Plain tobacco packaging plans flawed by security loophole

In the week MPs voted in favour of plain tobacco packaging, the government has been accused of “a crazy oversight” in its plans.

Sophisticated security and traceability identifiers - key tools in the fight against illicit tobacco - will become illegal for the next three years because plain packaging regulations will forcibly remove them from packs.

Ian Paisley MP, whose North Antrim constituency is home to a Japan Tobacco International factory due to close next year, has written to chancellor George Osborne and Treasury minister Priti Patel to warn them about the problem.

He claimed Codentify - a system currently used by JTI, Imperial Tobacco, Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco - would no longer be permitted under plain pack rules because the regulations would not allow anything on packs that was not required by law.

The revised European Tobacco Directive comes in at the same time as plain packs, in May 2016, but Paisley pointed out the track-and-trace provisions in the directive would not be mandatory until May 2019.

Anyone including Codentify on packs would therefore be breaking the law from 2016 to 2019, “which seems a crazy oversight”.

Paisley told the chancellor Codentify played a significant role in the industry delivering on its commitment to tackle the illegal tobacco trade.

He suggested the three-year gap contradicted reassurances given by Jane Ellison, parliamentary under-secretary of state for Health, in 2013 that “anti-smuggling devices would be built into standardised packaging, if we choose to go down that route.”

He added: “It is frustrating, to say the least, that my warnings have not only been ignored by the DH, but that the government has laid fundamentally flawed regulations in parliament that could actually prevent existing anti-illicit features from being used on tobacco packs.”

A DH spokeswoman said: “The security features required by law on existing packs of cigarettes will be present on standardised packs, including covert anti-counterfeit marks.

“We are working across government to ensure all anti-counterfeit systems useful to HMRC and other enforcement agencies can continue to feature on standardised packs.”

However, JTI argued that while there was an existing security feature that would remain, tobacco products would have none of the increased security measures Codentify offered manufacturers and HMRC - “a cutting edge technological means of authenticating product found during seizures and investigations.”