A less authoritarian Tory Party would have fewer authoritarian policies. Why doesn't it?

There appears to be something of a splurge of thinking in the Conservative Party. I'm keen on this especially given we're also in government making it much harder to leading figures to burst into thoughtful song - the dour, dull business of government 'twas ever a drag on ideas. The thinking seems to revolve around three themes: being altogether jollier, escaping the legacy of Thatcherism, and making a 21st century case for capitalism.

Now this all sound like a slightly updated version of Reaganism (for the record, the USA's best post-war president and a man whose ideas still resonate in their defence of freedom, community and a sunnier life) but underneath is covers over the gaping chasm in the UK's Conservative Party. This isn't a matter of policy nuance but something much more fundamental, a sort of cavaliers and roundheads divide between those wanting a stern parental grip on society and those who think a load more freedom is a great idea.

It's true to say that Conservatives have a sort of on/off love affair with liberalism - David Cameron famously described himself as a 'liberal conservative', a tag that raised the ire of the more autocratically-inclined in the party despite Cameron repeatedly demonstrating his illiberalism. Elsewhere - in what is probably the mainstream of the party - support for illiberal ideas like ID cards, stricter licensing laws, minimum pricing for alcohol, chasing immigrants about with slightly racist posters, and wanting controls on the Internet in the vain hope they will stop teenaged boys looking at pornography.

So when Ruth Davidson, probably the most shining champion of Cameron's liberal conservatism says:

“We look a bit joyless, to be fair. A bit authoritarian, sometimes”.

I have two conflicting reactions. The first is positive, fist-pumping agreement - we really need to stop nannying and fussing over the public as if they're unable to make any decisions at all without the gentle guiding (big stick wielding) hand to the paternal state. So well said, Ruth, well said.

The second reaction is that Ruth is a raging hypocrite - after all:

“Support for alcohol minimum pricing represents a major policy shift for the Scottish Conservatives. It follows my commitment as leader to undertake a widespread review of policy.

“I am delighted that we have managed to secure two major concessions which will reassure the retail industry following productive negotiations with the Health Secretary.”

Here's a policy that is harmful and stupid in equal measure, is the epitome of joyless authoritarianism and Ruth Davidson walked her Scottish Tories into voting for it.

If the future for the Party lies in being more fun, less fussy and more libertarian (a view that seems to have its champion more in Liz Truss than Ruth Davidson) then we need to put an end to things like minimum pricing, sugar taxes, aggressive benefit sanctions, ever expanding demands for ID, and stupid immigration policies that prevent businesses getting the skilled labour they need to compete in the global race David Cameron was always banging on about. Above all we should start treating the British public as adult friends and neighbours who we want to help get along, support when they're in trouble and care for when upset or ill. What we're getting instead is rampant fussbucketry that seems to view people as slightly retarded eleven-year-olds who can only survive under the benign, authoritarian gaze of a nanny state.

Ruth Davidson is right, the Conservative Party needs to be less authoritarian. To to this we should start by not proposing authoritarian policies. It might just help!

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The Hegemony of Nanny

Hilaire Belloc penned a cautionary tale about Jim who ran away from nurse and was eaten by a lion. It ends like this:

When Nurse informed his Parents, they
Were more Concerned than I can say:--
His Mother, as She dried her eyes,
Said, ``Well--it gives me no surprise,
He would not do as he was told!''
His Father, who was self-controlled,
Bade all the children round attend
To James's miserable end,
And always keep a-hold of Nurse
For fear of finding something worse. 

A summation of our governments' current outlook. We are badly behaved children who are at risk from whole prides of terrible lions - lions clutching burgers, lions pushing cigarettes, lions in bars serving us gin slings with a smile and lions urging us to have a little flutter on the ponies. And, as uncontrolled, ignorant children we must be protected, must be made to hold tightly to nurse so as these dreadful things do not harm us.

