ALCOHOL POLICY IN A ONE-PARTY STATE

It seems to me entirely possible that this general election will mark the demise of the Labour Party as a party of government. It could be reduced to the status of a left-wing protest group that is more concerned with its own ideological purity than with making the compromises necessary to widen its electoral appeal and actually win elections. This is a development which should concern all who believe that representative democracy requires a choice between two or more political parties that are at least electable, even if you don’t necessarily agree with their policy approach.

Since the financial crisis of 2008 the central political question for Europe has been: Will the political centre hold? Or will we see populist or extremist parties gaining power because they have fooled their electorates into believing there can be simple solutions to complex problems. The election of Macron in France and defeat of Le Pen; the defeat of Geert Wilders in Holland and, I anticipate, the re-election of Angela Merkel in Germany does suggest that it will hold.

But in all these countries there are credible political parties of centre-right and centre-left to the parties that have actually won. Not so in the UK. The Liberal Democrats appear not to be making a breakthrough by attracting the votes of sensible Labour supporters that want to vote for a centre-left party as opposed to a bunch of Trots. So, what we could see after the election is not just a landslide Tory victory, but a Tory government whose only effective political opposition may come from within its own ranks.

Meanwhile, what does Labour have to say about pubs and alcohol? For starters, Diane Abbott, Labour’s shadow Home Secretary is a dedicated anti-alcohol zealot, but all of a sudden Labour seems to have woken up to the scale of pub closures by pledging “We will set up a National Review of Local Pubs to examine the causes for the large-scale demise of pubs.” They might start by looking at their own 2005 manifesto which promised to legislate to ensure that all enclosed public places and workplaces – other than licensed premises – would be smoke-free. The exception would be restaurants and food-led pubs that would be smoke-free, but wet-led pubs and members’ clubs would have a choice. Labour rebels conspired to ensure that those exemptions were not in the legislation and we ended-up with the smoking ban - which has done a huge amount to damage pubs and beer sales. Jeremy Corbyn voted for these measures and is not in any position to preside over an objective review of why over 11,000 pubs closed between 2007 and 2013 – even in the remotely unlikely event that Labour is elected.

So, what might alcohol policy look like after the election in what will effectively be an elective dictatorship? Historically, the Conservatives were generally much more sympathetic to the trade in beverage alcohol, and did much to defend its interests from the 1870s onwards; and it was thanks to the opposition of Conservative peers in the House of Lords that the attempt by the Liberal government of Herbert Asquith to close 30,000 of the nation’s 96,000 pubs over 14 years, and nationalise the rest was defeated.

The Conservative-led coalition government, formed after the 2010 general election, promised some radical supply-side changes to the way in which the sale of alcohol was regulated: a review of alcohol policy which led to the introduction of EMAROs and the Late Night Levy; banning below-cost sales of alcohol; and tackling underage drinking. In 2012 the Conservatives were minded to go further and to introduce minimum unit pricing – a policy that had long been championed by the health lobby and that had passed into law in Scotland, albeit not been implemented due to legal challenge.

However, attempts at introducing EMAROs have been thwarted by concerted and unified opposition from the trade and the late night levy has so far been introduced by only eight local authorities, and moreover, the policy has been panned by the recent House of Lords review of the Licensing Act 2003.

Then we saw what the health lobby regarded as a great betrayal: minimum pricing was abandoned by the Conservative-led coalition government, or at least kicked into the long grass for lack of evidence regarding its efficacy, and with the convenient excuse that we should in any event await the outcome of the legal challenge to minimum pricing in Scotland that will be resolved by our own Supreme Court at a hearing on July 24-25 this year. Minimum pricing was also contrary to the Conservative ideological opposition to anything that compromised free markets, and faced considerable opposition within Conservative ranks for that reason, as well as the more pragmatic opposition that arose out of the need to avoid measures that raised prices and gave ammunition to Labour charges of a “cost of living crisis.”

We can but hope that the traditional Conservative opposition to price fixing and market regulation, combined with the huge amount of work to implement Brexit, will mean that alcohol policy in the new one-party state is something they just won’t find time for.

LORDS AND COMMONERS

Last week saw the publication of the House of Lords Select Committee Review of the Licensing Act 2003 (LA2003). It also saw the CAMRA Members’ Weekend in Bournemouth on Saturday 8^th April, at which I was a speaker.

