Scottish pub closures blamed on supermarket prices: more expected

Supermarket beer prices are held responsible for pub closures and many more closures are expected.

Nothing if not opportunist I added the following comment to the Express;

I am author of petition 01451 at the Scottish Parliament, 'review the smoking ban' open for signatures until 22 October. The smoking ban was brought in with the promise that non-smokers would fill the pubs if smoke were no longer a problem. Someone didn't do their market research properly, as the pub's traditional customers were used to the differential between supermarket and pub prices but people the pubs were now trying to woo were not used to them. And many smokers no longer cared to pay the differential now that they were shunted outdoors throughout the evening. 

Public pressure to bring in minimum pricing will not benefit pubs in the near term, because the European Union will fight them. Far better to take advantage of modern air standards and air cleaning technology and enable the hospitality trade to cater for smokers again.

It is nothing short of madness to expect that minimum pricing will bring relief to the bar trade in the near future. Europe will fight it.

This is the answer! Please sign and share.

F2C Scotland letter on minimum pricing, Edinburgh Evening News

Letter to Evening News from Michael Davidson, Freedom to Choose (Scotland)'s new chairman:

THE Scottish Government’s plan to bring in minimum pricing for alcohol will bring no benefits to society in general. 

There is no empirical evidence to suggest that it will make any difference to problem drinking – those who drink to a degree where they harm themselves, their families and society will continue to do so, just as they always have. 

Responsible drinkers among the poorest of society will suffer. The only beneficiaries of this government-imposed cartelism will be alcohol sellers and control-obsessed politicians.This is another prohibitionist move, following the smoking ban in pubs and other anti-tobacco measures, to wrest our autonomy from all of us. 

The job of politicians is to represent people, not to manage them.

Michael Davidson, Chairman, Freedom to Choose (Scotland), Edinburgh

The Guardian reports that minimum pricing was opposed by Scottish Labour, but following the SNP's decision to impose a 'health levy' on supermarkets (which will claw back the increased margins from alcohol sold in shops) they are likely to support it. The drinks industry believes that setting a minimum price for drink will be illegal in European law, even though most major parties now seem to be in favour.

Times are bad when European law seems the best hope we have of stopping this policy.

Licensees are quitting, not smokers, says SLTA

Today Paul Waterson has bid for another look at the smoking ban.  He begins:

Five years ago our pubs were generally full of life, had a great atmosphere and were just about holding their own against vicious price competition from the supermarkets.

A promising start. We knew that the supermarket prices had always been a problem, but it was a problem that broke the surface only when the smoking ban had sent away a good number of traditional pub customers.

Mr Waterson's piece goes on to explain how the smoking ban as enacted in Scotland has failed to catch on in Europe, pointing out that the better the weather, the laxer the enforcement tends to be. In terms of trade, bars are closing at four times the rate that they closed before the smoking ban came in. The losses have amounted, he says, to one-eighth of Scotland's pubs.

Comparing this to the smoking cessation rate in Scotland is an interesting move. Although the ban was not introduced (ostensibly) to prevent people from smoking, it's clear that the alleged damage from secondary smoke won't decline in the long term unless the smoking rate declines as well. And Mr Waterson has good reason to draw attention to the poor long-term success rate of smoking cessation interventions by the NHS. The latest official report (summary here) gives this paragraph:

Quit outcomes based on client follow-up at 12 months after the quit date use data for the 2009 calendar year (12 month outcomes for the full 2010 calendar year are not yet available). Based on data for 2009, the quit rate at 12 months was 7% with 68% of cases 'lost to follow-up'/smoking status unknown by this stage. 

