I am fully aware of the evils of alcohol: believe me, I’ve spent my fair share of nights out on the town (and now have the dubious privilege of living above a dodgy nightclub in an otherwise pleasant area), so I have seen first-hand what binge drinking looks (and sounds, and smells) like. It is not a pretty picture, and in addition to being a blight on neighbourhoods in town centres up and down the country, it is a huge health nightmare.
But how do you solve this problem? To quote from Yes, Minister, the Government’s response rather looks like a case of ‘The Government must do something, this is something; therefore the Government must do it.’ Instead of actually engaging in why binge drinking is going on and seeking to challenge these causes (let alone actually addressing its most immediate effects), their proposals just make it more expensive for everybody to have a drink. Now for most people this may be nothing more than an irritant, but for many people who genuinely don’t have much money in the first place, this is taking away their opportunity to enjoy the benefit of one of the few available low cost luxuries.
Yes binge drinking is a problem, but we need to remember liberal principles when trying to solve it. First, let us remember that the patron saint of liberalism John Stuart Mill advocated that the freedom of individuals shouldn’t be restricted for the sake of preventing them harming themselves. Second, in recognising that binge drinking blights neighbourhoods and costs the NHS and other state bodies money (most notably the Police and Ambulance Services) we should remember the principle underlying our environmental policies: the polluter should pay. The idea that you put tax up for everyone to pay for damage done by a minority polluting the environment would be laughed out of Party Conference – those who do the damage should pay for it, an approach that is both just and provides deterrence.
While the Government may market their minimum pricing as a policy which mirrors this approach, it doesn’t take a philosophy student to notice the flaw in their logic. Not all binge drinkers rely on cheap alcohol (in fact an awful lot of them don’t) and most certainly not all buyers of cheap alcohol are binge drinkers. Unfortunately, the reality is that binge drinking is for many a way of life, it is a cultural problem, and not one that can be solved by just pricing the poor out of buying it altogether.
That is not say that there aren’t things the Government can do, there are! First of all, they can recognise that the worst social effects of binge drinking come not from people who’ve bought 2 litres of cider from Tesco but who’ve downed 10 pints at the bar in the town centre. If I were in Government, I would make provision for the levying of a tax on all alcoholic beverages sold in public houses or other non-retail licenced premises of between 1p and 5p (depending on what the region wanted), every penny of which was ploughed straight back into the emergency services and other teams required to properly police town centres and deal with the effects of binge drinking. Such a tax would hardly be noticed by patrons, would not price anyone out of going out for a drink, and would fund the proper policing we need to deal with the current situation.
More can also be done in terms of oversight of licensed premises. We do license companies to serve alcohol, and such licensing does (and certainly should) come with conditions like not selling alcohol to people who clearly have drunk too much already. Councils can and should (and with the additional tax would have more resources to) properly inspect all such premises regularly, and be prepared to withdraw or suspend licenses very quickly if licensing conditions are breached and irresponsible drunkenness encouraged.
All in all, we need to have a debate about what government (both local and national) can actually do to help people instead of just reaching to hit the poorest hardest with yet more price increases in already difficult economic times.
* Matt McLaren is an elected member of the English Party Executive and the English Party’s representative on the Federal Conference Committee. In London Region, he is Vice-Chair of Enfield Liberal Democrats, a member of its Local Parties Committee and one of its elected representatives on the English Council. Matt is also currently a Liberal Democrat candidate for Enfield Council, standing in his home ward of Winchmore Hill.
20 Comments
Spot on Matt.
Disappointing how many liberals are perfectly happy to implement a form of what amounts to collective punishment to deal with a social problem.
It offends me both ideologically and personally: I buy lots of cheap lager at supermarkets (3 crates for £20 and those kinds of deals) at below this minimum price, but don’t drink it all at once! I stick it in the cupboard and it lasts for a summer’s worth of barbecues. I’ve got no real problem with paying a few pounds more to genuinely help others (I’d happily pay a bit more tax to fund public services), but in this case the principle does make it grate with me.
“I’ve got no real problem with paying a few pounds more to genuinely help others …”
The worst of it is that it’s difficult to see how this is going to help people with drink problems.
The proposal would make the minimum cost of drinking up to the recommended weekly limit £8.40 for men and £5.60 for women. I can’t see that this sort of pricing will be any deterrent at all, except for the poorest of the poor.
It’s been suggested that the benefit will be felt by the tiny percentage of people who drink very much more than the recommended amount – say ten times or more. But these people must currently be spending £40 a week on alcohol at the very least. Even if increasing the price causes them to reduce their consumption, there’s no way it will take them below the recommended limit, or anywhere near it.