Having read the HoL Review I was struck by how most, if not all, of its proposals for change reflected the fact that the Committee had listened to a wide range of views and was thereby able to arrive at what were, for the most part, a balanced set of recommendations that avoided siding with some of the more swivel-eyed members of the ‘public health’ community, who of course wanted a public health licensing objective. In that regard it contrasts most sharply with the way in which the Chief Medical Officers’ of Health revised drinking guidelines were compiled – by a who’s who of the modern neo-temperance movement.

The call for the government to abandon the Late Night Levy and Early Morning Alcohol Restriction Orders was also very welcome as was their Lordships acceptance of the value of local partnership working – particularly Business Improvement Districts. Council members sitting on local authority licensing committees should be trained, their Lordships said. Here! Here!

I did however find it a little curious that the release of the Review suggested that the committee members found the Licensing Act 2003 to be “fundamentally flawed”. I cannot agree – for the most part I think it works well and I think it is regrettable that modifications to it have rowed back from its original radicalism in order to accommodate those who were horrified at what was perceived back in 2003 as a liberalising Act. The crux of their Lordships’ concern is the view that it was a mistake to create new ‘licensing committees’ of council members when a system of planning committees already exists.

No one could argue with the idea that licensing and planning should work closely together – that is why the local planning department is a ‘responsible authority’ under the LA2003, and must be notified of any new licence application or application for a major variation of an existing licence. But to combine licensing and planning? In the 10 years since the LA2003 came in to force I have never heard that suggestion made. So, a little ‘left field’ it seems to me – not least because the sale of alcohol will continue to have its own laws and regulations and its own legal precedents. The Committee’s recommendation in this regard deserves to be studied carefully, but at first blush this seems a curious proposal.

So we know what the great and the good think of our licensing system, and perhaps by inference of our drinking culture. But what does the ordinary drinker think? Well, on Saturday 8^th April I had the privilege of addressing around a thousand CAMRA members at their annual shindig down in Bournemouth. Sometimes the alcohol and society debate seems be conducted between opposing groups consisting of industry players or health lobby fanatics; groups united only by their mutual loathing. The title of my talk ‘The Modern Anti-Alcohol Movement – Temperance Without the Hymns’ does indeed reflect this divide. So I was curious to hear the questions and comments from an audience of informed and influential consumers.

I argued that every society from the most ancient to the most modern has had at least one legally or socially accepted intoxicant – something that changes mood, social interaction or consciousness. Ours of course is beverage alcohol. But the widespread use of intoxicants throughout different societies and historical epochs suggests to me that the need to change your mood or consciousness is a fundamental human need. As such, in a society like ours, access to beverage alcohol within a legal framework becomes nothing less than a human right and must be defended.

Of course no one in the modern, ant-alcohol ‘public health’ community would openly call for the outright legal prohibition of alcohol, they know such suggestions would be ridiculed. But ‘public health’ harbours the same prohibitionist ambition as their clerical forbears, albeit prohibition by stealth. They call for a population-wide reduction in alcohol consumption, but will never tell you to what level. Thus the direction of travel is obvious, but the destination is never mentioned. A bit like Brexit!

I think the drinkers’ voice needs to be heard in this debate. I listened to that voice at CAMRA, down in Bournemouth, and what a passionate voice it was! I was able to announce a new, CAMRA-inspired initiative – the formation of the ‘Drinkers’ Voice’. This organisation, once set up, will articulate the voice of the consumer – the “ordinary drinker” – in the alcohol-society debate. It is time that voice was heard in the public square. Watch this space.

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

As I write we await the outcome of the House of Lords investigation into the workings of the Licensing Act 2003. One of the things they were considering was whether ‘protecting and promoting public health’ should be added as a fifth licensing objective. I don’t know what their Lordships will conclude on this issue, although rumour has it they will not recommend this, but that hasn’t stopped Public Health England (PHE) from publishing ‘Public Health and Licensing Guidance’, subtitled ‘A simple guide for responding to applications as a responsible authority.’ Directors of public health have been included as Responsible Authorities under the Licensing Act since 2013, so many in the ‘public health’ community may consider this guidance long overdue.

So, we have a guidance document consisting of some 27 sides of A4 which explains to local public health practitioners how to object to a licence application based on one or more of the four existing licensing objectives, notwithstanding that ‘public health’ isn’t one of them! As the document explains on page 7:

“Although the licensing objectives do not include a health objective, there is a health and wellbeing angle to each of them. It is also possible for a Director of Public Health to have an independent and supporting role as a responsible authority. The above provide some examples that do not cover the full range of opportunities for public health involvement, but outline some composite examples of actions that have been taken by responsible authorities that directly draw on the connection of health to the existing objectives.”

