Member

As the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) said, the reality is that people on a lower income often smoke more, and they will smoke the worst brands. Minimum excise tax was put in place to address that problem, but the practice still exists, so greater controls are needed. The levy model that we propose would give us the tools we need to end those practices and narrow the price gap between the most and least expensive products. We would expect that in itself to bring rates of smoking down, even before the revenue raised was invested in further programmes.