Scotch Whisky Industry

Debate between Brendan O'Hara and Stuart Blair Donaldson

Wednesday 9th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the contribution of the Scotch whisky industry to the UK economy.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mrs Moon. I am delighted to have secured this debate and to see so many of my colleagues present, particularly as they were all made aware that this is most definitely not a tasting event. I sincerely thank them for their attendance.

I understand that several hon. Members want to take part in this debate. If I have learned one thing since coming to this place last May, it is that no one loses points for repetition. However, in order to let colleagues develop their own arguments, I shall endeavour to speak in fairly broad terms about the remarkable economic success that is the Scotch whisky industry. I shall highlight the industry’s success before touching on what measures I believe that the Government must take to build on the achievements that we are currently enjoying and to ensure investor confidence for many years to come. I shall also look at the importance of the industry for rural communities throughout Scotland.

Thereafter, I shall shamelessly indulge myself in promoting the beauty of my Argyll and Bute constituency, which, regardless of what some of my green-eyed colleagues may claim later this afternoon, is without doubt the world’s whisky centre of excellence. As the home to the world-renowned whisky coast, Argyll and Bute can boast no fewer than 14 distilleries, which are working round the clock to produce the finest whisky in the world, consumed in ever greater numbers both at home and abroad. That said, I am inclined to agree with Raymond Chandler, the great American novelist, when he said:

“There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren’t as good as others.”

I have a theory that all Scots children are born knowing certain incontrovertible truths—the kind of thing that you just know and do not have to learn, such as the fact that everything good in the modern world was invented by a Scot, that that ball never actually crossed the line in the 1966 World cup final and that Scotch whisky is, as George Bernard Shaw so wonderfully described it, “liquid sunshine”.

That liquid sunshine provides a silver lining for the UK Exchequer, as sales of Scotch whisky both at home and abroad contributed more than £5 billion to the UK economy last year. Last year alone, almost 100 million cases of Scotch whisky were exported to every part of the world. That is 40 bottles every second of every day leaving Scotland, bound for Spain, Brazil, America, Canada, China and just about everywhere else in between. Those exports earned this Exchequer £4 billion—or, to put it another way, £135 every second of every day for the UK balance of payments. Indeed, Scotch whisky is liquid sunshine for the Chancellor.

To be fair to the Chancellor—please take note, as this is probably a once-in-a-career event—he had the foresight last year to cut spirit duty by 2%. Indeed, it was only the fourth time in 100 years that that had been done. Although that cut was very welcome, many of us feel there is much more we can do, as taxation still accounts for 76% of the price of a bottle of whisky.

It is worth remembering that last year’s cut in spirit duty was, by the Treasury’s own Red Book calculation, believed to result in a shortfall of £185 million to the Treasury. The reality, however, was very different: the 2% cut in 2015 actually increased the tax take to the Treasury by more than £100 million. I am not saying that every 2% cut in spirit duty will recoup £100 million for the Treasury, but I think we can argue with a great deal of justification that a cut in spirit duty helped to increase sales in the domestic market for the first time in several years. It also sent out a very important signal to potential investors in the Scotch whisky industry.

Investor confidence is vital. The initial duty freeze, followed by a duty cut, gave confidence to investors, who saw that, for the first time in decades, there was a Government who did not view the Scotch whisky industry simply as a cash cow. As we know, spirit can only become whisky after it has been laid down for three years; only then can it be classified as Scotch whisky. For at least three years, investors can therefore have little or no return on their money. The fact that nine new distilleries have opened across Scotland in the past two years, with no fewer than 40 in various stages of planning and construction and hoping to come on stream over the next two decades, is in no small part due to the change in policy of not hiking spirit duty at every possible opportunity.

In fact, such is the confidence in the industry that there are advance plans to open a new distillery in the Scottish borders. To put that into context, the last distillery in the Scottish borders closed its doors in 1837—the year Queen Victoria ascended to the throne, and shortly after the birth of the great Mark Twain, whose love of whisky was such that he was moved to say:

“Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.”

I have heard several people question how we can call for a further cut in spirit duty while at the same time campaigning in Scotland for a minimum unit price on alcohol. Let me say immediately that those are not contradictory positions. The adoption of a minimum unit price was never intended to affect sensible, moderate drinkers, and it would have no impact whatever on the production, consumption or export of Scotch whisky. Minimum unit pricing is designed to impact on the most harmful drinkers and is targeted at own-brand spirits and ciders that are high in alcohol but usually very cheap at the point of sale.

In the past few years, we have seen a signal to investors that Scotch whisky is a solid and sound investment. It is an investment that creates jobs and prosperity. The industry already supports directly and indirectly more than 40,000 jobs, many of which are highly skilled, across the United Kingdom. Included in that figure are 7,500 jobs in rural communities, where it is often very difficult to find alternative employment. A classic example of that is the new Isle of Harris distillery, which opened last year with the aim of producing 300,000 bottles of single malt a year. That one distillery has created 25 new jobs in the town of Tarbert, which has a population of barely 1,000 souls. That is an oft-repeated story across the highlands and islands of Scotland, where whisky distillation and high-skilled local employment have gone hand in hand for centuries.

As I said at the outset, in my opinion—and as chair of the all-party group on Scotch whisky, I suggest that that opinion is not to be taken lightly—the finest whiskies in the world come from Argyll and Bute, although I fear that my right hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) and my hon. Friends the Members for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) and for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) may be of a different opinion. On our whisky coast in Argyll, we have 14 distilleries producing some of the most famous brands in the world. We have Bowmore, Ardbeg, Bruichladdich, Bunnahabhain, Caol Ila, Lagavulin, Laphroaig, Kilchoman, Isle of Jura, Glengyle, Springbank, Glen Scotia, Tobermory and Oban—and if you can still reel those names off after a good night, perhaps the night was not as good as you thought it was. As well as producing great whisky and creating employment, those distilleries attract tourists to the area in their tens of thousands. Indeed, visits to distilleries have rocketed in recent years; I saw a figure suggesting that one in every five visitors to Scotland visits a distillery.

[Stuart Blair Donaldson (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (SNP)]

I thank my hon. Friend very much for securing this debate. Will he join me in welcoming the fact that Royal Lochnagar distillery in my constituency —the home of the first distillery tour, for Prince Albert and Queen Victoria—has almost doubled its visitor numbers since 2008, with 16,384 visitors visiting in 2015?

[Brendan O'Hara]

I absolutely join my hon. Friend in welcoming that, and that statistic is replicated across the country. Islay, for example, which has a population of just 3,000, has eight working distilleries with two more currently under construction. In 2014, Islay had 125,000 visitors to its distilleries—that is 41 visitors for every permanent resident on the island. The importance of tourism, and whisky tourism, cannot be overstated, and if hon. Members have not holidayed in Argyll and Bute, I suggest that they put it on their bucket list immediately.

I used to think the sky was the limit for our Scotch whisky industry, but it appears that I was wrong. It seems that there are absolutely no limits on what our industry can achieve, as I recently discovered, when I was told that a quantity of Ardbeg was sent into outer space to the international space station—for research purposes, I believe. Who would have believed that Argyll and Bute would be exporting liquid sunshine into outer space? Indeed, if that is not an argument for awarding the UK space station to Machrihanish, I do not know what is.