Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what recent estimate he has made of the proportion of (a) cigarettes and (b) pouches of tobacco smoked in the UK that have had full tax paid on them; and if he will make a statement.

The information requested is available within Table 3.5 and Table 3.6, chapter 3, of HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC)’s publication Measuring Tax Gaps: 2018 Edition, available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/measuring-tax-gaps. HMRC estimates that tax and duty was paid on approximately 29.5 billion cigarettes in 2016-17 and 6.4 million kg of hand rolling tobacco, representing 85% of the total cigarette market and 72% of the hand rolling tobacco market.