Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will estimate the amount of counterfeit tobacco products manufactured in the UK; and what the associated loss of revenue is to the Treasury.

HMRC publishes an annual estimate of the tobacco tax gap but this does not include estimates of the component parts of the tax gap, such as UK manufactured counterfeit product.

The latest estimate was included in ‘Measuring tax gaps 2018 edition’, which was published on 14 June 2018: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/measuring-tax-gaps.

The tobacco tax gap is £2.5 billion in 2016/17, which is 17% of liabilities. Of this, tobacco duty was £1.9 billion and associated VAT was £0.6 billion.