The masters who command this attachment to nanny do so for our own good. And for the good of society. Those devilous lions are a temptation into ways of sin, of the worst two sins: disobeying the government and putting our health at risk (thereby causing the masters to expend money caring for us). The problem is that we do not learn the lesson of Jim and continue to shun nanny's apron strings for the will o' the wisp that is private pleasure. We will not behave. As John Keats put it:

There was a naughty boy,
A naughty boy was he,
He would not stop at home,
He could not quiet be-

Off we go, playing, singing, writing poems, drinking beer, smoking and sticking our tongue out at nanny. So nanny goes to government reminding them of Jim's sorry end and how we are not behaving as that government has ordered. So more rules are set, more fences built and stronger apron strings tied, to the point of choking us. We cannot be allowed to disobey, we cannot be permitted to cost the government money by damaging our health.

Nanny is happy, the new rules are in place. Those unruly children will be brought to heel, made to comply and to conform. But we know better, we know that we'll break the rules - the more there are the more we'll break. We know we will seek out fun, enjoy forbidden pleasures that children in past times enjoyed.

And we know that nanny will return again to the government asking for more - more rules for nanny to crush our spirits, more rules that create a virtue of rule-breaking, more about those two great sins - disobedience and indulgence. For now the power is with nanny but when every pleasure is a sin, when every indulgence forbidden - what then? Then there'll be a reckoning.

And a return to pleasure. As a great sage once said:

“Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.” 

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Today's nannying jobsworth...

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Via Arfur Daley on Facebook:

Fires at an historic city centre pub will have to be put out after a landlord was told it was causing pollution following a passer-by's complaint about smoke in the street.

Graham Rowson, 60, has traditionally lit three fires for customers at his real ale bar so they can keep warm over the Christmas period.

But officials at Preston City Council have now said his 115-year-old Black Horse pub is pumping out fumes - putting it in breach of smokeless zone rules.

Apparently someone (anonymously) complained and the Council leapt into action to force a chilly Christmas onto a popular pub.

It makes you want to cry - such thoughtless, uncaring intervention based on nothing more than the word of some busybody.

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The prohibitionists now want fruit juice to be called wine...

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There is no end to the nannying. Now they want the EU to "redefine" wine to include drinks that don't have alcohol in them:

Earl Howe, the health minister, claimed that the market for low or reduced alcohol “wines” has been “increasingly rapidly” in recent years.

He insisted that promoting low alcohol wines was in customers’ “best long term interests”, amid concerns over a rise in liver diseases and cancers linked to alcohol consumption.

“The government has consistently made the case for change to the EU wine rules to permit reduced and de-alcoholised products to be called wines,” he said. 

It is interesting to note that the rhetoric of the prohibitionists is changing. Now it's a gentle game that combines divide and rule with bureaucratic lobbying. No-one has a problem with businesses creating low alcohol products by removing alcohol from wine. And that is what the market is doing - without any nudging or prompting from the bureaucrats:

Almost seven million bottles of wine with an alcohol content of less than 8.5 per cent were sold in Britain in 2011, two million more bottles than the year before. 

So leave well alone. And remember:
 

Victoria Moore, the Telegraph’s wine critic, said wine drinkers were already being “clobbered” with high taxes and a stream of political rhetoric warning them not to over-indulge.

Some naturally low-alcohol wines such as moscato from Italy, and German riesling, can be tasty, she said.

However, wine that has been through an artificial process, akin to decaffeinating coffee beans, generally tastes "rubbish".

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Quote of the day....modern government defined

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From Peter Saunders:

You see, I am your government, which means I care about you and I know best what is good for you. It's my job to nag you and boss you around. That's what living in a free and democratic country means: I force you to vote, then I take your money, then I use it to tell you how to live your lives. You'll thank me for it one day.

This truth is what we must fight, just as we must fight the misguided belief that all the money exists only because of government - we must try to reclaim what is ours: independence, personal responsibility and command of our own affairs.

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For the children...

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This is beyond stupid. It is deeply wrong and insulting to parents:

"It is with regret that from now on we will be unable to accommodate parents wishing to spectate at our sports fixtures unless they are in possession of an up-to-date Swindon Council CRB check.

"At Isambard we take safeguarding very seriously and because of this we are unable to leave gates open for access to sporting venues at anytime during the school day.

