Chamber and committees

Yes.

It is different for different retailers. Those in the off-licence trade—that is, bottle shops—can see the difference pretty clearly, but it has become difficult for supermarkets to separate sales, because people will buy alcohol along with whatever else is in their shopping. That said, HMRC might have some data on that, so we will follow that one up.

I am happy to move the motions. There is not much more to say, other than my key opening remarks that we believe, following the review, that now is the time to continue with the policy and to uprate the minimum unit price to 65p. I commend both sets of regulations to the committee and hope that it will support them.

I move,

That the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee recommends that the Alcohol (Minimum Pricing) (Scotland) Act 2012 (Continuation) Order 2024 [draft] be approved.

That the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee recommends that the Alcohol (Minimum Price per Unit) (Scotland) Amendment Order 2024 [draft] be approved.

That timeline runs over 17 or 18 years—which is a lot of time. In that time, there have been a lot of interventions, and a lot of work has been done to reduce drug and alcohol-related deaths and hospital admissions. We took the decision to continue to implement minimum unit pricing, because we saw the benefit not just in the short term but in the long term. That is why I am committed to continuing the policy and uprating MUP; we can see the definite change that is happening.

Have we been doing this long enough to understand that change at a population level? Probably not. That is why the reviews, the work and the modelling that are being done are incredibly important. Yes, we are talking estimates—but they can be only estimates, because it is a bit more difficult to disentangle health outcomes, particularly with regard to people who do not factor into the death statistics but who factor into the reduction in hazardous and harmful drinking. That is why the modelling and the analysis are being done in the way that they are, and it will also help us understand how we move forward. We want to uprate precisely because the differential has increased and we want to make sure that it increases again.

The director of public health in north-east England says that this policy works, and we can see that it works. We have made the comparison between Scotland and the north-east of England, and its recommendation is minimum unit pricing for England and Wales. That is an important point.

Last week, I met the industry partnership group to discuss further proposals and how we might work together on the issue, which is something that I am very committed to doing. According to some of the analysis, particularly that carried out by academics and Public Health Scotland, there has been a definitive drop in the use of some of those more highly-potent and very cheap ciders and similar types of alcohol.

That has been particularly the case among young people—that is, those under the age of 25. According to the health and wellbeing survey done in schools, the numbers of young people who would access that type of cheap high-alcohol product are declining quite quickly. At the time of the original debates on minimum unit pricing, it was called “pocket-money alcohol”; it is not that now. If there has been any impact on the industry at all, it has been on cider producers in Scotland, who are experiencing a real decline in the sale of that type of alcohol.

According to our analysis, there seems to have been no impact on that type of alcohol, because its unit price in the off-trade was already well in excess of 65p, while the unit price in the on-trade sits at about an average of £2.04. We have not seen any impact on the off-trade. In any case, the policy was targeted not at that sort of product, but at the high-alcohol, low-price products that were available. We have not seen an impact on those other products at all.

I do not agree with that characterisation of the evaluation. The Scottish Government tasked Public Health Scotland with undertaking an independent evaluation of minimum unit pricing. There were two overarching evaluation questions. The first was:

“To what extent has implementing MUP in Scotland contributed to reducing alcohol-related health and social harms?”

and the second was:

“Are some people and businesses more affected (positively or negatively) than others?”

The evaluation plan for minimum unit pricing contains a portfolio of studies that were either undertaken by Public Health Scotland or which PHS commissioned external research bodies to undertake and which, through open procurement processes, were separately funded and led by academic partners. A slew of information was taken into account and Public Health Scotland took a theory-based approach to the evaluation of minimum unit pricing, its implementation, compliance, the alcohol market, alcohol consumption and alcohol harms.

The outcome of the Public Health Scotland evaluation is that minimum unit pricing is estimated to have cut alcohol consumption and deaths attributable to alcohol and that it is likely to have reduced hospital admissions that were wholly attributable to alcohol. The evaluation of minimum unit pricing also told us that it reduced health inequalities, the biggest reduction being seen in the impacts on men and on people living in the 40 per cent most deprived areas.

I would argue that Public Health Scotland took a robust approach. There are people out there who do not agree with the policy and who will have a different opinion, which is absolutely fine. My opinion is based on the work that Public Health Scotland and the University of Sheffield have done for us and on the work of organisations working on the front line—including those made up of people with lived and living experience—who have seen the benefit of minimum unit pricing in the past few years.

The BRIA has additional details about the impact on the industry. You have hit the nail on the head on the reason for taking this approach. Minimum unit pricing is only one tool. People are experiencing an impact not just because of minimum unit pricing; the cost of living crisis is having an impact on everyone. Additional support is being given to ADPs. This year, record funding of £112 million is being provided, and we have made a commitment to provide £250 million over the whole parliamentary session—in other words, for the next two years. All those supports are contained within that.

One way in which we approach the matter is through a whole-family approach. That involves looking at some of the challenges that people have in their lives—homelessness, debt and all of that. All that advice is factored into the supports, and that approach has proven to be incredibly supportive and helpful for people who are in the categories that Paul Sweeney has mentioned.

I refer members to the managed alcohol programme that has been undertaken in Glasgow with the Simon Community Scotland, particularly with people who are homeless. I can make available to the committee a wonderful case study that involves a particular individual who has taken part in the Simon Community’s pilot project. That individual is now in a supported tenancy. They have had income maximisation work done because they were not claiming anything and they did not know that they were entitled to anything, and they have had all the other social supports that they need. That includes the ability to access other types of therapy and support that they need. That person has now become a peer mentor.

Members can see the real benefit of taking a whole-family or person-centred approach. We are really interested in the outcome of the Simon Community’s pilot, particularly for a very vulnerable cohort of our population who are involved in harmful use of alcohol, who are unemployed and homeless, and who have very little family support. That is the person-centred aspect. The other aspect is the whole-family approach, which involves looking at what the family as a whole is entitled to and where we can engage with families to ensure that they get holistic support.

We all understand that approaching one issue with one response will never work in these circumstances, so it has to be a whole-family approach. That is where the third sector, the charity sector, our ADPs and all the professionals who are working in this field become incredibly important, as they enable us to take a multi-agency approach with such individuals.

I would define problematic drinking as hazardous drinking, and that is the focus of this work. MUP impacts on dependent drinkers as well, but there has always been a clear understanding that that group of people, who are more vulnerable and more stigmatised, need a nuanced and more detailed support structure around them. That is the work that we are doing.

I said in my opening remarks that MUP is not a silver bullet; it is not the answer for everyone. However, it gives some of the answers for most people, and we have developed other answers for some of those other people as well.

In the court’s findings?