Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to paragraph 1.213 of the Summer Budget 2015 and paragraph 1.252 of the Autumn Statement 2014, what steps he plans to take to ask the tobacco industry to make a greater contribution to the costs imposed by smoking on society.

The government has already made significant interventions on tobacco, both to protect revenue and to promote public health. This includes the extension of the tobacco duty escalator until the end of the current Parliament and the introduction of plain packaging for tobacco products from May 2016.