Scotland: raising the price of drink

“In Scotland, a unit of alcohol can cost less than a third as much as a Twix,” said The Times. From 1 May next year, that will change. The Scottish minimum alcohol pricing law was passed with broad cross-party support in 2012, but has been held up in the courts since then. Last week, the Supreme Court finally dismissed an appeal by a whisky trade organisation. As a result, the minimum cost of a unit will be raised to 50p. Three-litre bottles of strong white cider, currently available for less than £4, will cost more than £10. The cheapest bottle of whisky will cost £14, and the cheapest four-pack of beer £4.

“Scotland should be proud that we are the first country in the world to establish minimum unit pricing,” said Alison Douglas in The Scotsman. The law came about in response to “soaring” alcohol-related hospital admissions and deaths: in the 1980s, there were about 600 such deaths in Scotland per year; by the mid-2000s, this had risen to 1,500. Unit pricing has been introduced because it is a highly effective way of targeting “the heaviest and most dependent drinkers”; a normal pint in the pub won’t cost any more. Big Alcohol fought the measure tooth and nail – showing that, like Big Tobacco, it will seek “to delay, distract or derail” any measure that may reduce its vast profits. The legal battle may have been fronted by the homelysounding Scotch Whisky Association, but it was funded by the industry at large; it was “strong white ciders and cheap vodkas” being protected here, not small Highland distilleries.

There are well-founded “class objections” to minimum pricing, said Pat Kane in The National (Glasgow) – namely, that “it deprives the working poor of the little relief and escapism they can have, in lives of alienating and frustrating grind”. It’s not only the price of alcohol that drives Scotland’s drink problem. True, said Lesley Riddoch, in the same paper. But, as the Supreme Court confirmed, this is a fair and proportionate law; and if it does not lead to at least 60 fewer deaths and 1,600 fewer hospital admissions in a year, it will automatically fail after five years. Make no mistake: for “drink-sozzled” Scotland, this is a “pioneering” step towards a better future. Statistics of the week Since paper tax discs were scrapped in 2014, the number of untaxed vehicles on the road has tripled, at a likely cost to the Treasury of £107m a year. The move was designed to save £10m a year in administrative costs. The Times

The number of EU migrants working in Britain has risen by 112,000 in the past year. Most of that increase is due to 90,000 more Romanians and Bulgarians in the labour force. The Guardian