Alcohol Duties

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact that the changes to alcohol duties announced in the Budget statement on 27 October will have on alcohol-related (1) hospital admissions, and (2) deaths.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Kamall) (Con)]

The reform of alcohol duties will simplify duty rules and tax drinks in proportion to their alcohol content. This should create a financial incentive for manufacturers to reformulate their products, therefore giving consumers a greater choice of lower-strength products. This would support individuals to drink within the Chief Medical Officer’s guidelines. The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities plans to make an assessment of the potential impact of these proposals on consumption and associated harms.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I regret that the Minister has not actually answered the Question. All the evidence indicates that if the price of alcohol goes up, people drink less and are healthier. If the price of alcohol goes down or the duty goes down, people in fact drink more. More people go into hospital and more people die. Instead of relying on the industry to decide whether manufacturers will reformulate their drinks, as the Minister just indicated, the Government should take a firm lead and put the health of the nation first. They should not be handing out a £3 billion cut in this way. Will the Minister please go back to the Chancellor and tell him that we need a policy that will lead to better health, not worse?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

Many public health officials, for many years, have criticised the system of alcohol taxation, particularly the EU’s system of taxation. Now that we have left the EU, we are free to set our own law in this area. Given the criticisms from the World Health Organization and many other think tanks, we can now set taxation based on the volume of alcohol.