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Meeting of the Parliament 14 March 2012

14 Mar 2012 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Alcohol (Minimum Pricing) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Sturgeon, Nicola SNP Glasgow Southside Watch on SPTV

I am pleased to open the debate on the general principles of the Alcohol (Minimum Pricing) (Scotland) Bill. I do so with a sense of déjà vu, although I hope that that will be dispelled by reaching a different outcome this time from the one the last time the subject was debated.

I thank the organisations and individuals who have helped to shape our minimum pricing policy—some of them are represented in the public gallery. I thank Duncan McNeil and the Health and Sport Committee and its clerking team for the committee’s careful and robust scrutiny of our proposals and the considered conclusions that it reached in its stage 1 report. Similarly, I thank colleagues on the Finance Committee and the Subordinate Legislation Committee for the part that they played in scrutinising the bill. I am also grateful to the many and varied witnesses who provided invaluable evidence to the committees.

I offer final thanks to the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. I have many differences with them, but it is to their great credit that, since the last vote on the issue, they have decided to join the Scottish National Party and the Greens by giving minimum pricing a chance.

Before discussing the substance of the Health and Sport Committee’s stage 1 report, I will take some time to remind members why the measures in the bill are important. I make it clear at the outset, as I hope I have been clear all along, that the Scottish Government is not anti-alcohol. We are not against drinking, but we are very much against the problems that are associated with excessive consumption of alcohol.

The hard fact is that, over the years, Scotland’s relationship with alcohol has got increasingly out of kilter and needs to be rebalanced. Since at least 2000, enough alcohol has been sold each week in Scotland to allow every adult to exceed the recommended weekly limit for men. It might be uncomfortable for any of us to admit it, but sales figures suggest that we drink almost a quarter more than do people in other parts of the United Kingdom.

In the past 15 years, a significant shift has taken place not just in how much we drink but in where we drink. Nearly 70 per cent of alcohol is now sold through the off-trade, and that shift has been driven largely by price and affordability. In 2010, the average price of a unit of alcohol in the on-trade was £1.34, in comparison with just 45p in the off-trade. In real terms, the affordability of alcohol in the on-trade has remained fairly static, but the affordability of off-trade alcohol has shifted significantly.

As all of us know from our constituency experiences and from other sources, excessive drinking is taking its toll on every age group, every socioeconomic group and every community across the country. It places huge pressure on our national health service, our police service and our local authorities. The associated costs are immense, at more than £3.6 billion every year, which is £900 for every adult in the country.

The cost tells only part of the story. In human terms, too, we pay a heavy price. In the past few decades, rates of chronic liver disease have trebled, alcohol-related deaths have doubled and alcohol-related hospital admissions have quadrupled. Of course, we also suffer from alcohol-related crime and disorder. In 2009, half of Scottish prisoners and 77 per cent of young offenders admitted to being drunk when they committed their offence.

I have no doubt at all that if we are to achieve our ambition—which I believe everyone in the Parliament shares—of a self-confident Scotland in which alcohol can be enjoyed sensibly as a pleasurable part of life, we need to take firm action now to rebalance our relationship with alcohol.

It is also important to say again, as I have said all along, that our alcohol industry is an important part of our economy. As we do now, we will continue to offer support to businesses to grow, including in the export market, and we will work with those businesses to use all the levers that are at their disposal to assist in reducing alcohol consumption, including, for example, where appropriate, promoting lower-strength products.

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Meeting of the Parliament 14 March 2012

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