"The current access arrangements are frustrating for both Isambard staff and parents and have recently resulted in reception staff and PE staff being on the receiving end of verbal abuse from parents who have become frustrated trying to get into or out of the school." 

There is absolutely no need at all for this policy. None whatsoever. But we can expect more and more of this as headteachers and governors get ever more panicked over safeguarding issues.

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The public aren't so keen on nannying fussbucketry after all!

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A little glimmer of hope. A small break in the dark New Puritan clouds. It seems that the British public - or a large proportion of it - aren't so very keen on nanny:

There is little support for nannying.  Asked if Government should provide advice on what foods to eat and how much to drink, 48 per cent disagree and only 22 per cent agree.

I'm guess that the fussbuckets will carry on - after all they know so much better. Shame then that that British public rather doubts that they do:

Asked if politicians and civil servants are well-equipped to make personal decisions on their behalf, nearly two out of three Britons (65 per cent) disagree, versus only 9 per cent who agree.

Perhaps, in the light of these findings the Church of Public Health will back off a little especially given that the good old British public things their latest wheeze, plain packs for fags, won't work and is an imposition.

Just a quarter of people in the UK (28 per cent) think that selling cigarettes in plain packaging would discourage younger people from taking up smoking, the stance that health organisations are currently taking to push the law in this territory. Only 25 per cent of smokers agree that plain packs would put children off trying cigarettes.

And all the evidence suggests that the British public have got it right.

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Nannying Leeds Councillors want an anti-smoking tsar

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Leeds Councillors have been spending their time fruitfully in looking at the terrible scourge of smoking in the city - forget jobs, housing, regeneration and care for the old, let's talk about smoking! And they want a sort of Nannying Fussbucket In Chief:

“To coincide with the launch of the Leeds Tobacco Action Plan, the council works towards identifying and securing a serving councillor to act as Leeds’ tobacco control champion.”

Yes folks - the "Anti-Smoking Tsar" arrives! And, in the tradition of Russian autocrats, this person will focus on lecturing the poor because they sin too much:

Councillors called for more enforcement work in worst-hit areas of the city and asked for a report about the work.

You see those little pleasures - like a fag - are to be discouraged. These councillors won't be thinking about why that single, pregnant, nineteen-year-old is smoking (it's a pretty grim life on the sixth floor of a council block in Armley - so why bother about the long-term) but will instead be moralising, lecturing and berating her for being such a terrible person.

Finally those Leeds Councillors want to get rid of a few more jobs in Bradford - and to encourage the criminals - by supporting plain packaging for cigarettes.

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What Nanny's state will be like?

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This could happen - just think about it!

h/t to Dick P ....

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You couldn't make it up! More from Bloomberg's health fascism

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Apparently Bloomberg's Nanny State (formerly known as New York City) is banning food donations:

"In conjunction with a mayoral task force and the Health Department, the Department of Homeless Services has recently started enforcing new nutritional rules for food served at city shelters. Since DHS can't assess the nutritional content of donated food, shelters have to turn away good Samaritans," 

Totally barking mad - heaven alone knows what the justification is - or rather here it is:

DHS Commissioner Seth Diamond says the ban on food donations is consistent with Mayor Bloomberg’s emphasis on improving nutrition for all New Yorkers. A new interagency document controls what can be served at facilities — dictating serving sizes as well as salt, fat and calorie contents, plus fiber minimums and condiment recommendations. 

So New York's homeless and hungry will get Mr Bloomberg's State Approved Diet.

Tell me, is the alternative to this man so truly awful that they keep re-electing him?

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Entering an Age of Disapproval

Over the weekend my reaction to the news that David Cameron was insisting on introducing a minimum price for alcohol fluctuated between resignation, anger and cynicism. Resignation at the seeming inevitability of the nannying fussbucket’s victory. Anger that a Conservative prime minister thinks it OK to muck about with prices for the purpose of social engineering. And cynicism in that Cameron appears to be chucking some red meat to the health lobby ahead of the final stages of the Health Bill’s progress through parliament.

With the new week came the dawning realisation that Cameron is merely a mirror of a depressing age – his championing of nannying fussbucketry reflects his penchant for government by dinner party and a resulting tendency for Mumsnet-style kneejerk reactions to perceived problems in “society”.

