An operation to crackdown on illegal tobacco products being sold in England saw the seizure of over 2.5m illegal cigarettes. Our feature writer Suzanne Danon tells us more.
Operation Henry, carried out between May and November 2014, saw 81 local authority trading standards services involved in the hunt for illegal tobacco and saw a total of 2,594,858 cigarettes seized with a value of £614,488.
This was England’s first large scale operation by trading standards against illegal tobacco products and saw the 81 local authority trading services involved carrying out intelligence led investigations with specialist tobacco detection dogs.
Funded by the Department of Health and managed by the Trading Standards Institute (TSI), the operation, which involved eight days of searches, led to 67 seizures across the country. In some instances, trading standards services combined intelligence with HMRC using their mapping data and carried out joint searches with HMRC officers.
TSI chief executive Leon Livermore said: "This cooperative work taken against illegal tobacco is a brilliant demonstration of how trading standards services and our partners work behind the scenes to protect the public.
"Worryingly, we can see from the spread and the sheer number of seizures that illegal tobacco is widely available throughout England. Operation Henry shows what can be achieved if funding is provided and trading standards officers are given the resources they need to carry out this incredibly important work.
"However I fear that due to the ever increasing trading standards budget cuts, which we know is up to 80% in some cases, suppliers of illegal tobacco products may have the upper hand unless more can be done to protect trading standards' budgets."
A spokesperson for the Department of Health added: “We are committed to the fight against illegal tobacco. By taking tough action and working with local authorities, this operation has taken a significant amount of illegal tobacco off the streets.”
HMRC estimates that in 2012-13 the UK economy lost £1.6bn as a result of illicit tobacco. Nine per cent of all cigarettes and 36% of all rolling tobacco smoked in this country is believed to be illicit.
How have problems such as this affected your local authority trading standards services? Are these large scale operations the best way of dealing with such widespread issues? Let us know below
