Alcohol Consumption Guidelines

Debate between Jane Ellison and Andrew Griffiths

Tuesday 28th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)]

I thank colleagues for bearing with our rather interrupted debate. I am fairly confident that I will not have time to discuss all the issues in my response, but as some colleagues are aware, my door is always open, and I have a proposal towards the end of my speech for how we might continue the discussion.

First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Byron Davies) on securing this debate and on opening it so authoritatively. We are all aware of the impact of alcohol misuse, which was well summed up by the shadow Minister, who is knowledgeable about that. She reminded us of some of the pressure it puts on our vital public services. It is right that we give this issue our attention.

I know that people have asked why we need new guidelines when alcohol consumption is falling. My hon. Friend, in introducing the debate, talked about some of the areas in which we have had welcome improvements in the statistics. The majority of people drink alcohol in an entirely responsible way. In 2014, 59%—just over 25 million adults—drank within the new guidelines, so it is important to stress that quite a lot of people drink that amount or less at the moment.

As a Government who believe in informed and empowered consumers, we have a responsibility to provide clear information to help people make informed choices about their drinking. The guidelines are not about preventing those who want to enjoy a drink from doing so. Goodness knows, as a passionate remainer, I can certainly say that guidelines of all sorts have been suspended in my household for the past week or so. This is about ensuring that people get common-sense advice and practical information, and some of that will be about things like taking days off from drinking. There is an appetite for that; we know that from the research we have done with people.

The new low-risk drinking guidelines are the means by which the four UK chief medical officers, working together, provide the public with the latest and most up-to-date information about the health risks of different levels and patterns of drinking. Let me clarify at the outset, in case I run out of time, what the guidelines are not. Nobody has said that more than 14 units is considered harmful or problem drinking. It is just not recommended as low risk. To be clear, there is no public policy on abstinence. The guidelines are not about the rate at which alcohol affects men and women in terms of intoxication, but how it affects their long-term health.

[Andrew Griffiths]

Will the Minister give way?

[Jane Ellison]

If colleagues will forgive me, I have very little time. I will not even have 10 minutes. I will give way, but it means I will not get through my speech.

[Andrew Griffiths]

I have a very simple question. Does the Minister think there is no such thing as safe drinking?

[Jane Ellison]

I will come on to deal with some of the issues, but I will also make a suggestion for how we take this discussion forward. The issue outlined was about the extent to which alcohol affects people. The second part of the consultation, to which a response has not yet been published—I will come on to talk about that—is about how we express and communicate the new guidelines. That is slightly different from the science that sits behind them. I want to try to pull those two things apart. Clearly we have a job of communication to do, because we want to be helpful to the public.

Perhaps it would be useful to remind Members how we arrived at this review. It was not Ministers who asked the chief medical officers to do it but Parliament. The previous guidelines came out in 1995, and in 2012 the Science and Technology Committee recommended that they should be reviewed because they had not been for so long. It is fair to say that there are a lot of places around the world where such guidelines have not been looked at for a long time, so the evidence base is not as up to date as it could be. There was a lot of parliamentary interest, especially in the previous Parliament, in guidelines—for example, in the harmonisation of the pregnancy guidelines when we had debates about foetal alcohol syndrome.

At the request of the four UK chief medical officers, three independent groups of experts have met since 2013 to look at both the scientific and the behavioural evidence of the health effects of alcohol. Those groups were made up of international experts in the field of epidemiology, public health, liver disease, behavioural science, science communications and evidence-based alcohol policy. None of those people were members of the temperance movement.

To ensure that the guidelines are as practical as possible, after their publication the Government held a public consultation to gather views on their clarity, expression and usefulness. I should clarify something that is important: the Royal Statistical Society supported the evidence review and the conclusions. It was very specific in its challenge about how the Department of Health presented it in the launch. That is exactly why there was then a consultation about how we express and discuss the guidelines. To be clear, though, the RSS did not question the evidence review or its conclusions.