A 7 per cent quit rate at 12 months (that's 7 per cent of the 7.4 per cent of smokers that even tried to give up)  seems rather bleak from where I am sitting. Sheila Duffy does her best to sound optimistic but this is all she can manage:

While giving up smoking can be difficult for some, it is encouraging to see that at least 39% of those who attended stop smoking services in 2010 remained quit a month later. [emphasis added] 

Surely anyone wanting to give up would like a fair idea of their chances after the first few weeks of intensive support. Failure to give any information after four weeks doesn't look promising. A rough ballpark figure suggests that from one year to the next, 93 per cent of the smoking population carries on smoking, plus 92 per cent of the remaining 7 per cent who have tried to quit, plus any youngsters who have taken up the habit and minus any smokers who have died. It gives Paul Waterson good grounds for saying that the impact of the smoking ban has been far greater on licensees and their establishments than it has on the smoking rate.

Mr Waterson speaks of moderate amendments, the old days having gone forever, and so on. Whatever. As long as government dominates the discussion of what should be allowed the trade will need to grow teeth before it will make any impact – if my reading of the current Scottish Government's agenda is accurate. Begging the government to increase drinks prices to ridiculous heights will not help the drinks industry and will not help the licensed trade either. To quote at second hand from here:

The hospitality industry lobbies for more restrictions on supermarket-bought alcohol to boost sales in bars; small brewers push for more punitive tax rates on big brewers... the only winners are the healthists who get support bit by bit for more regulations on everything. It's like a bunch of folks on the scaffolds complaining that the other guy's noose isn't quite tight enough. Y'all might instead direct your attention to the hangman sometime and try helping each other cut those ropes.

Things could get more ridiculous yet, as some health expert (not in Scotland thankfully) has said the drinking age should be raised to 24. Raising any legal purchasing age so far beyond the age of majority would not, I suspect, go down well with young people in this country. But some people will enjoy flying this kind of kite.

The licensed trade and its associates and rivals need to consider their strategy very carefully. But it's good to see that the smoking ban is at last getting some of the attention it deserves.

Scottish Licensed Trade Association backs minimum price bid (wine for £10)

Yesterday's Scottish Daily Mail reported that the Scottish Licensed Trade Association has asked for a £1 minimum per unit of alcohol as the SNP prepares to put a minimum pricing bill through Parliament for the second time. Full story here: 

I have never seen the point of minimum pricing. Scotland is not independent and doesn't have closed borders. A UK-wide policy on alcohol (perhaps restricting alcohol sales below the cost price) seems far more reasonable. But the Scottish Licensed Trade Association's suggestion that 45p per unit is not enough and should be more than doubled in order to keep pubs open is breathtaking.

The SLTA was one of many organisations to publish the results of a CGA survey in 2009. The survey showed a clear relationship between pub closures and the smoking ban in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England. The piece carries the headline 'Smoking Ban To Blame For Pub Decline, Says New Research':

Oliver Griffiths, director of CR Consulting, said, “The decline of the British pub had started before the smoking ban but at a low level. The ban had a sudden and marked impact, accelerating the rate of decline.

“While it is not the only factor in the closure of pubs, the smoking ban is demonstrably the most significant cause of pub closures.”

We are not just talking of pub closures. We are talking of a sudden decline in the viability of pubs within a very short timespan.

It is not clear how such a dramatic hike in the unit price of alcohol will encourage customers back into pubs, even if pubs are already charging more than £1 per unit, because it is evident from the research that it wasn't price that was the problem in the first place.

The Scottish Government states that over 20 years alcohol prices in the off-trade have remained static and below the retail price index (increases kept below the rate of inflation). The prices in bars and other licensed outlets have risen but affordability in general is lower than it used to be. In other words there has been no radical change in the affordability of alcohol in shops in the last twenty years and no reason to attribute the sharp drops in pub fortunes to supermarket prices.

Minimum pricing will be good for nothing but creating mayhem in a country where many people can't afford shop alcohol prices. As recommended by the SLTA, it will do communities even more damage, without any likely impact on the closure rate of pubs. The recommended £1 per unit might persuade people to be grateful for a minimum price of 45p, in which case the licensed trade will have done the SNP an ill-deserved favour.

