Last Tuesday Lord Bichard, chair of National Trading Standards, made a chilling admission.

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He told MPs that illegal tobacco “is increasingly linked to organised crime, child exploitation, money laundering and immigration”. He followed by asking Government to change how it talks about the crisis: moving from “this tobacco may not be safe” to following the money.

He is right - and his intervention should be a watershed moment. For too long the tobacco black market has been treated as a minor nuisance. A bit of tax dodging, a few knock-off packets of cigarettes and a problem only for the Treasury. It is so much more than that, and a documentary broadcast last week shows exactly how far it reaches.

The programme tracked this trade from mainland Europe right to the heart of Britain’s high streets. Investigators raided an illegal Belgian factory whose “target market no. 1 is the UK”, part of a network with links to gangs across Europe. In factories operating here in Britain, they found victims of forced labour and modern slavery, most stripped of their passports. To the untrained eye, what comes........

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