The reference in the second sentence of the paragraph quoted to “the above” refers to examples regarding how a director of public health might smuggle in a health objection as an objection based on, say, public nuisance:

“…a representation requesting noise related conditions or objecting to an extension of hours for an application using evidence on the health impacts that sleep deficit can have on the local residents.”

Or evidence from:

“last drinks survey data, A&E and ambulance data indicating a high number of alcohol poisoning cases coming from a particular premises, or from within its near vicinity.”

You can see right here the difficulty in relating general evidence to a particular application for a premises that hasn’t yet opened or had its hours extended. You can also see that the implicit assumption of PHE is that local directors of public health should be looking for reasons to object. In fact, the guidance document proposes a traffic light system based on ‘red’ and ‘green’ applications. A ‘red’ application – one that would need to be looked at with a view to making a representation – would include any application for:

·       Off licences

·       Any application for hours after midnight or before 8 am

·       Anything within a cumulative impact policy

·       Night clubs

·       Premises reviews by other responsible authorities

·       High volume or ‘vertical drinking’ establishments.

Whereas a ‘green’ application – one that would be of low concern to public health – might include applications for:

·       Restaurants before midnight

·       Food venue before midnight 

·       Theatre Bars before midnight 

·       Changes to the Designated Premises Supervisor

·       Temporary Event Notices (TENs) as the Director of Public Health does not have the remit to respond to these.

Clearly these benighted nannies don’t want the citizenry up and drinking after midnight – and even then only in posh eateries or theatre bars – but preferably not at all!

When your starting point is that it’s the availability of alcohol that makes people drink it, and that population levels of consumption drive alcohol harm, then it should come as no surprise that the starting point for directors of public health in relation to any application for a new licence is “how can we stop it?” the purpose of the traffic light system is merely to sift out applications where an objection would stand little chance of success.

I hope that the House of Lords and the government will not introduce a health licensing objective – much less a ‘health and wellbeing’ objective – and if you read the PHE guidance document you will see how often that word is insinuated into the text. The system we have works well as it is, and scarce resources need to be directed at those who really are drinking at unhealthy and damaging levels, not at making mischief through gratuitous objections to individual licence applications based on an objection to beverage alcohol as such, rather than any real local concerns.

Paul Chase

The shape of things to come by Paul Chase

As I write we await the outcome of the House of Lords investigation into the workings of the Licensing Act 2003. One of the things it was considering was whether “protecting and promoting public health” should be added as a fifth licensing objective. I don’t know what their Lordships will conclude on this issue, although rumour has it they will not recommend this. But that hasn’t stopped Public Health England (PHE) from publishing “Public Health and Licensing Guidance”, subtitled “A simple guide for responding to applications as a responsible authority”. Directors of public health have been included as responsible authorities under the Licensing Act since 2013, so many in the “public health” community may consider this guidance long overdue.

So, we have a guidance document consisting of some 27 sides of A4 that explains to local public health practitioners how to object to a licence application based on one or more of the four existing licensing objectives, notwithstanding that “public health” isn’t one of them! As the document explains on page seven: “Although the licensing objectives do not include a health objective, there is a health and well-being angle to each of them. It is also possible for a director of public health to have an independent and supporting role as a responsible authority. The above provide some examples that do not cover the full range of opportunities for public health involvement, but outline some composite examples of actions that have been taken by responsible authorities that directly draw on the connection of health to the existing objectives.”

The reference in the second sentence of the paragraph quoted to “the above” refers to examples regarding how a director of public health might smuggle in a health objection as an objection based on, say, public nuisance: “…a representation requesting noise-related conditions or objecting to an extension of hours for an application using evidence on the health impacts that sleep deficit can have on the local residents.” Or evidence from: “...last drinks survey data, A&E and ambulance data indicating a high number of alcohol poisoning cases coming from a particular premises, or from within its near vicinity.”

You can see right here the difficulty in relating general evidence to a particular application for a premises that hasn’t yet opened or had its hours extended. You can also see the implicit assumption of PHE is local directors of public health should be looking for reasons to object. In fact, the guidance document proposes a traffic light system based on “red” and “green” applications. A “red” application – one that would need to be looked at with a view to making a representation – would include any application for off-licences, any application for hours after midnight or before 8am, anything within a cumulative impact policy, nightclubs, premises reviews by other responsible authorities and high volume or “vertical drinking” establishments.

Whereas a “green” application – one that would be of low concern to public health – might include applications for restaurants before midnight, food venues before midnight, theatre bars before midnight, changes to the designated premises supervisor and Temporary Event Notices as the director of public health does not have the remit to respond to these.