It’s not just minimum pricing for alcohol, the PM has moaned about chocolate oranges in W H Smiths, the “premature sexualisation” of girls (but for some reason not boys) and has proposed ‘fat taxes’ on the ‘most unhealthy foods’.  Whenever Cameron wants a positive headline he turns to the judgement of other people’s lifestyles and other people’s choices. And in doing this he is simply reflecting the age in which we now live.

We have entered an “Age of Disapproval” – after several decades of growing openness, personal freedom and choice, society has looked at itself and decided it doesn’t approve. Where once liberalisation was applauded, it is now seen as license, as an encouragement to decadent hedonism. We have created a new set of sins – things of which we disapprove.

A few years ago a good night out was something good – a chance to blow away some cobwebs, let our hair down and enjoy ourselves. Now it’s binge-drinking and it's unhealthy - a terrible burden on society and especially on that most sacred of sacred cows, the National Health Service.

There was a time in all our lives when the thing that hit the spot was a full English breakfast – bacon, sausage, fried eggs, hash browns or fried bread, maybe a bit of black pudding and perhaps some beans. After that big night out this great meal set us right again. Now these meals are cancer-giving, artery-clogging and sinful – we disapprove of such indulgence with talk of rising obesity and, you’ve guessed it, the great cost to the NHS of such a terrible diet.

Not so far back in time, we saw smoking as a bad habit but tolerated the smoker – it was their choice after all. We liked the fact that places made provision for smokers while allowing non-smokers space as well. Today, smoking sits as the thing we disapprove of the most. And we don’t stop at condemning the sin – we ostracise and exclude the sinner as well, casting them out into the cold and rain, making them second-class citizens, like pariahs.

Everywhere we look, we see disapproval – complaints about the covers of so-called ‘lads mags’, frowning criticism of models for being too thin and condemnation of mothers for putting a cream egg in their child’s lunchbox. Politicians, doctors, scientists, journalists and pundits fall over each other to express disapproval of the choices other people make. And this disapproval is followed by calls for action to prevent such evil from spreading – whether we’re talking about school dinners, the ‘sexualisation’ of children or me having a very large whisky at the end of a long day.

Right now the pendulum is swinging away from personal choice and private freedom towards a controlling state and society. The “Age of Disapproval” chalks up a new victory with each passing day – with every one of these little wins making society a little less free and life for so many a little less pleasant.

But this is fine for the New Puritans, prohibitionists and healthy living fanatics – it means that people are directed towards an approved, purposeful and sober life and away from indulgent, hedonism and pleasure for the sheer joy of its experience.

It isn’t a better world. It is a dreary, depressing, controlling culture where we may live a little longer but that extra will be free from pleasure, without the chance of indulgence.

It truly is an “Age of Disapproval”.

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Labour's still wedded to the license state

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The bizarre polity that is modern India was - under its then perennial Congress Party rule - described as the 'license raj":

This is when India got its License Raj, the bureaucratic control over the economy. Not only did the Indian Government require businesses get bureaucratic approval for expanding productive capacity, businesses had to have bureaucratic approval for laying off workers and for shutting down. When a business was losing money the Government would prevent them from shutting down and to keep the business going would provide assistance and subsidies. When a business was hopeless an owner might take away, illegally, all the equipment that could be moved and disappear themselves. In such cases the Government would try to keep the business functioning by means of subsidies to the employees. One can imagine how chaotic and unproductive a business would be under such conditions. 

Every economic act, every profession, every industry acts solely on the basis of licenses granted by government. Not only was this corrupt but it crippled the Indian economy for a generation.

This lesson in failure - with India falling ever further behind places like South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and, latterly, China - is still ignored by social democrats. Ignored by those who see the purpose of the state as the direction of individual actions to a greater good - or rather to the preferences and interests of the political class.

Such a man is Ivan Lewis MP, the Labour culture shadow - Mr Lewis wishes to license journalists:

Lewis will suggest that newspapers should introduce a system whereby journalists could be struck off a register for malpractice.