I just don’t see how this is meant to work, except as a purely political stunt.
II agree with the policy. In fact I think the price should be made higher in order to reduce alcoholism even more. I remember a time in the 1970s when people bought less alcoholic drinks because they were more expensive. No one then said that the poor were suffering because of that. Whether these drinks are affordable is down to market forces, not out of any sense of social justice. Do we imagine the poor are suffering because they cannot afford to buy champagne?
All sections of society suffer from the effects of cheap alcohol, either directly or or indirectly. A person who is an alcoholic not only damages himself, he also is more likely to be violent to his wife and children, and for that matter the local neighbourhood. We as taxpayers end up paying even more on the police and NHS in order to deal with this.
So although some will be disappointed that they will have to buy less alcohol, maybe those same people, plus everyone else will be glad that they do not have to put up with the problems that come with excessive drinking. On balance I do not think that the poor will on balance “suffer”, many will have their quality of life improved.
If you argue that increasing prices will not make any difference, that is a different argument. If it can be objectively shown this is the case, well fair enough. However I suspect the reason the government wants to do this is because the evidence suggests otherwise.
That’s your view Geoffrey, but if society suffers so much, why not just ban alcohol? It would make society better and people safer.
Forgive me for thinking that a liberal party’s position would include some reference to individual rights, freedoms and desires – rather than societal outcomes alone.
I recognise that addiction has always been a ‘problem’ for pure liberalism (alongside things like animal rights, raising children into certain lifestyles, and religion, but those are debates for another day…), but I still think we need to be helping addicts recover, better enforcing the law when laws have been broken, getting night-time industries to contribute more to dealing with anti-social behaviour, but leaving non-troublemaking, non-binge drinkers alone!
Over the years, we have relatively successfully modified smokers behaviour by price – even Tesco don’t do BOGOF/3 for 2 etc on tobacco products, so it’s difficult to see why drinkers shouldn’t be treated similarly.
Booze is not a staple item and alcohol related health problems (either ER or long term) cost the NHS loads.
We can’t on the one hand complain about closing pubs whilst allowing the sale of dirt cheap booze
“That’s your view Geoffrey, but if society suffers so much, why not just ban alcohol? It would make society better and people safer.”
Or why not introduce alcohol rationing? Isn’t that the logic of what Geoffrey is saying? In a way it would be preferable to what’s proposed, as it wouldn’t penalise responsible drinkers, and it would have an impact on problem drinkers over the whole range of incomes.
In fact why not go further, and enforce a healthy diet on everyone? No doubt some people will be disappointed that they can’t eat what they like, but I’m sure everyone will have the quality of their life improved in the long run.
Come to think of it, why stop at food and drink? There are all sorts of ways in which I’m sure people would be better off if they behaved as I’d like them to, rather than doing as they please …
I’m not even sure where to begin.
“To quote from Yes, Minister, the Government’s response rather looks like a case of ‘The Government must do something, this is something; therefore the Government must do it.’”
Either that or it is a solution supported by almost every single medical organisation and charity that works with alcohol abusers. Ya know, just maybe.
“their proposals just make it more expensive for everybody to have a drink”
No, they propose to increase the price of the most cheap, bargain basement drinks, thus not affecting 90% of alcohol consumption.
“we should remember the principle underlying our environmental policies: the polluter should pay. The idea that you put tax up for everyone to pay for damage done by a minority polluting the environment would be laughed out of Party Conference”
At this point I genuinely start wondering if you are descending into satire. Our entire environmental policy is predicated on subsidies and taxes that force up the price of energy for everybody so that sustainable energy sources can compete. This may describe UKIP’s environmental policy, but not anyone pursued by either Conservatives, Labour or Lib Dems.
“Not all binge drinkers rely on cheap alcohol (in fact an awful lot of them don’t) and most certainly not all buyers of cheap alcohol are binge drinkers.”
True but irrelevant. This isn’t just meant to affect binge drinkers but chronic abuse of alcohol generally. Those who drink far too much alcohol overwhelmingly drink very cheap alcohol and this measure will hit their consumption hard while not increasing the price of a drink for 90% of drinkers. It is not perfect but compared to just chucking a few pence on the duty every year it is far more targeted and effective.
“First of all, they can recognise that the worst social effects of binge drinking come not from people who’ve bought 2 litres of cider from Tesco but who’ve downed 10 pints at the bar in the town centre.”