The issue is that the smoking ban prevented most bars from providing effective hospitality to their biggest customers. This is what the Scottish Licensed Trade Association needs to persuade the Scottish Government, rather than encouraging it to flex its muscles in restricting its market competitors.

Scottish blogging: Political Innovation event

I missed this event at the weekend, but found some interesting accounts.

This one, which gave me the impression that blogging in Scotland was all about nationalism, and providing an outlet for nationalist views that are not accommodated by the mainstream Scottish media.

And this one, less nationalistic in outlook, but while acknowledging the anti-nationalist bias in the media, maintained a broader outlook. 'It's not the only issue on which the Scottish media gets it wrong', says writer Peter McColl, listing other Scottish issues neglected by Scottish media (a new Forth road bridge being one example). To such issues I would of course add tobacco control and smoking ban-related issues. 'There’s more to politics than the national question, and the case for more powers would be stronger if it were less one dimensionally put by nationalist bloggers.'

I've never been nationalist in outlook and particularly dislike the indignation expressed about unionists who disagree with issues such as minimum pricing. Having a different view about whether a policy will be effective is not the same as wanting to condemn Scotland's poorest to a life of drink. Taking the moral high ground and claiming a monopoly on caring about Scotland's health does not serve the issues but just turns people into political pawns. It will also not help nationalists to be taken more seriously by Scotland's media, if they claim to be the only ones with a passion for their country and people, and surely not what our supposedly non-adversarial politics with a circular chamber was meant to bring to Scotland.

Having said that, the realisation that Scottish nationalists know that there is something deeply disconnected about Scotland's mainstream media should be common ground.

Peter McColl's gripe was with the quality of political discussion over the last two decades and, more recently, with the failure of participants on Saturday to take hope from the size of the student demonstration in London last week. I also enjoyed his conclusion:

While I’d seen the events in London as evidence that young people are anything but apathetic, the conversation worked from an assumed position that young people are more apathetic. For an event that was meant to be about political innovation this was deeply disappointing. If you think innovation in politics is taking a marketing approach, or making it more like “The X-Factor” then we’re faced with a pretty dire future. The poverty of analysis was matched only by the lack of ambition. The problem with politics is precisely that it is bedevilled by a marketing approach and failed attempts to be like “The X-Factor.” The managerial politics of the last 20 years, marked by an ever more presidential style, has gone a long way to killing politics. If you never discuss anything interesting you make politics boring.

The event itself attracted over 80 participants, and is an ongoing project. Here is one of the organisers' accounts, with links to Twitter and Facebook for those who want to follow developments.

Health Secretary to persevere with minimum pricing policy

The Health Secretary has not given up on minimum pricing. Not that I've got anything against a fighter, but it's hard to see the merits of a system where alcohol in Scotland is priced higher than its larger neighbour over the border: a border, moreover, that has no border controls. BBC reporter Brian Taylor's summary of the arguments and counter-arguments says that the main argument in favour is the support expressed by health service leaders and the police: not very persuasive against the arguments put forward by opponents to minimum pricing (it's really not enough to say that important people agree with you).

For me the Achilles heel was the claim that:

In the first year of such a policy, there would be 50 fewer deaths, 1,200 fewer hospital admissions, 400 fewer violent crimes and millions of pounds saved in healthcare ... 

