Licensing Act 2003: Post-Legislative Scrutiny (Licensing Act 2003 Report)

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Wednesday 20th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, it was extremely interesting to be a member of the committee which undertook this scrutiny of the Licensing Act and I thank the chair, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, the clerk and the specialist adviser to the committee for their leadership and support in the work we undertook. It was a great pleasure to work with so many other noble Lords and I thank them for initiating me with humour and patience in equal measure into Lords’ committee work, of which this was my first experience.

The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, has outlined the scope of the review and the subsequent recommendations, as have other noble Lords, so I will not rehearse these issues further. Rather, I wish to focus on one element of our inquiry: the availability of alcohol. It was a theme to which our inquiry returned on several occasions and on which we collated a significant amount of evidence. How much the availability of alcohol had been influenced by the passage of the 2003 Act was a key line of inquiry.

One of the primary foci of the Act in relation to licensing objectives is “the protection of children”, with particular reference to the granting of licences for the retail sale and consumption of alcohol. The Act made it illegal for people under the age of 18 to purchase alcohol, and, more importantly, made it an offence to sell alcohol to children anywhere in England and Wales. This objective seems to have been very successfully achieved and indicates that part of the Act is working well. However, purchasing may be increasingly difficult to monitor given the changing nature of shopping—from physical retail outlets to online purchasing. In some instances, you can order alcohol via an internet retailer using a simple app and have it delivered within an hour. If the retailer who sold the alcohol subcontracts delivery to another party, it is very difficult for the authorities to monitor whether it is received by a responsible adult or a child. This issue is noted in paragraph 60 of the report, where the point is made that, while recognising that an increasing proportion of alcohol is sold online, we were unable to get separate figures for this emerging market, even from substantial supermarket retailers. We urge the Government to keep this issue under review to protect children from receiving, and possibly consuming, large amounts of alcohol without adult supervision.

The evidence we took on alcohol consumption from a range of stakeholders clearly indicated a fall in consumption over the last decade. However, it was also clear that the liberal approach, resulting in alcohol being freely available 24 hours a day, seven days a week in many areas, may be fuelling the increase in alcohol-related hospital admissions and deaths in England. The report outlines these issues in depth, and not only the associated costs to the NHS but the very real long-term misery suffered by people who abuse alcohol, and the effects on their families and friends. The committee therefore reached a view that it is indeed inarguable that an increase in the price of alcohol would decrease consumption further, particularly in high-risk groups. Indeed, the report from Public Health England of December 2016, to which our report refers, concludes:

“Implementing an MUP is a highly targeted measure which ensures any resulting price increases are passed on to the consumer, improving the health of the heaviest drinkers who experience the greatest amount of harm. MUP would have a negligible impact on moderate drinkers and the price of alcohol sold in pubs, bars and restaurants”.


On Recommendation 3 of our report, assuming MUP is brought into force in Scotland and is successful, it is recommended that MUP be introduced in England and Wales, as other noble Lords have said. I welcome the Government’s saying that they will consider this issue once the evidence is available. However, how long will we wait? At what point will the Government conclude that the evidence is sufficiently sound either way to make a decision?

The Scottish model has estimated that if a minimum unit price of 50p were introduced in the first year, there would be 58 fewer alcohol-related deaths and 1,299 fewer alcohol-related hospital admissions in the first year. So will we watch and wait for a year, see whether this success is achieved, and then adopt a minimum unit price in 2019? The consultation document, Improving Scotland’s Health: Minimum Unit Pricing of Alcohol, also acknowledges that it may take 20 years for all the benefits of the policy to be realised. The Scottish Government must report to their Parliament on the impact of the MUP within five years. I welcome the Chancellor’s proposal, announced in the Budget, to look at additional taxation on very cheap alcohol products, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, has just referred, and I believe this will have beneficial results. However, many experts who gave evidence to our committee said that the adoption of MUP would have a positive effect on the nation’s health and save the NHS money.

I therefore conclude with two questions for the Minister. First, how will the Government maintain their responsibility to protect children if the latter receive and potentially consume alcohol purchased via the internet and delivered by third parties? Secondly, what period do the Government believe would be appropriate within which to judge the success or otherwise of the introduction of MUP in Scotland? If, in year one, there is the expected fall in alcohol-related deaths and hospital admissions, will we act then? Or are we to wait for five or even 20 years until we judge the evidence to be sufficiently strong to act in England and Wales, while Scotland improves its health?