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Committee

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee 26 March 2024

26 Mar 2024 · S6 · Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Item of business
Subordinate Legislation
Alcohol (Minimum Price per Unit) (Scotland) Amendment Order 2024 [Draft]
McKelvie, Christina SNP Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse Watch on SPTV
Yes, thank you. That discussion was really helpful. I thank Scottish Labour, Scottish National Party and Scottish Green members for their support for the policy. Everyone’s comments on the work that is still to be done, the way in which we fund the sector, and the analysis and work that we must do on a public health levy are not lost on me. I will take them all away as action points. I want to reassure members on funding. There is record funding of £112 million. I am absolutely committed to ensuring that it will be spent in exactly the right places. I also want to respond to Tess White’s and Sandesh Gulhane’s remarks querying who might support the policy. We have seen the letter in The Lancet and the comments of the Association of Directors of Public Health north-east that Emma Harper referenced. We have seen the views of the 80 organisations that work with people and support them day in and day out. We have seen case studies such as those that have been carried out by the Simon Community Scotland. We have also seen modelling numbers that tell us that the lives of 156 people have been saved. That is not an insignificant number; it represents 156 loved ones. We should never forget that those are not just numbers; there are people behind them. I turn to the point about treatment. The 40 per cent drop that we have experienced here has also been experienced in England, and the UK Government is looking at the reasons for that. It is just not true to say that nothing else has been done on the matter. I will give the committee a list of actions that we are currently progressing to tackle the issues, whether they concern harmful, hazardous or dependent drinkers. We are working with the UK Government to produce new clinical guidelines on alcohol treatment for the whole UK. There is an alcohol brief intervention review and there are national specifications on alcohol and drugs. All ADPs already offer psychological counselling, in-patient alcohol-detox services and access to medication, and most offer community detox, ABIs and alcohol hospital liaison. It is therefore just not true to say that nothing is being done, because all those measures are already in place. As for the proposed right to addiction recovery bill, for months I have been asking to see details of it, but we have not received them. I generally do not respond to social media comments on Government business, but just last week I did so to our colleague Annie Wells, who asked me whether I would support such a bill. I said that I would be happy to meet her to discuss it. We now have a date for that in the diary. I will be happy to discuss the bill then, but we still need to see the detail to understand what it would do. I am glad to see that many members here support consideration of a public health levy. Mr Gulhane—some of your colleagues might be a bit disgruntled about your having said that you support that, because many of them do not. I am keen to work with you on all such aspects. All the organisations that have written to us agree that minimum unit pricing works. They also agree that it is not a silver bullet. It has achieved its aim. Gillian Mackay is right: at the heart of the matter are the people whose lives will be made immeasurably better, and that is why lived and living experience is at the heart of all the work that I will do. I ask the committee to support the Alcohol (Minimum Pricing) (Scotland) Act 2012 (Continuation) Order 2024 and the Alcohol (Minimum Price per Unit) (Scotland) Amendment Order 2024, which seeks to change the level from 50p per unit to 65p per unit. I thank the committee for its deliberations. None of what has been said is lost on me and all of it will inform my work.

In the same item of business

The Convener SNP
Agenda item 2 is consideration of two draft affirmative instruments, the first of which is the draft Alcohol (Minimum Pricing) (Scotland) Act 2012 (Continuat...
The Minister for Drugs and Alcohol Policy (Christina McKelvie) SNP
Good morning, convener and colleagues. I am pleased to be in front of the committee today to discuss minimum unit pricing and the two draft orders that were ...
The Convener SNP
Thank you, minister, for that opening statement. As it has pre-empted what was going to be my first question, I will move on to my next. You touched on clai...
Christina McKelvie SNP
As I have said, not everybody agrees with minimum unit pricing, but Public Health Scotland’s evaluation, the work that we have done, and the 80 organisations...
The Convener SNP
Thank you for that. I should also place on record a reference to my entry in the register of members’ interests as a registered mental health nurse with a cu...
Christina McKelvie SNP
Last week, I met the industry partnership group to discuss further proposals and how we might work together on the issue, which is something that I am very c...
The Convener SNP
Has there been an impact on the sales of other products, such as whisky and other spirits?
Christina McKelvie SNP
According to our analysis, there seems to have been no impact on that type of alcohol, because its unit price in the off-trade was already well in excess of ...
The Convener SNP
Tess White has a supplementary question. 09:30
Tess White (North East Scotland) (Con) Con
The Public Health Scotland evaluation of MUP is riddled with holes, as are the Scottish Government’s conclusions about its effectiveness. That is not my view...
Christina McKelvie SNP
I do not agree with that characterisation of the evaluation. The Scottish Government tasked Public Health Scotland with undertaking an independent evaluation...
Sandesh Gulhane (Glasgow) (Con) Con
I declare my interest as a national health service general practitioner. Minister, you spoke about underage drinkers. Can you point me to the evidence that ...
Christina McKelvie SNP
There has been a pretty marked impact on underage drinking. We should look at that in more detail, because it surely demonstrates the benefits of doing the h...
Sandesh Gulhane Con
Are you specifically saying that MUP has led to a decrease in underage drinking? That was my question.
Christina McKelvie SNP
The Public Health Scotland evaluation did not find that and did not go into that detail, but the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children survey did. That ga...
Sandesh Gulhane Con
I am sure that that is the case, but the quote that you used was about underage drinking and Public Health Scotland said that it has found no evidence that M...
Christina McKelvie SNP
Public Health Scotland has said that, yes.
Carol Mochan (South Scotland) (Lab) Lab
Thank you, minister, for your opening statement. I am interested in some of the other measurements that we might look at around MUP. We have seen strong evid...
Christina McKelvie SNP
There are a couple of things there. Public Health Scotland’s analysis showed that the biggest impact was on men and on people in the 40 per cent most deprive...
Katherine Myant (Scottish Government)
As the minister has said, the Public Health Scotland evaluation took a theory-based approach. One of the things that it did was to look at any potential unin...
Christina McKelvie SNP
The thing is that dependent drinkers were never the focus of this policy; the focus was always on the people who drink at harmful and hazardous levels. As I ...
Carol Mochan Lab
Yes, it had been suggested that that might happen, but there is some evidence—
Christina McKelvie SNP
The front-line organisations that support people had that worry, but it has not materialised. They have been pretty open; I think that they have said in evid...
Carol Mochan Lab
To be clear, as this is an important policy that we will be voting on, is the Government confident that it worked in the area that it should have worked in a...
Christina McKelvie SNP
We are not committing to a huge Public Health Scotland review such as the one that we have just done. However, I am committed to reviewing the areas that we ...
Ivan McKee (Glasgow Provan) (SNP) SNP
Good morning, minister. I have a brief supplementary question following on from the conversation around Sandesh Gulhane’s question. With regard to underage d...
Christina McKelvie SNP
We have analysed that cross-border comparison of what is happening here compared with other parts of not just the whole of England, but England and Wales and...
Ivan McKee SNP
To be clear, I assume that data is available on alcohol consumption rates in Scotland versus the rest of the UK. What does that show for young people?
Katherine Myant
The Health Behaviour in School-aged Children survey is a multicountry survey, so we can compare Scotland with other countries. Those trends are also observed...
Emma Harper (South Scotland) (SNP) SNP
Thank you for being here this morning. I am interested in how the pandemic impacted alcohol consumption. I have a wee brief in front of me from Alcohol Focus...