As part of the consultation process, Public Health England has undertaken market research to test understanding and acceptance of the guidelines—just the points that colleagues have asked about. Overall, the results were positive, showing that the language was understood and accepted and the tone appropriately informational. That is the tone we are trying to achieve: informational, not hectoring or nannying. The expert group has now reviewed the consultation responses and market research and has put its final recommendations to the four CMOs for their consideration. We intend to publish the final guidelines and the Government response to the consultation as soon as possible.

We of course recognise that industry has a key role in communicating the new information to consumers, particularly through labelling. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) for his remarks. As he knows, as a Back Bencher in the previous Parliament I was an active member of the all-party groups on pubs and beer. I had the honour of being the guest judge of the pale ale category at the Battersea beer festival on more than one occasion. To declare an interest, I am a member of the Campaign for Real Ale. I could not agree more that a well-run pub or bar can be a great way to help people to drink responsibly while maintaining social contact.

Nevertheless, the industry needs to enable those who want to moderate what they drink to do so. It has done some really good work on that. The work with the industry in the previous Parliament on alcohol units was very useful. I always have a further challenge for the industry. One thing we can do to reduce the number of units people consume and to develop that wider choice is to put more emphasis on lower-alcohol products. When I have spoken to them, I have always been very honest with industry spokesmen that greater promotion of lower-alcohol drinks can help people to get into healthier habits. Simple switches can help. I want to put on the record that just by swapping from a pint of beer or lager at 6% strength to a pint at 4% strength, people could cut their units by a third—that is, they could take out 1.1 units. They could still enjoy their pint but cut their alcohol intake by a third.

The chief medical officer had a successful meeting with the Portman Group yesterday, confirming willingness on both sides to continue to work constructively together and to deliver benefits to the public and good information to our constituents. There are reasons for optimism in some of the alcohol statistics, but the shadow Minister is right that there are some significant and often highly concentrated problems. We need to give people the best and most up-to-date advice. We recognise that it is not for the Government to tell adults what to do in their private lives, but we do have a role in enabling the public to make informed decisions about their health based on up-to-date guidelines and the best science.

I am grateful to the chief medical officer, who has confirmed that she is happy to hold a parliamentary drop-in briefing for colleagues to discuss the matter further. It simply is not possible to pick up many of the detailed points that have been made on the various international studies in the time available. For the record, the review scrutinised all the available high-quality evidence and covered the findings of 63 systematic reviews from the evidence worldwide. It was a major undertaking. I think it would be useful for colleagues to be able to come along and discuss some of the studies that have been cited. Some of them are in different countries and some, it must be said, are based on different situations in terms of the nature of the national health service and the health support in those countries. I do not have time to go into that factor, but it is relevant for some of the comparative remarks that were made.

I hope I have reassured colleagues that we want to move forward in a sensible way. We want to give people the best information and we want to communicate it with clarity. Change will not happen overnight, but we want to raise awareness of the health risks, particularly around some of the links, such as between breast cancer and alcohol. We have a vastly better understanding of that than we did in 1995, and that has come through in recent years. It is important that we reflect that and continue to communicate it. I hope we can move forward constructively from here. I will set up the meeting that I offered. I sense from the Chamber that there is an interest in having further constructive dialogue. I leave a couple of minutes to my hon. Friend the Member for Gower to close the debate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jane Ellison and Andrew Griffiths

Tuesday 24th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)]

14. What support the Government are giving to people with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)]

The Government acknowledge the challenge posed in supporting patients with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which encompasses a complex range of conditions with a wide variety of symptoms. Diagnosis and investigation of suspected EDS takes place in dedicated regional genetics clinics, with specialist clinics, as my hon. Friend will know, at Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust and London North West Healthcare NHS Trust.

[Andrew Griffiths]

People in Burton have raised £130,000 to pay for a life-saving operation that is not available in the UK for Nina Parsons, my constituent, who suffers from EDS. I have another constituent, Sarah Pugh, who is having to pay for vital physiotherapy and an MRI scan. Will my hon. Friend look at what more can be done to help people suffering the misery of EDS, and will she agree to meet some sufferers to discuss the matter further?

