Tobacco: Smuggling

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

The headline figure in terms of prosecutions over the past few years is very significant here, and the key point. Some 3,700 people have been successfully prosecuted since 2000. I think that I am right in saying that there is no diminution in the number of cases or the amount of success that we are having on the prosecution front.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, when the last Northern Ireland Affairs Committee looked into this grave issue, we found that a very large percentage of the smuggling into Northern Ireland involved substances far more noxious than tobacco. Can the noble Lord say how much of this smuggling is of genuine cigarettes, which are harmful enough, and how much is of more dangerous substances?

[Lord Newby]

Whether it is in Northern Ireland or anywhere else, the people who smuggle cigarettes do, indeed, tend to smuggle other things, typically drugs, and sometimes even more dangerous things than that. I do not have an exact breakdown, but a lot of this smuggling is carried out on a large scale by criminal gangs who are looking to smuggle anything they can with a high value, of which cigarettes typically are only one component.