Clearly these benighted nannies don’t want the citizenry up and drinking after midnight – and even then only in posh eateries or theatre bars – but preferably not at all! When your starting point is it’s the availability of alcohol that makes people drink it, and that population levels of consumption drive alcohol harm, then it should come as no surprise the starting point for directors of public health in relation to any application for a new licence is “how can we stop it”? The purpose of the traffic light system is merely to sift out applications where an objection would stand little chance of success.

I hope the House of Lords and the government will not introduce a health licensing objective – much less a “health and well-being” objective – and if you read the PHE guidance document you will see how often that word is insinuated into the text. The system we have works well as it is, and scarce resources need to be directed at those who really are drinking at unhealthy and damaging levels, not at making mischief through gratuitous objections to individual licence applications based on an objection to beverage alcohol as such, rather than any real local concerns.

The hydra-headed monster by Paul Chase

I thought I would return to the fray with a new twist on an old theme – minimum unit pricing (MUP). Readers of my articles may recall the legality of a minimum unit price for alcohol is an issue that has been batted back and forth between the Scottish government and the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) since 2012. The Scottish courts had their say (legal); it was referred to the European Court of Justice (not legal). But the ECJ left the final decision to the Scottish courts, which needed to be convinced there was no other, less trade-restrictive way of achieving the Scottish government’s health objectives in respect of alcohol if they were to conclude it was, after all, “legal” to impose a minimum price on a unit of alcohol.

They promptly did so when the Scottish government provided them with the latest research findings from the boys and girls at Sheffield University, whose modelling forms the basis of all the claims made for this measure. So, game, set and match? Well, not quite. The SWA has appealed the Scottish court’s decision to the Supreme Court in London. They have been rather busy of late considering whether the UK government has to get parliamentary approval before triggering Article 50 of the EU treaty to take us out of the European Union. But the little matter of MUP is likely to be ruled on around June this year.

Meanwhile, the authors of the Sheffield model haven’t been sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Oh no! They’ve been modelling the effect of an MUP of 50p on alcohol-related hospital admissions and deaths in Northern Ireland. A charity called Northern Ireland Chest Heart and Stroke said raising the minimum price paid for booze would save lives, lower hospital admissions and cut the costs of crime by £20m a year. Neil Johnston from the charity said: “Alcohol sold for less than 50p a unit makes up the majority of alcohol purchased by high-risk drinkers. Work by Sheffield University shows that pushing up the price of very cheap alcohol will reduce consumption of it by high-risk drinkers and bring considerable benefits. Introducing a minimum unit price of 50p is estimated to save 63 lives a year and result in almost 2,500 fewer hospital admissions.” Very impressive, but do the figures stack up? It is informative to compare Sheffield University’s predictions for Northern Ireland with its predictions for Scotland:

• How can it be that a 50p MUP saves three fewer lives each year in Scotland than in Northern Ireland, despite the fact Scotland has 3.6 million more people than Northern Ireland? And, in terms of alcohol-related hospital admissions, nearly twice as many of these are saved in Northern Ireland despite the fact Northern Ireland’s population is only a third of Scotland’s!

• It is interesting to note that MUP as a policy has been enthusiastically and uncritically supported by Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, whereas in England the UK government’s view has been much more sceptical. The “healthiest” agenda tends to receive much more support by governments that are relatively new, struggling for legitimacy or relevance, and for whom embracing policies that claim to improve the “health of the nation” gives them an opportunity to promote themselves as standing up for the interests of “the people” and against those of big business – in this case Big Alcohol.

It remains to be seen whether the UK Supreme Court will risk being labelled “enemies of the people” by yet again standing up for rationality and finding against MUP. In this “fake fact” world, where an appeal to prejudice is seemingly all that is needed to identify a large constituency of support that will rise up vociferously, it seems to me we need some unelected judges who aren’t afraid to tell us the truth.

ALCOHOL CONCERN R.I.P.

It may have escaped your attention, but Alcohol Concern (AC) and Alcohol Research UK (ARUK), the UK’s two leading anti-alcohol sock puppet charities, are to merge. This merger has consequences for the way in which anti-alcohol advocacy will be conducted going forward, but first, a little bit of history:

Alcohol Concern and the International Order of Good Templars

The International Order of Good Templars, or ‘IOGT International’ as they now refer to themselves, was the most zealous of the clutch of anti-alcohol groups that sprang up in the 1850s. Despite the repeal of Prohibition in America in 1933, it remained in existence as a hard-line anti-alcohol sect until the 1970s, when its leader Derek Rutherford, recognising that campaigning for the outright prohibition of alcohol was a lost cause, moved IOGT to an apparently softer line of campaigning to reduce alcohol-related harms. Initially, in the UK, IOGT worked with the National Council on Alcoholism, which later evolved into the anti-alcohol advocacy group Alcohol Concern (AC).

