Janet Hood: Making alcohol more expensive won’t bring back a ‘golden age’

IT IS interesting to note that governments in Holyrood and Westminster claim to be doing their best to curb the British disease – heavy drinking.

They state – despite their own statistics demonstrating the contrary position – that we are drinking more and more, to our certain detriment. They look back to a golden age when alcohol was more expensive and less easily available.

Both governments acknowledge that most licensees run their businesses well, cause no harm to their local communities and provide fantastic secular meeting places where we can meet, make friends, hold functions from christenings to funerals and generally celebrate life. The pub is a safe place to drink, consumption and behaviour are generally effectively monitored, the landlord otherwise being likely to lose his livelihood.

Sheffield University has produced an influential model concluding if alcohol is more expensive and there are fewer outlets where it can be sold, we will reduce alcohol harm.

We have actually been drinking less alcohol per head since 2000. On-sales are dropping year on year, we have the highest alcohol tax in Europe, we have no pro-tourist VAT rate and the swingeing costs of complying with heavily bureaucratic licensing and planning regimes are damaging to tourism, business and the social fabric of rural Scotland.

Further, if the Sheffield model is correct, Scotland should be way ahead of the game. On 1 September, 2009, we lost nearly a fifth of all licences in Scotland. We went from some 20,000 licensed venues to about 16,500 in one fell swoop. Cost and the complexities of bureaucracy broke the back of many and of course the credit crunch has polished off more. Some businesses are lost because owners and managers do not understand that great service, wonderful products and well-trained staff are required to encourage custom.

We have a moratorium on new licences in West Dunbartonshire. This is hailed by government as a model which should be adopted across Scotland. On the other hand, our political masters want us to develop an innovative, vibrant licensed trade to benefit tourism and to serve our business and social needs. This is likely to require new businesses. Joined-up thinking combining these policy aims would be welcomed by businesses involved in tourism and the licensed trade.

I went to university in the mid-70s when alcohol was considerably more expensive than today. I remember my first stroll around the city that was to be my home for four years. Edinburgh was amazing! I wound my way through its ancient streets until I came to the Grassmarket, where I encountered the “good ole boys” who were not “drinking whisky and rye” but meths and milk enlivened with hairspray.

Was this the golden age?

• Janet Hood is a lawyer specialising in licensing, of Blackadders, Dundee