Chamber and committees

Yes.

I am absolutely clear that the budget that we have provided for ADPs—which has gone up this year to a record amount—should be spent on ADPs. If I have to go as far as to give a direction, it will be that that money should be spent on ADPs and the work that they have to do, including the detailed work that they do with dependent drinkers. That ties into Mr Sweeney’s question about my contact with IJBs and boards with regard to the work that they are doing, because this is a shared responsibility across health and social care. However, my direction is that that money is to be spent on ADPs and the work that they do on the front line.

To be absolutely honest, I am open-minded about how to do it. We are looking at many ways in which we can tackle it. Every official in the department has different experience, so they come with all that information as well. We will look at whether inflation is the right measure; then we will have an argument about whether it should be the consumer price index or the retail price index. We will work that out.

My mind is open, and you are absolutely right about giving businesses the opportunity to be ready. We listened to their calls. If the uprating to 65p goes through, it will be September before that is implemented. That is the amount of time that businesses thought that they needed. Some people were looking for 12 months, which was stretching it a wee bit; we think that six months is time enough. If it becomes a regular thing, that opportunity will be there.

You will know that the First Minister set a new deal with business. That is why, just last week, I met the alcohol business partnership group to talk about some of its concerns and challenges. I am trying to take as balanced a view as possible. I am not here to make life more difficult for our producers. We have a world-leading food and drinks industry. Its global impact is huge. I would not want to diminish any of that, but we have to get the balance right.

Straight off, that is a yes—obviously. Public Health Scotland’s evaluation found that the evidence points to minimum unit pricing having a

“positive impact on health outcomes”

for harmful and hazardous drinking, and the work that we have done on that is incredibly detailed. My answer is yes—those people need the most support.

The point that you made about a 40 per cent drop in the number of people accessing services has confounded us, and we are doing a bit of work to understand why it has happened. This is anecdotal, but, from conversations that I have been having across the board, I know that there are particular groups of people who, because of stigma, will not access services, which is why Professor Alan Miller and lots of organisations are doing work on stigma. Women are pretty significant in that category, which is why I am looking at the impact of minimum unit pricing on women and at the support that they need.

I am concerned that, if people with an alcohol dependency are shunned socially in the way that people who have a drug dependency are, it will be much more difficult for them to come forward for treatment. We are taking a public health approach to the issue because we hope to create circumstances in which people feel confident about coming for treatment.

As I said, we are a bit confounded by the 40 per cent drop, and we are doing detailed work to analyse it and try to understand how to pivot services to address it. Orlando Heijmer-Mason has been really involved in that work, so he can give you more detail.

I think that all analysis should be taken into account. Modelling is a recommended and respected way of getting the information that we need to tackle societal issues and move policy forward. I would not underestimate the impact of the modelling work that has been done by the University of Sheffield and Public Health Scotland. I take your point about data and facts, because we all face issues with getting information.

You asked about coming back to Parliament. As I said to Gillian Mackay, my mind is completely open regarding uprating. We are working right now on some of the information about the best way to do that. I will bring that back to the committee if that is what members wish and I am also happy to come to Parliament with that. I suspect that another change to legislation would be needed, so we would have to go through that process anyway.

I am happy to come back when I have considered all the evidence, including facts and modelling.

Yes. The modelling found that inflation would take it from 50p up to 60p or 62p, and we decided on 65p, which takes it one level further. We also looked at modelling for 70p and other prices per unit, but we felt that 65p gave us the right balance between the impact on industry and the impact on public health.

Yes, absolutely.

It will know, based on the alcohol duty.

We will keep the scheme under continuous review. Whether we do a full review in five years will probably be for other people to decide, but my commitment is to keep the scheme under continuous review to ensure that we can be fleet of foot with any changes. For example, we might well see some of the pandemic’s impacts playing out over the next couple of years, and we will need to respond to that.

A policy such as this will always benefit from being reviewed. No doubt academics and others out there will be continuously reviewing it anyway, but the Government is committed to reviewing all of this work and will continue to do so.