Tobacco Products (Description of Products) (Amendment) Order 2019

Peter Dowd Excerpts

Monday 17th June 2019 General Committees

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

The Opposition will not oppose the order, but I have to reaffirm some of the points we made during the passage of the Finance Bill. This is, quite simply, the Government extending the tax regime to take these products on board. Questions about the health implications of these products are not proven one way or the other, and I do not particularly want to go into them today. However, it would be interesting to find out how much this change is projected to raise over the years. I do not think I saw those projections anywhere; it would be helpful to know what they are.

I also ask for the Minister’s view on the fact that tobacco revenue will start to go down, given the significant numbers of people engaged in smoking cessation campaigns. In fact, the last Labour Government put significant amounts into smoking cessation campaigns—I chaired a health trust at the time, and we put additional money into that—which brought down the number of people who smoke. In the light of that and of the general push—by all Governments, I have to say—to reduce smoking rates, the Government will have to start considering the implications of the reduction in revenue, relatively speaking, that will come from tobacco products as the years go by.

On a very minor point, my grandmother used snuff for God knows how many years—decades—but the order does not refer to snuff. Perhaps the Minister could put that right. That aside, there are two key points: the first is the revenue implications, and the second is the consideration of future revenue as a result of smoking cessation programmes.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for supporting this measure. As I said, it is a simple measure, which puts on the statute book the definition that is required under the Finance Act 2019.

The amount of revenue at stake is negligible—less than £5 million per year. That is partly because there is only one known product on the market at the moment. Of course, should this take off as a new form of smoking, there will more revenue at stake; at the moment, we think it will be only a small amount. Our primary motivation here is providing clarity to taxpayers, rather than raising significant amounts of money.

On the future revenue stream from tobacco, the hon. Gentleman is right to say that, should smoking continue to decline, which is a good thing, the revenue stream will start to decline. We monitor that closely, and the Exchequer always has new and novel ways of raising money to meet the shortfall in the future, should it have to.

In terms of snuff, I am looking to my officials—[Interruption.] That is disappointing. I was looking to my officials to see whether they knew the answer, but I will have to write to the hon. Gentleman.

[Peter Dowd]

Snuff is not a heated product—not, I suspect until it gets up your nose, but that is by the bye. I do not want any response, formally or informally, from the Minister on that.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful for that. I commend the order to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.