Anyone can see this country has a drink problem. But what to do about it pits the nannies against the wiseguys
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A shop in Scotstoun, Glasgow. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian
The interesting thing about the government's decision to drop minimum unit pricing for alcohol isn't whether or not it's a U-turn – it is, but there's nothing wrong with that, if it's a smart one – or if it's a tactical victory for Theresa May over David Cameron (it is, but who cares?) No: it's the way in which the as-yet-unconfirmed decision shows the kind of policy dilemma ministers routinely face, and does so on a simple issue near to voters' hearts.
Everyone can see that excessive drinking is a problem in this country, as it is in some others (dark, northern countries in particular?) but not in others. But is it primarily a medical problem for individuals, a social problem – the way society tolerates certain forms of misbehaviour, and even encourages them via 24/7 drinking rules – or is it a pricing problem, that the stuff's simply too cheap these days? (It's mostly a lot cheaper than it was in my youth.)
I'd say there's an element of all three in our problem, though the physical and psychological makeup of the individual must be at the heart of it. Some people can't handle drink, just as other people can't handle drugs (including penicillin). It's like an allergy. Either they fall apart after two small sherries, they can't stop until they're wasted, or they want to start again at breakfast time.
In the process, some of these people – let's call them alcoholics, though not all are – may have crashed the car, punched their partner, spent the rent money, been in a pub brawl, committed a burglary or rape, and/or ended up at A&E after collapsing. The list is a long one and it's expensive, both in terms of damaged lives and economic costs: the externalities of a serious piss-up, as the experts put it. I think we can all agree on that.
But what to do about it? That's the problem. And that's why the coalition cabinet has fallen out over it, why the hard men – the hard women, too, Theresa – have prevailed over the handwringers, who include Dave ("We must end the scourge of cheap alcohol") Cameron and, so I imagine, his Lib Dem cabinet posse.
The experts on Alcohol Policy UK favour minimum pricing, and many others are in favour of stricter controls, including the 50p-a-unit pricing policy the Scottish government of Alex Salmond has already adopted – though it has been taken to court over it, for reasons to which we will return. The Tory blogger, journalist and councillor Harry Phibbs, however, says on the influential ConHome website he favours dropping the minimum pricing plan.
I wouldn't want to flatter Harry, but his voice is typical enough of those who say the nanny state should stay out of this one, that higher pricing won't stop drunks from buying white cider or red Buckie, and that it will hurt only the modestly drinking respectable poor, who will stop voting Tory as a result. Teenage pre-loaders, who drink before they go clubbing, will carry on much as before, say the wiseguys.
We should always take arguments about individual rights and autonomy seriously: these things are essential to what we are as human beings. But not even the most gin-sozzled libertarian would insist on the right to drive up the wrong side of the road, drunk or sober, or (except in poorer US states) to possess an M16 assault rifle or one of Mr Kalashnikov's AK-47s in the kitchen cupboard. Society needs constraints; we disagree as to what they should be. Tell me about it, Lord Justice Leveson.
I'm with the nannies on this one, as I am on tobacco pricing, which, combined with the ban on smoking in public places, seems to be reducing consumption of a dangerous pleasure. Sorry about that. I do drink (more than the nannies advise), but I don't smoke. I do feel sorry for smoking huddles outside pubs and offices: they look like dissidents – which, in a way, they are. The efficacy of minimum pricing is disputed, though it seems to have worked in Canada. That's taken – typical, isn't it, Mr Phibbs! – from the BBC website.
Will it work? Probably, at least at the margins. It's worth a try because the problem is urgent and affects most of us. Yes, I know that overall alcohol consumption is down (hard drugs, too?) but that's not the point. As in so much else about social policy, it's the hardcore of helpless and irresponsible people – bankers as well as boozers – who cause disproportionate cost and inconvenience to others, usually in poorer areas that already have problems enough: poor children pay in added misery for 22p-a-can lager.
That's a decision in principle. It's OK to disagree. But the tricky bit comes where the ethics of principle collide with those of consequence. Ministers have been committed since Labour days to an RPI-plus-2% price strategy for drink on budget day. It's always unpopular somewhere, and it adds to the cost of living for hard-pressed households, as well as to the pensions and benefits tied to them.
That's probably why the chancellor, due to make his budget speech two weeks today, joined forces with May and with Andrew Lansley, the ex-health secretary whose view of the evidence from both sides inclined him to say it wouldn't work. Lansley said it would simply shift £1bn from taxes – which would help George Osborne's budget-balancing – to the booze manufacturers. Happily, those manufacturers are friends of the Tory party, and might recycle some of that money their way.
But let's not be cynical. Lansley is not a cynical man, though I usually disagree with him. Osborne is afraid of losing money he can't afford to lose. All chancellors have this worry, which is why these lifestyle-choice battles are so difficult and take so long. Tony Blair once said in 1997 he would never have imagined the ban on public smoking being so easy, but 10 years later public health and the bans imposed by private employers had prepared the ground.
It's a good point, but Blair was all over the place on liberty: fiercely against hunting and smoking, lax on 24/7 drinking and gambling – not to mention rendition and secrecy, if his more implacable critics are to be believed. Faith schools, civil partnerships, Islamist suicide squads: he struggled to keep up with the bewildering diversity of modern Britain, and sometimes got it wrong.
But at least he did take decisions. Interesting man though he is, the libertarian Tory David Davis, who resigned as shadow home secretary on dubious tactical grounds, could have been taking decisions, too, but preferred to play Pontius Pilate on Radio 4's Today. After he had dismissed unit pricing as a "blunderbuss" on this morning's programme, he was asked what he would do.
There followed an, er, um … after which he said he would crack down on underage drinking and landlords who failed to prevent drunkenness, and curb Blair's 24/7 licensing culture. Thanks, David. We'll ring you.
His fellow Tory MP, the GP Sarah Wollaston, who regretted the decision, argued more effectively that we have to stop the sale of 22p cans of booze. No wonder she was interviewed separately: she was better informed.
There's a further complication to spoil the libertarian lobby's first snifter of the day. It is that the Scottish government's efforts to curb drinking – Scots apparently tuck away 20% more than people do in England – via a 50p unit price since 2009 have been resisted in the courts, not only by the whisky trade (fair enough) but by the EU, which calls the action disproportionate: a very Phibbsian notion.
Alex Salmond's government says it is acting in ways compatible with Scottish, UK and EU law; its opponents say it is not. Labour should have resisted the temptation to call the London cabinet spineless and indecisive, since the Blair/Brown regime didn't resolve this one either. But it's a useful reminder to all those peddling easy panaceas for painless forms of government that some decisions are tricky.
They will remain so, whether we get to live in a Tory-, Labour- or coalition-run country, in or out of the union with Scotland, with or without PR elections or a reformed House of Lords, or in or out of the EU, which will continue to impose trade regulations on our whisky exports – whether we are paid-up members or not.