Swing and a miss. Those people vomiting outside your flat have almost certainly been heavily pre-drinking on strong, cheap booze before they went out. I know this, because I used to do it as well. Also, the measure is aimed at people who are ruining their own health and damaging their familes and surroundings with chronic over-drinking. Not just, and not even mainly, people being a pain in the arse on the highstreet on a friday night.
“If I were in Government, I would make provision for the levying of a tax on all alcoholic beverages sold in public houses or other non-retail licenced premises of between 1p and 5p (depending on what the region wanted), every penny of which was ploughed straight back into the emergency services and other teams required to properly police town centres and deal with the effects of binge drinking.”
Wow, that’s a great idea. Like how we levy a tax on cigarettes or petrol to deal with the negative externalities of those, and fund public services, So a tax like the fuel duty, or the tobacco duty, but on alcohol. Maybe we could call it the alcohol du . . t . . . . y. Oh . . . . wait. . . ..
So you reject minimum alcohol pricing because it would hit people who don’t cause damage through alcohol, and your replacement for this is a tax on everyone who drinks in pubs or bars? “It doesn’t take a philosophy student to notice the flaw in [the] logic” of that one either.
Even ignoring that all evidence suggests that on aggregate drinking socially in pubs and bars is much less harmful than sitting at home getting trashed on bargain basement supermarket booze. I’m sorry if that thought is objectionable but it is backed up by every study and piece of clear evidence about alcohol abuse. That your solution to alcohol abuse would be to put a tax on drinking on-licence premises but do nothing to deal with supermarket booze is just remarkable, and you have the gall to accuse the government of just making stuff up.
“Those people vomiting outside your flat have almost certainly been heavily pre-drinking on strong, cheap booze before they went out.”
But have you actually thought about how this measure will affect those who “pre-load” in this way?
Suppose half of someone’s alcohol intake comes from cheap booze at 20p a unit, and the other half from booze bought in a pub or club for £2 a unit. The average cost per unit is £1.10.
Now the minimum price per unit is raised to 40p. Assume they don’t change their behaviour. The average cost per unit rises to £1.20 – an increase of about 9%.
Is that really going to have a significant effect on their behaviour? Particularly when they could nullify the effect of the increase by simply upping their cheap alcohol intake to 55% rather than 50%? The more I think about this, the more I don’t believe a word of it.
Just to confirm what commonsense tells us, here’s some modelling of the effect of minimum pricing in Scotland, done by a group at the University of Sheffield in 2010:
http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.96510!/file/scotlandupdate.pdf
The modelled effects of a 40p per unit minimum price are shown in Table 3.1 on p. 30.
In the group classed as “Hazardous,” average consumption per week was modelled as dropping from 27.42 units a week to 27.03. In the “Harmful” group the drop was from 71.84 units per week to 68.38.
Clearly, the advocates of minimum pricing should be arguing for a much higher minimum price, if they are trying to achieve significant benefits to problem drinkers. But the government won’t do that because it would be so unpopular. So they’re pulling a political stunt instead.
It’s an unworkable policy based on stirring up bogeymen more than anything else. For a start the evidence for preloading is thin and may not be linked to how cheap booze is, anyway. It’s unlikely to effect the bigger most popular brand name white spirits or beers, which is what youngster drink . Secondly, there are a growing number of illegal distilleries, precisely because alcohol is actually very expensive in Britain. Plus other substances have crept in the live for the weekend tendency in our culture.
It also prices a lot of firms out of the market. If say a blended malt costs the same as a ten year old single malt, the blend becomes uncompetitive. Finally, it’s just outrageously illiberal to put the price if products under government control. And it isn’t an attack on the poor, it’s an attack on ordinary people who just want a good deal for a few bears in their garden over the summer. In sort it’s a Daily Mail pandering knee-jerk moral panic, not a policy., You can’t moan about Labour’s nanny state whilst expanding it.
“it’s an attack on ordinary people who just want a good deal for a few bears in their garden over the summer”
Surely “beers” … ?
i type quick and didn’t spot it and that’s nit picking that its” beers” ” bears” who cares
@Chris.
To repeat what I said before
“the measure is aimed at people who are ruining their own health and damaging their familes and surroundings with chronic over-drinking. Not just, and not even mainly, people being a pain in the arse on the highstreet on a friday night.”
I agree a 40p minimum price would heave very little impact on people making an ass of themselves on the streets at the weekend. A 40p minimum is really too low anyway to have any impact, a 45p would have a reasonable impact and still have relatively little impact on the vast majority of booze prices. More relevantly, this measure is aimed at chronic abuse of alcohol. That largely means people sitting at home drinking vast amounts each day.If someone is drinking 40 units a week at 20p a unit and then this goes up to 45p, then yes, this is going to push down their consumption, quite possibly enough to put years on their life.
