Smuggling is a heinous crime
From Mr Alan Toft Sir: The campaign to denigrate the efforts of Customs and Excise as it attempts to prevent the importation, by cross-Channel ferry passengers, of quantities of alcohol and tobacco which are obviously not for personal use, must be forcefully countered by the government. Your contributor Andrew McKie (lip the smugglers', 4 August), supporting the campaign, is naively falling for a populist activity worthy of a trashy tabloid.
Criminal cross-Channel smuggling of alcohol and tobacco, together with other forms of duty fraud, has reached such a scale as to jeopardise the future of many independent retailers. Personal import abuse simply adds to this criminal activity.
The Daily Telegraph, sponsor of the antiCustoms and Excise campaign, ignores the fact that it is encouraging its readers to aid and abet the criminal.
There are calls for duty harmonisation. This solution is obvious but it will never he achieved quickly enough to prevent more damage to wholesalers and independent retailers, whose tobacco and alcohol sales are being seriously eroded by cross-Channel imports by criminals and greedy booze cruisers.
Government requires a two-pronged strategy. While searching for the difficult path to harmonisation, the resources of Customs and Excise must be increased yet again to provide a ring of steel around our coast to defeat the criminal. The casual but dangerous ferry passengers who exceed the current guidelines must be made aware that they will continue to be policed.
Alan Toff
Federation of Wholesale Distributors, Eastbourne, East Sussex
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