Chamber and committees

As I have said, not everybody agrees with minimum unit pricing, but Public Health Scotland’s evaluation, the work that we have done, and the 80 organisations, including those at the front line, and individuals that I have mentioned tell a very different story.

In a letter to The Lancet, a number of leading public health officials, including Professors Michael Marmot and Sally Casswell, said:

“The concentration of the decrease in mortality in the lowest income groups is particularly welcome, as a narrowing of health inequalities was one of the key intentions of the policy and it has been achieved.”

I know that some people do not agree with minimum unit pricing, but, as I have said, the professional judgment and experience of front-line organisations and people with lived and living experience tell a very different story. They see the value of minimum unit pricing, and they support its continuation and uprating.

There has been a pretty marked impact on underage drinking. We should look at that in more detail, because it surely demonstrates the benefits of doing the health and wellbeing survey with children at school, which is where some of the data came from.

The Health Behaviour in School-aged Children survey—all those things have big, long names—showed that levels of drunkenness in children aged 15

“have declined steadily and are now at their lowest in 32 years”.

Some of the data has been picked up by curriculum for excellence work in schools and some comes from specific projects.

Public Health Scotland has said that, yes.

The front-line organisations that support people had that worry, but it has not materialised. They have been pretty open; I think that they have said in evidence to the committee in the past few weeks that they have not seen that happen.

Public Health Scotland found no evidence that people started to use drugs because of the increased price of alcohol. However, it was considering the group that drinks at harmful and hazardous levels and, as I said, a different approach is being taken to the work around dependent drinkers.

We are not committing to a huge Public Health Scotland review such as the one that we have just done. However, I am committed to reviewing the areas that we feel need a bit more focus, which is why I am focusing on dependent drinkers and women, and some of the other challenges that other people have had around the matter. The commitment is to keep the issue under review. The work of the committee is incredibly helpful in informing our work and challenging us on where we should be looking, and I welcome that.

Public Health Scotland took information from a range of sources. Some of those studies—seven or eight, I think—included analysis of the Covid years. We can get you more detail of the deep analysis of that via Public Health Scotland. Are you talking about the blog?

Yes. I spotted that as well. I spotted that coming over the airwaves and had a good look at it. Although we realise that harmful drinking increased during the Covid pandemic, we have still not been able to completely analyse that and understand what it means for recovery going forward. That includes an uptick in people suggesting that they have increased their drinking habits; that was mostly among people in the harmful and hazardous category who are now looking for ways to reduce their drinking. We need to keep doing work in that area.

We are nowhere near understanding the impact of Covid on many things, never mind social isolation and loneliness, and some people may become more alcohol dependent to escape that social isolation and loneliness. We treat social isolation and loneliness as a public health issue—indeed, as a public health emergency. Looking at the data that has come through, about eight of the studies had information that included the Covid years, and we can get you much more detailed analysis on that.

Katherine Myant has been much embedded in all of that work, and she will be able to pick up on that.

That is a smashing question—thank you so much. Mr Sweeney and the committee will be keen to know that we have published an up-to-date BRIA, which goes into some depth. I had been in the job for only about three days when my lovely officials presented me with a 70-page document to work my way through. It goes into some detail, and we are happy to make it available to the committee.

Mr Sweeney is right to say that the elasticity in prices has impacted on high-alcohol, low-price products. People who are involved in the cider market will tell you that their market has collapsed in Scotland—although not too much, we would argue. That has been where some of the biggest impact of MUP has been noticed from a business point of view.

We take the World Health Organization’s approach in relation to accessibility and availability and how to tackle those. Setting a minimum price is one of the tools that the World Health Organization suggests that we use. That goes along with the work of Public Health Scotland and the University of Sheffield, and our commitment to on-going review. We will keep the issue under review, because we want to ensure that we are being as responsive as possible.

Work was done on analysing the price point that the MUP should be set at, and researchers at the University of Sheffield thought that it should be set at around 60p or 62p. Tying that in with inflation and all of those issues, we felt that 65p would be the level at which the MUP would create the circumstances to drive down some of the sales, and to drive down hazardous and harmful drinking.

We have taken all those things into account, including the World Health Organization’s recommendations.

You have stumped me there, Mr Sweeney. I do not have information on the comparison between spirits and beer in my head or in my folder. However, we can certainly look at the analysis that has been done and provide the committee with an update on that. If that information exists, we will get it to you.

Yes, most definitely. I think that I have been in this role for about eight weeks. I have tried to continue with as much of Elena Whitham’s diary as possible to maintain continuity and to ensure that the regular things still happen with the regular people. At the same time, I have also tried to learn the portfolio and to engage with some of the key stakeholders. I have done quite a lot of work on that over the past few weeks. We have held a number of round-table events and have engaged in other ways of gathering evidence from stakeholders.

One issue that arises time and again is a worry about IJBs. When the First Minister appointed me to this post, he told me that my budget is protected, which, I must say, is a very privileged place to be in at any level of Government. Over the next weeks and months, I have planned events to discuss with IJBs and boards how that money should be spent. I am absolutely clear that the money that is coming from my budget for ADPs and for front-line services through IJBs and boards is to be spent on those subjects. I will make that clear when I meet them. Circumstances are tough for everybody right now, and I want to be as supportive as possible, but I am absolutely clear that that money is to be spent where we have agreed that it should be spent.