Yes, it only affects at the margins, but alcohol abuse is a such a widespread, if largely invisible problem, that this good still mean many lives saved, and more more people given years extra life through lower levels of alcohol abuse. It is not just a matter of liberal choice either. Alcohol when drunk in the kind of large quantities we’re talking about is a damaging, addictive poison.
If you think policies to drive up the price of booze are illiberal it would make much more sense to campaign against alcohol duty, which really does hit all drinkers, responsible or otherwise, and especially poorer drinkers. Compared to a strategy of constantly hiking alcohol duty minimum pricing is targeted and effective at precisely the problem drinkers. Where is your outrage against alcohol duty?
It doesn’t target problem drinkers, it targets ordinary people. Alcoholics are like all drug addicts. They will pay what they are forced to pay or find a cheaper source. Here’s a thought take it to a vote. , Ask voters do you want to pay more for a drink. Yes or No, See how far it gets . And if you put the duty down whilst putting the minimum price up you just loose revenue and people will be buying cheap imports from under the counter just like they do with tobacco.
@ Glenn — it’s a mistake to assume that “problem drinker” is synonymous with “alcoholic”, or indeed that the world divides neatly into normal people who make rational decisions based on things like price, and “addicts” who are completely unaffected by economic reasoning. These simplifications are not good reasons for rejecting the proposal.
Having said that, I’m at a loss to understand why the law should insist on boosting supermarket margins on alcohol rather than simply whacking on a tax on off-sales (and perhaps a general regulation that you can’t sell alcoholic drinks at a loss — but whilst I’ve seen various comments claiming that supermarkets do this, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone citing direct evidence of it, and it seems a surprising strategy).
Malcolm granted. about the alcoholics thing. , To be honest I just don’t like the nanny state stuff and basically think it’s wrong for governments to impose prices.
I think this mostly another of Britain’s many moral panics..
Good God, alcohol abuse is not a moral panic, it is something that kills thousands a year and blights the lives of many thousands more.
And the obvious reason they don’t whack a tax on off-scales is that would affect far more people and far more types of alcohol than a minimum price would. That policy is much LESS tarrgeted and efficient. And although it will boost margins it will also cut profits because value alcohol has a high elasticity of demand.
Firstly, I accept entirely that it is market circumstances that have provided current opportunities to purchase alcoholic beverages at low prices. Nonetheless, it is a conscious decision on the part of the Government to tamper with the market to increase the price of these products and such interference amounts to a reduction of the freedom available to individuals to act as they see fit and therefore needs to be heavily justified. My article was designed to show (albeit perhaps slightly sardonically) that such justification is lacking, that there are better alternatives, and that there are unpleasant and otherwise avoidable consequences of this policy (i.e. pricing some out buying alcohol altogether).
As regards this last point, yes alcohol is not a staple but it is not for the Government to decide what people should spend their money on – that is, after all, the point of liberalism: to ensure that individuals are free to make such choices and not Governments. There is no human right to cheap alcohol, but there is a liberal expectation that any interference in the ability of citizens to live their lives as they see fit must be considerably well justified.
Of course, arguments have been made here and elsewhere that this measure is justified on public health grounds. However, to reiterate, the Home Secretary’s statement to the House of Commons on Friday (to which my article was a response) explicitly addressed the problem of binge drinking less than it did alcohol abuse more generally (and alcoholism in particular). Binge drinking is a problem, but this policy won’t do much to address it primarily because it is a problem with individuals drinking far too much when out in licenced premises and minimum pricing wouldn’t do much to change this. As for the problem of pre-drinking via bargain supermarket products, for reasons already stated by others in comments above I am somewhat sceptical about likelihood of the policy altering this practice even slightly.
Now, to return to the justification rather than the effectiveness of the policy: we are liberals, we do believe in freedom, and so this tampering with freedom does need to be justified. But is it? I would argue that the measure isn’t justified for ideological reasons. Even evidence based policy (which Lib Dems rightly champion) still has to pass through the prism of ideology (and I am with Mark Pack in chastising this becoming a dirty word). To help explain this I hoped to draw an analogy with environmental policy, but the complications involved in this area make any such analogy difficult to outline. So let me be more precise here.
