The following article, written by Fiona as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Alcohol Harm, was published on The Times newspaper's online edition.
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Yesterday in parliament my colleagues and I urged the Government to adopt evidence-based policy measures in order to reduce the rising levels of alcohol-related harm.
Public Health England recently found that 167,000 years of working life were lost to alcohol in 2015, more than the ten most common types of cancer combined. This comes at a social cost estimated between £21 billion and £52 billion. Improving the health of the population and reducing alcohol-related harm is an immense challenge, and must not be ignored.
The government’s 2012 Alcohol Strategy acknowledged its cost to people’s health, our economy and wider society, stating baldly “we can’t go on like this” before setting forth policy proposals to tackle the scourge of problems caused by drink.
Five years later, there has been very little commitment to the any of the cornerstone policies of the strategy, and no real effort to get to grips with the root cause of the problems: the availability and price of alcohol. Regulatory measures such as raising prices may not be the most politically popular, but the evidence for their effectiveness is compelling.
The need to take action has never been more apparent: alcohol-related deaths have gone up, alcohol-related hospital admissions are rising, and alcohol is 60 per cent more affordable today than it was in 1980.
Using the NHS to fix the consequences is unsustainable. Each year in England, there are over a million hospital admissions and 23,000 deaths related to alcohol.
These figures are shocking, but if we consider that each individual seriously affected by alcohol has a family, and many are parents and grandparents, it’s clear the effects of alcohol are felt by a much wider population. These effects include physical violence, drink-drive accidents, relationship problems, domestic abuse and child neglect. A report published by the Institute of Alcohol Studies in 2015 found that rates of harm experienced by another person’s drinking were high with 79 per cent of people surveyed in England had suffered some form of second-hand harm in the past year.
Many of the adverse consequences of alcohol are experienced by vulnerable populations. High-strength white cider and spirits are the drinks of choice for many underage and dependent drinkers and represent the cheapest way to consume alcohol. There is no logic in the current situation where a can of cider can be cheaper than a bottle of water. High-strength ciders — typically 7.5 per cent ABV — can be bought for as little as 16p per unit and attract the lowest rates of alcohol duty, about a third of duty levied on beer of the same strength. The Alcohol Health Alliance’s recent investigation into the ubiquity of cheap alcohol, uncovered three-litre bottles of strong cider are being sold for as little as £3.49, which contains the same amount of alcohol as 22 shots of vodka.
The availability of cheap alcohol perpetuates deprivation and health inequalities. With an estimated 28 per cent of UK children currently living in poverty, according to the Child Poverty Action Group, tackling one of the major drivers of inequality must be a priority. The evidence indicates that raising the price of the cheapest alcohol would benefit poorest communities the most: of those lives that minimum-unit pricing is predicted to save, 90 per cent of them would be amongst those with the lowest incomes. Importantly, this measure would not penalise the moderate drinkers or hurt our pubs.
Problems with alcohol are not limited to a small minority of irresponsible drinkers. They are wide ranging, can be seen as everybody’s business and as a society we have a duty to protect and support our most vulnerable communities, not least children. Following Public Health England’s Review – undertaken at the request of the Government – we now have the evidence based policy solutions to address alcohol harm, now we need the political will.