Title – Raise price of alcohol to beat binge drinkers / Brown won’t buy 50p-a-unit alcohol planSource – The Independent / The Times
Date 16th March 2009
Well now even I am confused, this proposal from the chief medical officer seems on the face of it to be sensible when I consider my own habits, it wouldn’t really affect me much at all. I don’t however pretend that I am in anyway an ‘average’ consumer; I tend not to buy value beer or £2.50 bottles of wine (and before you think it, it has nothing to do with snobbery, but rather just that I drink quite infrequently and as such am relatively content to pay a fair price for a quality product).
Having said all this, the occasional G&T I consume would cost me significantly more, maybe as much as 25% more. But let’s look at the real players here;
The government have been preaching for years that alcohol needs to cost more to reduce the harm it causes in society, yet politicians from every party have come out against this proposal… they do love their mixed messages. They claim it has to do with not wanting to hurt the average consumer with additional costs in these harder economic times. If that is the case then why have they continued with their above inflation rises on alcohol tax and seem to not even be willing to discuss this policy? Incidentally the argument they use for this burdensome tax increase is that pricing out excessive consumption is the way to tackle binge and chronic drinking habits…. curioser and curioser… or is this more to do with not wanting to rock the boat when they are already very unpopular? The cynical side of me might go even further and suggest that they know if this is put into statute that they will be limited on how much additional tax they will be able to raise, because the minimum pricing suggestion is not an additional tax but simply a minimum selling price for retailers. Would they have come out so strongly against the minimum price per unit scheme if it had been proposed as a minimum tax per unit?
The drinks manufacturers and their trade bodies have a clear vested interest; there is no additional income for them and this measure would undoubtedly reduce volumes and hence their margins, so for them it is a ‘no brainer’. It will be a bad move and one they will try and resist, so the Portman Group and WSTA comments are hardly surprising.
Supermarkets and off-sales retailers will undoubtedly fight against this move, although the voice of the larger retailers will be the loudest as they can afford to use alcohol as a ‘loss-leader’ or in aggressive promotions to get people into their stores. Some of the smaller retailers may benefit from the levelling of the playing field this move provides. So it is a mixed bag, although I think it is fair to say that the voice of the supermarkets will drown out the smaller retailers.
Pubs, clubs, bars, social clubs, venues, restaurants, hotels, events and the myriad of other on-sales retailers, seem to have been remarkably quiet in all of this. I would have thought they would be shouting from the roof tops, well most of them at least. The vast majority of them and their product lines would not be affected in any way, yet their main competitors in the form of the supermarkets will come slightly closer to their sale price and reduce the imbalance. If a unit of alcohol costs a minimum of 50p your average pint of strong larger will have a minimum price of £1.50 hardly revolutionary for the on-trade… even
Weatherspoons 99p pint would barely be affected; the £1 shot of Vodka promotions that have come under the spotlight of late would not be affected; so why did they not make more of a fuss, is it that they are so closely linked through ownership to large chains and their trade bodies largely funded by breweries, that their voice was somewhat quashed?Date 16th March 2009
Well now even I am confused, this proposal from the chief medical officer seems on the face of it to be sensible when I consider my own habits, it wouldn’t really affect me much at all. I don’t however pretend that I am in anyway an ‘average’ consumer; I tend not to buy value beer or £2.50 bottles of wine (and before you think it, it has nothing to do with snobbery, but rather just that I drink quite infrequently and as such am relatively content to pay a fair price for a quality product).
Having said all this, the occasional G&T I consume would cost me significantly more, maybe as much as 25% more. But let’s look at the real players here;
The government have been preaching for years that alcohol needs to cost more to reduce the harm it causes in society, yet politicians from every party have come out against this proposal… they do love their mixed messages. They claim it has to do with not wanting to hurt the average consumer with additional costs in these harder economic times. If that is the case then why have they continued with their above inflation rises on alcohol tax and seem to not even be willing to discuss this policy? Incidentally the argument they use for this burdensome tax increase is that pricing out excessive consumption is the way to tackle binge and chronic drinking habits…. curioser and curioser… or is this more to do with not wanting to rock the boat when they are already very unpopular? The cynical side of me might go even further and suggest that they know if this is put into statute that they will be limited on how much additional tax they will be able to raise, because the minimum pricing suggestion is not an additional tax but simply a minimum selling price for retailers. Would they have come out so strongly against the minimum price per unit scheme if it had been proposed as a minimum tax per unit?
The drinks manufacturers and their trade bodies have a clear vested interest; there is no additional income for them and this measure would undoubtedly reduce volumes and hence their margins, so for them it is a ‘no brainer’. It will be a bad move and one they will try and resist, so the Portman Group and WSTA comments are hardly surprising.
Supermarkets and off-sales retailers will undoubtedly fight against this move, although the voice of the larger retailers will be the loudest as they can afford to use alcohol as a ‘loss-leader’ or in aggressive promotions to get people into their stores. Some of the smaller retailers may benefit from the levelling of the playing field this move provides. So it is a mixed bag, although I think it is fair to say that the voice of the supermarkets will drown out the smaller retailers.
Pubs, clubs, bars, social clubs, venues, restaurants, hotels, events and the myriad of other on-sales retailers, seem to have been remarkably quiet in all of this. I would have thought they would be shouting from the roof tops, well most of them at least. The vast majority of them and their product lines would not be affected in any way, yet their main competitors in the form of the supermarkets will come slightly closer to their sale price and reduce the imbalance. If a unit of alcohol costs a minimum of 50p your average pint of strong larger will have a minimum price of £1.50 hardly revolutionary for the on-trade… even
What about the consumer? Well the average responsible drinker will lose out if this measure was introduced in this crude fashion (on average to the tune of £11.80 a year) and that is the fundamental problem and why it is unlikely this measure will now be adopted; certainly before any election and before Scotland’s recent proposals have been properly tested. The simple answer which the government and the medical establishment is seeking is just not going to be this simple. It has to address more than just cost across the board it has to be more sophisticated than that and it will only work if it gets everyone on board, which means everyone giving way a little and recognising the good in the Licensed Retail Sector, eliminating the bad; rewarding the good and punishing the bad. Above all it has to get everyone including the public striving for the same goals. Even this simple synopsis of my opinion to the reaction of this latest proposal demonstrates how far apart all the different groups involved in production, sale and consumption of alcohol are; where the only solution is a co-ordinated approach, we seem to be moving further away, rather than nearer to consensus.
At Beyond The Blue we run a number of courses for those working in the licensed retail sector to help them sell alcohol more responsibly. These include; The Award in Responsible Alcohol Retailing (ARAR) designed for front-line staff to help them meet their statutory requirements; The National Certificate for Personal Licence Holders (NCPLH) which qualifies candidates to apply for their personal licence; Our Conflict Management and Resolution (CMR) course compliments these courses to help employees deal with Workplace Violence and alcohol related disorder.
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