New plans to stub out smugglers
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• Healers smuggling Gig. arettes will find themselves up against a tougher Customs regime under a government plan to disrupt their activities by investing more than £200m in extra vehicle scanning equipment and nearly 1,000 more Customs officers.
Chancellor Gordon Brown plans to spend an extra £209m over three years after receiving warnings that if he fails to take strong action up to one in three cigarettes smoked in the UK could soon be smuggled. Within three years he plans to seize £50m worth of criminal assets, including vehicles used for smuggling; to seize more than 10 billion cigarettes; and to break up 180 smuggling gangs. This could bring in an extra £2.3bn in tax revenue.
More than 500 extra staff will be deployed across the country, including 170 at the Channel ports, with another 95 in the UK and overseas. There will be another 300 to break up smuggling gangs and 30 more legal workers to handle the expected increase in case load.
The government has already announced the creation of new offences, including a £5,000 fine for dealing in smuggled tobacco.
Customs chairman Richard Broadbent says: "We will put more staff at ports around the country We will invest in largescale X-ray scanners which can look inside lorries and containers. We will invest in intelligence."