Richard Simpson: Minimum pricing is not the answer to our booze culture

Published on Wednesday 25 November 2009 20:47

SCOTLAND'S hard-drinking culture is a national disgrace. We have the eighth highest alcohol consumption level in the world. Alcohol-related mortality has doubled in the past 15 years and the increase in the rate of liver disease is scary.

As a hospital consultant, I have seen the consequences of this epidemic at first hand in my own patients. Liver disease is a horrible way to die.

I know that the key factors we have to influence are availability and price. Scottish Labour has repeatedly said that we will look seriously at any credible proposals to reduce the level of alcohol abuse. This is the most important public health issue we face in Scotland today.

My experience as a doctor made me instinctively sympathetic towards proposals for minimum unit pricing. There is direct evidence linking price decreases to increased consumption and consequent increases in chronic and acute health harms including cancers, stroke, accidents and violence. A 2009 study for the European Commission noted the affordability of alcohol had increased across the majority of EU member states in the past 12 years.

Unfortunately, the SNP proposals have not been properly thought through and could actually end up taking us backwards. First, I see no reason why the Scottish Government should pursue a policy whose main beneficiaries will be the big supermarkets. Tesco and Asda already make enough money from the sale of alcohol. The SNP's scheme would increase those profits still further, and there is no opportunity to target the extra revenue raised at alcohol education or treatment, or additional police for enforcement activity.

Furthermore, a minimum unit price of about 40p, as the SNP have suggested, would not affect the price of drinks such as Buckfast that fuel antisocial behaviour among young people.

No other country in the Northern Europe has introduced such a measure. Unit pricing is untried, untested and possibly illegal.

Serious doubts about the competence of the SNP's scheme have been raised following a ruling at the European Court in Brussels, which outlawed minimum pricing for tobacco.

We therefore asked the Scottish Government to share the substance of their legal advice. Despite promises from the First Minister in the Chamber and an exchange of letters with the health secretary Nicola Sturgeon, nothing has been forthcoming.

The SNP's refusal to share such basic information indicates that they are not serious about building a genuine consensus.

It is likely that minimum unit pricing would be challenged in the European Court as soon as it was introduced. If the proposals were struck down, there is a real danger that it would set the debate back by a decade. This cannot be allowed to happen.

For these reasons, I have reluctantly reached the conclusion that the SNP's scheme for minimum unit pricing is not fit for purpose and I cannot support it. The challenge now is to come up with something better.

There are serious and complex issues to consider if we are to successfully change Scotland's relationship with alcohol. For that reason, we have set up a commission, led by Professor Sally Brown, emeritus professor of education at Stirling University.

We will announce other members but are keen to be inclusive. The commission will start work in the new year and will consider measures that will help to tackle the overconsumption of alcohol, including an examination of alternative pricing mechanisms. Unlike the SNP, we want a genuine debate.

&#149 Labour MSP Richard Simpson is the party's health spokesman.