Tobacco: Excise Duties
The question
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential impact of applying only one of the (a) RPI-linked uprating and (b) one-off tobacco duty increase scheduled to take effect from 1 October 2026 on inflation.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson
At Autumn Budget 2024, the Government renewed the commitment to a tobacco duty escalator, which increases duty by 2 per cent above RPI inflation at each Budget, until the end of the current Parliament. Budget 2025 announced tobacco duty will rise in line with the escalator as well as an additional one-off increase alongside the introduction of Vaping Duty on 1 October 2026. This is to preserve the price differential between vaping and tobacco products to maintain the incentive to choose vaping over smoking.
A Tax Information and Impact Note setting out the expected impacts was published at Budget and can be found here:
Changes to tobacco duty rates from 26 November 2025 and 1 October 2026 - GOV.UK
The independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) are responsible for estimating the impact of Government policies on inflation. The OBR did not include an assessment of the contribution of tobacco excise duty to inflation in the November 2025 Economic and Fiscal Outlook.
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