Health campaigners condemn alcohol price cuts for prioritising business interests

Health experts and campaigners have condemned new tax breaks for the alcohol industry in the UK government’s Budget as “shameful” and “perverse.”

Chancellor George Osborne declared a penny off the price of a pint, 2p off cider, a 2% cut in excise duty on Scotch whisky, and a freeze on wine duty in his Budget statement on 18 March.

Ian Gilmore, chair of the Alcohol Health Alliance UK, said that “prioritising” the interests of big business over public health was “disgraceful” and a “slap in the face” to doctors, nurses, and emergency services on the front line. The alliance is a group of more than 40 organisations including the Royal College of Physicians, Royal College of General Practitioners, the BMA, Alcohol Concern, and the Institute of Alcohol Studies.

Gilmore said that there were more than a million alcohol related hospital attendances every year and the NHS could not afford for alcohol to get cheaper. “The government’s own figures show that alcohol related harm costs the UK £21bn (€29bn; $31bn) every single year. With less than half of this recouped through current levels of taxation, to suggest lowering taxes even further is thoroughly shameful,” he said. “These cuts also mean that cheap, strong alcohol that gets into the hands of our children will be even more affordable now.”

Jackie Ballard, chief executive of the charity Alcohol Concern, said, “Instead of taking serious, evidence based action—like implementing a minimum unit price—the chancellor has given the alcohol industry the go ahead to make even bigger profits at all of our expense.”

On 17 March in a debate in London Ballard said that the alcohol industry had had access to government decision makers ahead of the Budget that were not available to charities and health experts. She and other experts clashed with alcohol industry figures and free market supporters at a seminar on the future of alcohol policy held by Westminster Social Policy Forum.

Ballard accused alcohol producers of “undermining” the evidence base for effective action and opposing measures that would benefit individuals and society as a whole. Participants criticised the alcohol industry for shirking responsibility to reduce harm and resisting measures that could be effective, such as minimum unit pricing, local authority licensing controls, and strict health warnings on drinks.

“The figures show that the NHS is having to pick up an ever growing bill because of alcohol,” Ballard said. “We are seeing different patterns of drinking—regular drinking in older people and once a week or so binge drinking in younger people.” She said that the rise in alcoholic liver disease in people under 30 was especially worrying.

Also speaking at the forum Adrian Lee, chief constable of Northamptonshire Police, said that alcohol was a factor in nearly half of all violent crime and had a “massive impact” on policing and hospitals. “The status quo can’t continue. I think we have become too tolerant of excessive use of alcohol. We don’t arrest enough people, we don’t challenge people’s behaviour enough. We allow people to behave in a drunk and disorderly manner without taking firm action. That’s also true of society,” he said.

Lee added that welfare centres, which some have dubbed “drunk tanks,” attached to emergency departments could ease pressures on hospitals and police. “We should care for people who have got a genuine health problem but be punitive with people who have a choice and choose to behave irresponsibly,” he said.

David Wilson, public affairs director for the British Beer and Pub Association, defended the industry’s record. “We’ve removed as an industry 1.3 billion units of alcohol from the market place through voluntary measures, product innovation, and reformulation. It’s been a very successful voluntary pledge through the responsibility deal,” he said.

Christopher Snowdon, director of lifestyle economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs, warned against a “moral panic.” He said, “Every single prediction made about the Licensing Act 2005, so called 24 hour drinking, has proved to be wrong.”

He said that the proportion of young people who drank frequently had fallen by more than two thirds since 2005, binge drinking was in decline among 16-24 year olds, and violent crime had also fallen.