Stephen W is correct in saying that the effect of our environmental policies (specifically our energy policy) is to raise prices generally. But whilst this is the effect of such policy, it is not the intention but rather an unintended consequence. We certainly didn’t going into the 2010 election saying ‘energy use is bad for the planet so we will make everybody pay more for it’. Rather, we want renewable energy to make a greater contribution to our energy mix so we subsidize it and heavily tax high-polluting forms of energy consumption such as vehicular fuel, etc. However, to help bring out the analogy let’s look at nuclear energy. Nuclear energy results in clean-up costs, costs which hitherto society at large has had to pay for. Liberal Democrats are very clear about this though, we WILL NOT subsidise a polluting industry in this kind of way in the future. The nuclear industry will have to pay for clean-up and decommissioning: the polluter should pay.
The minimum price policy looks like it’s doing something similar, but here is the relevance of my point that:
“Not all binge drinkers rely on cheap alcohol (in fact an awful lot of them don’t) and most certainly not all buyers of cheap alcohol are binge drinkers.”
People who purchase cheap alcohol do not equal binge drinkers and therefore the policy punishes the former and not necessarily the latter. Add to this that the former are mostly people who have fewer economic resources and you have a problem – making the poor pay instead of the irresponsible.
Of course, unlike in the nuclear energy case, there is not a clear group of people who are responsible for the problem who can then be asked to pay for it; and since there are clean-up costs associated with binge drinking (extra police needed, NHS use etc.) someone does have to pay. As an alternative to the minimum unit price then, I proposed an additional tax on drinks served in licenced premises, and I did so for a number of reasons:
(a) unlike a minimum unit price, this would not unduly limit the ability of poorer people to benefit from a luxury currently available to them;
(b) money raised from this could and should be ploughed straight back into funding the clean-up costs (that and the fact that it could and should be set locally is what makes it radically different from alcohol duty);
(c) the binge drinkers causing the problems are users of such premises meaning that many licensed premises are selling too much to their customers or serving alcohol to already inebriated individuals and are therefore at fault.
Crucially, this approach is better justified because of the fact that many individuals or premises not at fault in the sense of point (c) would not be unduly penalised under point (a), unlike the many non-binge drinking (i.e. not at fault) poorer people whose ability to act as they see fit would be severely limited by the minimum price policy.
Of course, there are other public health grounds way beyond binge drinking that have been advanced here and elsewhere in favour of the policy. Nonetheless, the fact that the Government chose to focus on binge drinking when announcing its policy means this is the justification deserving of scrutiny in the first instance. As regards the other possible supporting arguments, for reasons already expounded by many in comments above I am disinclined to view this as anything other than an ineffective and unjustified move designed to appeal to readers of right wing newspapers.
Oops, in the above comment I meant to say that ‘the Home Secretary’s statement to the House of Commons on Friday (to which my article was a response) explicitly addressed the problem of binge drinking MORE than it did alcohol abuse more generally (and alcoholism in particular).’ Apologies for the typo.
I still think that you are thoroughly confused.
What we do with energy is effectively set a minimum price for energy, thus guaranteeing sustainable generators a certain price and removing the ability of fossil fuels to undercut them. That is precisely the analogy with minimum alcohol pricing. We do this because there are power long-term negative externalities of very low energy prices from fossil fuels not taken into account in the market price.
Minimium pricing for alcohol is almost exactly the same. There are powerful social and personal negative externalities with alcohol that are not priced into very low prices. A minimum price helps sort this out by moving towards pricing people out of alcohol abuse. Let’s not be dishonest, a minimum price of 45p a unit will only increase people noticeably if they are drinking large, large amounts of the very cheapest drinks, and frankly evidence shows those are the people most likely to be suffering the effects of alcohol abuse, and most likely to have that damage also affecting their families and their communities. It will have almost no effect on more wealthy people or poor people who are not drinking vast quantities each week.
Now you may find it utterly unacceptable to support policies that target poor alcohol abusers, but the facts are simply that this is overwhelmingly where the damage (negative externality) is, and this is a policy that could really help to combat that without affecting the freedom and drinking habits of 90% of the population, including the vast majority of poor people. You are only taking away people’s right to drink far too much cheap booze, which is almost certainly not a choice they are making freely, considering that alcohol taken in those quantities is an addictive and dehabilitating drug. You are also ignoring the wider damage to themselves, their families and society this behaviour causes.
Yours points a-c are entirely backwards. Taxing all licenced premises would probably increase the damage from alcohol by encouraging people to drink less socially and hence make them more likely to drink more, faster. This is a fact established by all research in this field.
Adding taxes to all pubs and clubs will affect all drinkers, vastly more than affected by minimum pricing, and will not be targeted at where the most harm happens, and will in fact encourage less healthy drinking habits, whereas minimum pricing will only seriously affect those drinking extremely large quantities of extremely cheap alcohol.