The price of a pack of cigarettes will increase after the Chancellor announced that he would raise tobacco duty for the first time since October 2021.
Smokers are used to seeing costs go up each year, but Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, froze tobacco duty in last year’s spring Budget when he was chancellor.
Jeremy Hunt said today that the Government would “uprate tobacco duty, and we will freeze the gross gaming duty yield bands”.
Yesterday it was predicted that tobacco duty would rise in line with retail price inflation (RPI) which stands at 12.7 per cent, plus a minimum extra hike of 2 per cent. Under this, the average price of a 20-pack of cigarettes will increase by £1.15 from £10.65 to around £11.80.
Tobacco tax is a huge earner for the Government, bringing £10.7bn into the Treasury in 2022 and accounting for more than 1 per cent of the total tax collection.
The Government is hoping frequent price rises will lead to less than 5 per cent of the population being smokers by 2030.
This story is being updated…
