Alcohol Health Alliance call for minimum pricing as Scotland awaits

This month the Alcohol Health Alliance (AHA) released a report calling for firm action on pricing as it warned of the damaging impact of alcohol available at 'pocket money prices'.

The report, 'Cheap alcohol: the price we pay' [pdf], says it is possible to buy almost seven and a half litres of high strength white cider for the cost of a standard off-peak cinema ticket. The report was covered in the media, highlighting the key findings:

• Alcohol continues to be sold at pocket money prices, with white cider dominating the market for cheap, high-strength drinks.

High-strength white cider products, predominantly drunk by dependent and underage drinkers, are sold for as little as 16p per unit of alcohol.

Recent cuts in alcohol taxes allow shops and supermarkets to sell alcohol at pocket money prices but have done little to benefit pubs and their customers.

High-strength white cider is taxed at the lowest rate of all alcohol products. A can of 7.5% ABV white cider attracts less than one-third of the duty on a can of beer that is the same strength.

The report criticises recent alcohol pricing policy, including the infamous u-turn on minimum unit pricing (MUP) by the coalition Government in 2013 and reported influence of the industry. Furthermore health groups such as the AHA have criticised recent Government taxation policy including an end to the alcohol duty escalator and a continued freeze on most alcohol duties earlier this year.

As such the report calls on the Government to:

1. increase duty on high-strength cider;
2. reinstate the alcohol duty escalator;
3. upon leaving the EU, tax all alcoholic drinks categories in proportion to strength; and
4. implement a minimum unit price for all alcoholic drinks.

Firmer alcohol pricing policy though remains a politically tricky issue; recent survey findings show the public are broadly split on MUP, though may be warming to it slowly. Advocates also point out that the continued shift to off-trade 'home drinking' is being driven to a large extent by the gap in prices compared to the on-trade.

Chair of the AHA, and former President of the Royal College of Physicians, Professor Sir Ian Gilmore said:

“We need to make excessively cheap alcohol less affordable through the tax system, including an increase in cider duty. It’s not right that high strength white cider is taxed at a third of the rate for strong beer.

In addition, we need minimum unit pricing. This would target the cheap, high strength products drunk by harmful drinkers whilst barely affecting moderate drinkers, and it would leave pub prices untouched. In fact, pubs could benefit from minimum unit pricing, as it would prevent the proliferation of cheap alcohol in our supermarkets."

Scotland's MUP battle... a conclusion awaits?

In response to the report, Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems (SHAAP) issued a press release calling on the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) to respect the Scottish Court of Session's imminent MUP decision and 'desist from any further appeal to the UK Supreme Court'. The SWA have headed a long running legal challenge to Scotland's MUP policy first passed by law in 2012.

Meanwhile Brexit creates a different set of circumstances for the prospect of alcohol pricing policy - both limitations to duty changes and the current MUP legal challenge are tied to EU laws. As such the SHAAP release called on both Scottish and UK Government to prioritise policies that reduce alcohol harms within future Brexit and trade negotiations. With both Wales and Ireland also intent on MUP, the future of UK alcohol pricing policy is particularly hard to predict.