The two groups parted company in 1982 after a row with the new chairman who said he had no time for “a bunch of Methodist teetotallers.” IOGT walked out and Rutherford, along with Andrew McNeill set up the Institute of Alcohol studies as an alcohol research organisation. So, whilst the National Council on Alcoholism and IOGT parted company, the legacy organisations they spawned have their roots deeply embedded in historical temperance.

Alcohol Research UK (ARUK)

ARUK is another organisation with its roots in historical temperance. Indeed, today 70% of its income is derived from returns on an investment fund that arose out of the Licensing Act 1904! The government of Conservative Prime Minister Arthur Balfour established the ‘Licensing Compensation Scheme’ to compensate licensees who lost their licences through no fault of their own, but as a result of action by local Justices to close down premises in areas where they deemed there was overprovision. The scheme was funded by a levy on all licensed property, from £1 on small beer houses to £150 on large hotels. The scheme was not popular with either side in the alcohol/society debate, with temperance campaigners dubbing it the “Brewers Endowment Fund” and brewers calling it the “Mutual Burial Fund”.

The scheme didn’t last for long, but the money collected was not returned to the trade from whose pockets it had been picked. The fund was left in abeyance, and it wasn’t until the 1981 Act that half of the residual funds were transferred via a liquidator to establish the Alcohol Education and Research Council (AERC). In 2011 the AERC was wound up and the investment fund was transferred to a new charity, Alcohol Research UK.

The merger

On the 7^th December 2016 there was a joint press release announcing that AC and ARUK are to “merge” by April 2017. Why has this happened? If you look at the published accounts of both organisations this gives you a clue. AC has struggled to fund itself since it lost core funding from the UK government in 2012. It still receives taxpayers’ money from the Welsh Assembly government totalling £185,108 in 2016, with its second biggest funder being the Big Lottery – Pembrokeshire which contributed £62,459 in the same year. In the recent past AC has received money from the pharmaceutical industry for its support for a treatment for ‘mild alcoholism’ that was marketed as ‘Selincro’. However, in 2016 its expenditure exceeded its income by some £72,330 and it is apparent that AC struggles to make ends meet, and if the UK government isn’t going to finance its sock puppet activities using public funds to lobby for public policy change, then its long-term future looked uncertain at best.

ARUK, on the other hand, is losing even more money, with its expenditure exceeding its income in 2015 by £317,701. Whilst this is a much bigger budget deficit than Alcohol Concern’s, ARUK does have a dependable source of income from its historical investment fund of £15.7 million, which delivered £548,855 in 2015, with just £51,972 from voluntary donations and an income of just £17,864 from “charitable activities”.

So, when is a merger not really a merger? Well, the CEO of the newly-merged organisation will be Dave Roberts, who currently heads up ARUK. AC’s current CEO Joanna Simons was appointed with the specific remit of looking at options for its future strategy and she will leave in April 2017, when the merger is accomplished. Emily Robinson, AC’s deputy CEO has already left. So, it appears that ARUK will gain AC’s income of around £950K a year, lose the cost of the two biggest earners from its payroll, and, presumably merge the two offices and save even more cost. All very sensible.

But what will really remain of AC’s campaigning efforts in the future? ‘Dry January’ will presumably still go ahead in January 2017, but after that will it be retained, rather like Fidel Castro’s cigar, as the signature symbol of a dead icon, or will it be dispensed with? I guess that will depend on whether AC’s funders are prepared to fund the AC part of the merged charity.

And what will be the position of those key figures in ARUK who insist that theirs is an objective, independent research organisation, now that they are about to acquire an organisation dedicated to advocacy and campaigning? ARUK states that its aim is to “reduce levels of alcohol-related harm by ensuring that policy and practice can always be developed on the basis of research-based evidence”; whereas AC states that they “work throughout England and Wales towards our vision of a world where alcohol does no harm”.

There is a big difference between reducing levels of harm, and creating a world where alcohol does no harm – which, given the mantra of “there is no safe level of alcohol consumption” - can only mean a world without alcohol. Whose vision will prevail? Given the tendency of anti-alcohol groups to undergo Trotskyite-like splits, will this marriage of financial convenience last, or might the Institute of Alcohol Studies and IOGT win-out in the neo-temperance merger stakes? We’ll have to wait and see.

Paul Chase