[Jane Ellison]

I am certainly very happy to talk to my hon. Friend about his particular constituents. I am aware of the work that he has done in his local area. He will be interested to know that in 2013 the Government published “The UK Strategy for Rare Diseases” precisely to address such issues and the complexities around them, and aspects of that strategy speak directly to the challenges that he has just outlined. May I also take this opportunity to mention that there is an event tomorrow in Parliament organised by Rare Disease UK to mark rare disease day, at which the Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, my hon. Friend the Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), will be speaking?

The Future of Pubs

Debate between Jane Ellison and Andrew Griffiths

Thursday 9th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Griffiths]

My hon. Friend, as always, makes a valid point. In fact, the figures are worse than he suggests. Under the previous Government, duty on beer increased by 60%, while the increase on spirits was just 15%. That differential has had a huge impact on the viability of the British brewing industry. It is no surprise, as hon. Members from all parties will realise, that as a result of 13 years of Scottish Chancellors, the Scotch whisky industry has not, unfortunately, suffered the same increases in duty as those suffered by the British beer industry. I hope that the new Chancellor and the coalition Government will be more supportive of the brewing industry and our pubs.

It is encouraging that last week the Treasury announced innovative and well-thought through proposals on what I call “smart taxes.” The idea is to increase tax on bad things and reduce it on good things. Reducing taxation on lower-strength beers and spirits and increasing it on higher-strength drinks would support the vast majority of the British brewing industry and help to nudge people—we all know the phrase “the nudge approach”—towards choosing a more responsible and healthy drink when they go out for a tipple on Friday or Saturday night.

We must do something about the change in people’s behaviour and their drinking habits. When I was elected, one of the first things I did was spend a Friday night with the local police in Burton. I was with them from 6 o’clock in the evening until 3 o’clock in the morning. We walked the streets and I went out with them as they dealt with the consequences of people who had had too much alcohol in what the Daily Mail likes to call “Drink-fuelled Britain”.

I am not a young man, but I am not an old man. I remember when I used to go out with my friends for a night on the town, a night on the pull. [Laughter.] We were more successful at drinking than we were at pulling, unfortunately. We would go out for a night on the town and we would probably meet at about 8.30 pm. We would have a couple of drinks and then head to a nightclub to try our luck with the ladies of Dudley. The nightclub would close at 2 o’clock, and that would be the end of our evening.

As hon. Members will know from their own high streets, young people now go out much later. I saw that they were not going out on the streets until 10 or 11 o’clock in the evening and when they arrived, they were already half-cut. As the phrase goes, they had “pre-loaded”. While at home, they drank alcohol that they had bought from supermarkets at cheap prices. That is the heart of the matter and something we must address if we are to offer real support to the pub trade.

While there is a vast differential between the off-sale price and the price at which pubs are forced to sell their drinks, people will always drink at home. If one can buy 24-packs of strong lager, or a can of lager in the supermarket that is cheaper than a can of Coca-Cola, that is the biggest nudge of all.

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

On that point, perhaps I could read out a letter that I received from Mr Geoff Dennis, manager of The Goat in Battersea:

“We have all seen the results of young people ‘pre-loading’ on cheap alcohol in preparation for a night out, which can often lead to alcohol-related crime and disorder and only causes problems that we as pub managers then have to deal with later on in the evening. Below-cost selling of alcohol directly threatens the future of pubs which offer not only a focus for community life but also provide a safe and supervised place…to drink responsibly.”

[Andrew Griffiths]

My hon. Friend and Geoff from The Goat make a point of which we must all be aware. Not only do pubs suffer as a result of the price differential, they have to deal with the consequences. Although Tesco might sell a bottle of Lambrini for £1.90 for the young ladies of Dudley, Burton, or wherever, to drink before they go out, pubs have to deal with the supervision that involves not only the doorkeeper on the door, but those inside who must ensure that they do not serve alcohol to people who are already drunk. Over many years, we have seen the full cost of regulation being borne by the publican, but the supermarkets that have led to much of the unsupervised drinking do not have to deal with any of the consequences.