theft of our hard earned cash in punishment for enjoying smoking and refusing to quit.
I did not lend the Tories my vote for this. I expected Boris to keep his promise of levelling up and treating all people fairly and decently. I might have well as well have voted for Labour and perhaps next time I might.
Irritating though this is, it isn’t a great surprise. It would be nice to have a Government which, for once, was prepared to stand up to Tobacco Control and, even if not making a big noise about it, quietly ignore their demands (whatever demands those may be). The trouble, I think, is that many – probably the majority – of politicians actually see themselves as part of Tobacco Control not, as is in fact the case, the separate “enforcement arm” of it. To use the old analogy, the tail has been wagging the dog for so many years now that the tail actually thinks it is the dog!
More positively, though, I think that it’s a tentatively good sign that tobacco price increases are no longer trumpeted from the rooftops as they used to be and are now buried away in the paperwork, almost like a dirty little secret. This silence over all things smoking-related and what I see as a boycott of even the mention of smoking anywhere except for statements and press releases by ASH and their ilk – most of which, these days, receive far less attention than they used to – often appear to me like some kind of quiet realisation has occurred that, particularly post-ban, All Things Anti-Smoking are no longer the good news they used to be and can, in many instances, have a contrary effect to the one intended. Even health stories – and not just Coronavirus, either – which used, it seems, to blame smoking for pretty much everything, often now no longer even mention smoking as a risk factor, a cause or even something which will make symptoms worse, which still surprises me every time I hear some new health-related story on the radio or the TV.
Quite why this is I’ve not so far been able to work out, because it does seem to have happened rather suddenly. Perhaps they now think that the number of smokers is so low that blaming them for every new illness to hit market simply won’t ring true any more if all the non-smokers are going down with it too; maybe they’ve just realised that they darned well need the tax take from smoking to survive; maybe that tax take has now dropped sufficiently for them to realise how much they have always needed it; or maybe they’ve decided to go so far down the “denormalised” route that they don’t want to mention smoking in case the public rumble the uncomfortable fact that rather a lot of – err – “normal” people are in fact still doing it!
Or, even more positively, perhaps they are quietly trying to extricate themselves from the ever-increasing funding demands from Tobacco Control simply because Tobacco Control has been so “successful” in reducing the number of smokers still around that they’ve hit the point of diminishing returns, and the Government really can’t see the point in continuing to pay more and more money to organisations which, through sheer reductions in numbers, simply can’t have as great an affect any more as they once did. In short, Tobacco Control may well now be finding that it is itself a victim of its own “success.” Now, that is a satisfying thought!