Asked by
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of
the impact that the changes to alcohol duties announced in the
Budget statement on 27 October will have on alcohol-related (1)
hospital admissions, and (2) deaths.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health
and Social Care () (Con)
The reform of alcohol duties will simplify duty rules and tax
drinks in proportion to their alcohol content. This should create
a financial incentive for manufacturers to reformulate their
products, therefore giving consumers a greater choice of
lower-strength products. This would support individuals to drink
within the Chief Medical Officer’s guidelines. The Office for
Health Improvement and Disparities plans to make an assessment of
the potential impact of these proposals on consumption and
associated harms.
(Lab)
My Lords, I regret that the Minister has not actually answered
the Question. All the evidence indicates that if the price of
alcohol goes up, people drink less and are healthier. If the
price of alcohol goes down or the duty goes down, people in fact
drink more. More people go into hospital and more people die.
Instead of relying on the industry to decide whether
manufacturers will reformulate their drinks, as the Minister just
indicated, the Government should take a firm lead and put the
health of the nation first. They should not be handing out a £3
billion cut in this way. Will the Minister please go back to the
Chancellor and tell him that we need a policy that will lead to
better health, not worse?
(Con)
Many public health officials, for many years, have criticised the
system of alcohol taxation, particularly the EU’s system of
taxation. Now that we have left the EU, we are free to set our
own law in this area. Given the criticisms from the World Health
Organization and many other think tanks, we can now set taxation
based on the volume of alcohol.
(Lab)
My Lords, I welcome that the duty will be related to the strength
of alcohol. However, the Budget included a dozen references to
wine, just as the Government were boasting that the biggest
benefit of the New Zealand trade deal was cheaper New Zealand
wine. This duty freeze, as we have heard, will cost £3 billion to
the Exchequer over five years—money that could have been used for
treatment services and for public health, since we know that
deaths and illnesses will go up. It seems to me that the
Government have an alcohol problem. They are scared to increase
prices for the sake of all our health and are uncaring about the
problems that this measure brings in its wake. Can this Health
Minister go to his colleagues in the Treasury and try to educate
them as to what they should be doing?
(Con)
The noble Baroness is being a little unfair in her comments.
These reforms were based on the advice of many public health
officials, including the World Health Organization as well as a
number of think tanks, which said that it was about time that we
linked taxation to the volume of alcohol in drinks in the hope
that we can encourage and incentivise manufacturers to lower
alcohol content and to produce more low-alcohol and alcohol-free
drinks. I am not sure whether noble Lords would accept such
reformulated drinks, but it is important that we push this from a
public health perspective.
(LD)
My Lords, real-term cuts in the price of alcohol send the wrong
message also about drink-driving. We have one of the highest
drink-drive limits in the world, set more than 50 years ago and
well out of date. Around 2,000 people are killed and seriously
injured on the roads every year, and that figure rose by 8% in
2019 alone. The British attitudes survey reveals that 77% of
people support lower limits. Do the Government intend to catch up
with the rest of the world and adopt this popular policy, saving
lives on the road?
(Con)
Noble Lords will know that alcohol-related deaths are not due
purely to sclerosis of the liver and other direct impacts; we
also know that alcohol plays a large role in, for example,
drownings, 30% of which have some alcohol connection. We know
that a number of murders and cases of domestic abuse are also
connected to alcohol. The most important thing is to try to
incentivise drinkers to drink low-alcohol or no-alcohol products
in the hope that we can do that. This is why we have reformed the
taxation system in a way that is linked to the volume of alcohol
in drinks.
(Con)
My Lords, I refer to my interests as set out in the register.
While the duty freeze and 5% cut on duty on draft beer was
welcomed by the industry, in reality prices that consumers will
experience are likely only to increase due to production and
distribution costs. I do not think that measures in the Budget
will lead to overconsumption since, in the highly unlikely event
of the duty cut being passed on, a person would need to drink 183
pints before they got a free one. Does my noble friend the
Minister agree that we should encourage people to go out, have a
couple a modest drinks if they want to, support our fantastic
hospitality industry and enjoy themselves?
(Con)
The noble Lord makes an important point in looking at the various
factors that have to be balanced up. Clearly, we want to
encourage consumers or drinkers to move towards low-alcohol and
no-alcohol products, while balancing that against the wider
economic climate and the hard two years that the hospitality
sector has faced, which is why we announced the freeze to some
alcohol duties. On encouraging people to go out and drink
alcohol, I am afraid I am the wrong person, because I am
teetotal.
(CB)
My Lords, I declare my interest, having chaired the Commission on
Alcohol Harm. Our report published last year cited the data, then
10 years old, which showed that the cost from alcohol to the NHS
was £3.5 billion a year, while the Home Office’s own estimates
were that the cost to society was £21 billion a year. In the
decade since then, the number of alcohol-related hospital
admissions has risen by 19%, and there has been a rise, too, in
alcohol-related hospital admissions and deaths, which increased
by 20% last year alone. Given the rising cost to the NHS, what
contingency plans have the Government made should this drop in
duty fail to decrease alcohol harms, and what other methods do
the Government plan to use to decrease alcohol consumption?
(Con)
The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, as well as
many other bodies, will continue constantly to review the impact
of this change in taxation. In addition, the Government remain
committed to supporting those who are most vulnerable and most at
risk from alcohol misuse. Alcohol is a cross-cutting issue
affecting several government departments. A strong programme of
work is under way to address alcohol-related harms and their
impact on life chances, including an ambitious programme to
establish specialist alcohol care teams in hospitals and support
for children of alcohol-dependent parents. There are a number of
other alcohol harm reduction strategies that are too numerous to
list now, but I am happy to write to the noble Baroness.
(Lab)
My Lords, alcohol-misuse experts have warned that the
Government’s reforms of alcohol taxes are undermined by their
failure to address the issue that alcohol from high-strength
beverages may remain cheaper, in many cases, because the price
per unit of alcohol is lower in many of those high-strength
beverages. What plans do the Government have to introduce minimum
alcohol pricing? Does the Minister share my concern that the
Chancellor, in the Budget, appeared to be investing more in
Prosecco than in the public health budgets that we need to see to
cover the cost to society of alcohol harm.
(Con)
The World Health Organization and a number of other organisations
have criticised the current system of taxation of alcohol, and
urged the Government—and the EU when we were a member of it—to
move toward taxation based upon the volume of alcohol. To answer
the noble Baroness’s specific question, there are no current
plans to implement minimum unit pricing in England, but the
Government continue to monitor the impact of minimum unit pricing
as evidence emerges from Scotland and Wales. It has been in place
in Scotland for more than three years, and the Scottish
Parliament will not consider its extension until April 2024. In
all my conversations with various public health experts, one of
the things that they make quite clear is that this has to be
evidence-led, and we want to look at evidence from elsewhere.
(Con)
I declare my interest as chairman of the PASS Proof of Age
Standards Board. I also chaired the Select Committee on the
Licensing Act 2003. Does the Minister agree with the Committee
when it said:
“It is in our view unarguable that an increase in the price of
alcohol will decrease consumption.”?
Does he further agree that, by increasing the taxation on
stronger alcohol as the Budget aims to do, that will have a
better chance of reducing alcohol intake and dependency than the
minimum unit pricing that we have seen in Scotland?
(Con)
I thank my noble friend for that very important point. This is
why the new system of taxation has been introduced. It will more
directly align the volume of alcohol with the taxation on it.
That will feed through to higher prices for drinks with higher
alcohol content.
