Minimum unit pricing “a really important lever to tackle inequalities”

Katherine Severi is the chief executive at the Institute of Alcohol Studies and chairs the communications and advocacy group for the Alcohol Health Alliance.

“The Institute of Alcohol Studies is an independent charity,” Severi says. “Our role is to inform public policy debates about reducing alcohol harm with the best available evidence, so we both produce research reports and summarise existing evidence. But we also bring academics and policymakers together to try to nurture relationships – to make sure, essentially, that policy officials are as well-informed as they can be with the best evidence on how to reduce alcohol harms.

“The Alcohol Health Alliance is a campaigning coalition of organisations that includes the majority of public health representatives across the UK, so all of the medical royal colleges, major cancer charities such as Cancer Research UK, alcohol treatment services and alcohol charities such as Alcohol Change UK.

“Our main objective as a coalition is to campaign for evidence-based policies to reduce harm, and our priority right now, with a new government, is to call for an evidence-based alcohol strategy that is largely based on what the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends. This would lead to policies that are the most cost-effective interventions: reducing affordability of alcohol, availability and regulating promotion and marketing.”

Minimum unit pricing (MUP) was first implemented in the UK in Scotland in 2018, when legislation set the minimum price per unit of alcohol at 50p. Evidence shows that MUP has had a positive impact on health outcomes, including addressing alcohol-related health inequalities. It has reduced deaths directly caused by alcohol consumption by an estimated 13% and hospital admissions by 4%, with the largest reductions seen in men and those living in the 40% most deprived areas.

“We would like to see a minimum unit price introduced in England,” Severi says. “It’s currently in place in Scotland and Wales and also Ireland, with plans to consult on bringing it in in Northern Ireland, and it’s an effective policy. The data from Scotland has shown that it’s been very successful. It has reduced deaths and hospital admissions, and the greatest health outcomes have been experienced by people in most disadvantaged communities, so it could potentially be a really important lever to tackle inequalities. We’d also like to see alcohol duties increased at every budget so that alcohol maintains its level of affordability with inflation and that alcohol duty increases aren’t eroded by inflation.

“We would also like to see local authorities given more powers to make licencing decisions based on public health data so that local licencing committees are able to look at their local health data and decide whether or not an additional off licence is needed on a high street that is already crowded and saturated with retailers, or whether a new pub should be given extended licencing hours when there are lots of data related to alcohol harms in that community. At the moment, health is not one of the legal objectives of licencing, so licencing decisions can’t be based on health, and we’d like to see that shifted.

“Finally, with regards to marketing and promotion, we would like to see children and vulnerable groups better protected from advertising and marketing materials from the alcohol industry, including online and in outdoor spaces. We are calling for alcohol to be included in the definition of unhealthy food and drinks, because we’re already seeing plans to restrict marketing and promotion of what’s known as junk food, so foods high in fat salts and sugars, and this is to protect children. It should be very straightforward to include alcohol within these regulations so that the same communities that need to be protected can be.”

Since 2010, she adds, “we have been under government leadership that is driven by a political philosophy surrounding a small state and the government not interfering in people’s lives, but I think that ideology doesn’t reflect public opinion. The general public do want the government to do more to protect people and communities from alcohol harm.”

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