Their claims are much less extravagant than they were prior to the smoking ban when it was claimed that 1,000 lives would be saved in Glasgow alone: in England an estimate in 2007 came in at 11,000 lives a year. Later that year back in Scotland we had Jill Pell announcing 17 per cent fewer heart attack admissions in the first year of the ban (never repeated, which is possibly why she had had to move on to another condition). Mortality statistics for Scotland reveal a steady decline in total mortality since 1999 and earlier (peaking in 1989 at nearly 34,000), steepest at 2003/4, rising slightly at 2007, and declining since.* Figures for the Glasgow area show nothing to support a claim that 1,000 fewer people have died every year since the smoking ban came in, hovering at 6.5 to 7.5K per year for both men and women.**

Saving fifty lives by comparison is quite a modest prediction, if hard to verify, but 400 fewer violent crimes and 1,200 fewer hospitalisations is hard to believe. How they come up with these figures is anybody's guess.
Whatever the legislation is meant to tackle, whether chronic drinking or anti-social behaviour, it won't help the situation if it turns out that the people causing the trouble are not mostly at the bottom of the economic heap, but it will hurt them just the same.

Tables from General Register Office for Scotland
*Deaths, by sex and age groups, Scotland, 1901 to 2009
**Deaths by sex, year and (post-April 2006) NHS Board area, 1991 to 2009

Scottish Government defeated on minimum pricing

In a vote that attracted UK-wide attention, the Scottish Government has been defeated on the key issue of the Alcohol Bill, the much-discussed issue of minimum pricing. As seems to be the pattern in such highly charged issues, the votes went along party lines, with the Greens supporting the Scottish National Party in voting for minimum pricing and the Labour and Tories voting against, with only former health minister Malcolm Chisholm MSP breaking ranks.

Labour appointed a commission that reported on the issue, saying that the issue was a UK-wide one, should be based on taxation rather than minimum pricing and a ban on selling below cost. To that extent it makes sense but the Alcohol Commission has also suggested banning alcohol sponsorship and a banning alcohol at official functions. In the middle of a public financial crisis banning sponsorship is lunacy: allegations abound that sponsorship deals include cheap drink that encourages binge drinking, and there may be some truth in this but it is a moot point whether it outweighs the health benefits brought by more participation in sports.

We're not doing very well then. Neither a Scotland-only policy that sets a minimum price per 'unit' (whatever that is), nor blanket ban on alcohol companies sponsoring functions and sporting events, is likely to go very far in stopping people from drinking. As Richard Simpson MSP pointed out in the Chamber, a separate minimum pricing policy in Scotland would provide business for cross-border informal alcohol sales. And as this blogger points out, such a policy would exert the most pressure on the lowest earners, leading in some circles to a deepening spiral of crime, debt and family breakdown.

Almost more dangerous than this possibility is the one of attempting to stop sponsorship by the alcohol trade in the same way that tobacco companies have already experienced. Apart from taking money out of the economy away from areas that need investment (sport, for example), this option marginalises the whole industry. The government should instead demand input from the alcohol industry into policy recommendations: who understands the alcohol trade like them that produce it? This is the approach suggested by The International Coalition Against Prohibition in their reply to last year's consultation on the issue. (TICAP also promotes the Brussels Declaration on Scientific Integrity, which points out that moderate consumption of alcohol has health benefits and prohibition thus not a sensible health policy option.)

In broad terms, although I haven't absorbed enough detail so far, it seems much better to allow the alcohol industry full participation in drink damage limitation exercises, than to allow government health departments full authority in this area. Sure, the Health and Sport Committee can run about managing the tobacco and alcohol industries but is that its job? Input is one thing, but it is surely not appropriate that the Health and Sport Committee leads on the detailed regulation of a trade issue.

The Scottish Government's report in 2007, Better Care, Better Health (a jumbled sandwich with direct discussion of public health priorities in the middle) seems 90 per cent concerned with health service management and targets. The page featuring the Health and Sport Committee on the Scottish Parliament website reflects a similar preoccupation with Health Service management, and its recent reports, listed at the bottom of the page, don't cover sport at all. Wouldn't it be better for alcohol and tobacco to be regulated by industry and trade department officials (admittedly a problem in post-devolutionary Scotland) than by a health department with too much on its plate already? (and is there any commitment to youth sport?)

Minimum pricing is off the agenda at any rate: it remains to be seen what will replace it, as May 2011 is just a few months away.