Not only is this illiberal - but then we expect that from Labour politicians - it is stupid and enforceable only by arbitrary power. It would represent the first step towards the social democrat establishment controlling the output of the press, a big stride towards the hounding of journalists for the grave sin of criticising Labour politicians. And it is wrong.

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Nannying planners in Wrexham want to ban food outlets near schools

Wrexham's councillors are considering whether to adopt a new rule effectively banning new fast food outlets near schools:

The guidance, which is currently out for consultation, would prevent takeaway outlets from gaining planning permission within 400 metres of a school or college. The move has been prompted by a report from governmental advisory service Public Health Wales, which found that around one in four eightand nine-year-olds in the Wrexham County Borough Council area is either overweight or obese.

Why do I think this is just an exercise in making planners and councillors feel good and actually it won't make a blind bit of difference to the fatness of Wrexham's school children?

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A snapshot of our nannying, controlling, interfering, public sector

Just today:

1.       The Royal Town Planning Institute called for a new enforcement regime on minor unpermitted developments  - these changes are currently permitted as they are not worth pursuing and there are rarely objections. The RTPI wants a planning application to be submitted retrospectively – great business for its members and a further imposition on ordinary householders.

2.       Kevin Barron, Labour’s nanny-in-chief is in a froth over the tobacco industry providing funding for the retailers of its products in their battle against the lunatic proposals for the banning of tobacco displays

3.       Teachers at a Warwickshire primary school told parents to discipline boys “after they were spotted making gun-shapes with their hands

4.       Police Officers are being provided with guidance on diet, exercise, hobbies and even bedtime routine – all in the interest of providing “...staff with advice and support to enable them to function effectively while maintaining a good work-life balance.”

5.       Back with evil tobacco, the launch of an ultra-slim cigarette – Vogue Perle – has been criticised as “scheming, calculating and cynical” by the usual nannying culprits. Apparently because it might be preferred by young women (not that these campaigners provide any evidence of course).

Everywhere we look interfering, judging, controlling and bullying people are trying to undermine our choices as free individuals. It’s enough to make you cry.

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If we’re to have bread and circuses – we’ll need some acrobats!

Yesterday two things struck me – as they do sometimes.

The Riverside Studios in Hammersmith and the Derby and Exeter theatres were among the 206 theatre companies, galleries and arts venues who learned yesterday their government grants would dry up in 2012.

Others had their budgets significantly reduced, with the critically acclaimed Almeida Theatre Company in Islington, north London seeing their grant cut from £1 million this year to £700,000 in 2015 – a real terms drop of 39 per cent.

This was amongst announcements about funding from the Arts Council as part of an overall reduction (to £957 million) of 15% in grants to nationally-funded bodies.

At the same time I read this:

“Health experts are trying to see a shift in public eating habits which could add to improved general health. ASK is a unique Greater Manchester initiative to reduce the amount of salt added to food.

“Participating businesses display the ASK logo in their windows and use cards on tables to demonstrate their support. Most food cafes and restaurants already season their food adequately. For customers, reaching for salt has become a habit rather than it being a necessity.”

Now leaving aside the fact that salt does not cause hypertension (it is a risk factor for people who already have hypertension), this encapsulates the priorities of government to me. There may be a case for reducing funding of pleasure, animation and fun in a time of austerity but I am deeply offended when, at the same time as theatres close, art galleries reduce their hours and dance troops fold, we are spending money on scaring people about health risks.

On the back of other attacks on our simple pleasures – fags, booze, red meat, bacon – this speaks to me of a society obsessed with survival at the expense of pleasure. A place where the little tin gods of the medical profession suck up ever larger sums of other peoples’ cash to berate us with their “healthy living” obsessions.

All this while festivals go unfunded, arts groups fold and films aren’t made. A dour, dreary place filled with safety lectures, health concerns and a dread fear of anything that might seem a little untidy.

So here’s a little suggestion – let’s take all the cash we spend on nannying fussbucketry and spend it on having some fun! On plays, paintings, music, country walks, food festivals, markets – on animation and excitement. Surely that would do more to for mental health, for happiness and for health that all these dreary lectures from doctors and their pals.

After all, if we’re to have bread and circuses – we’ll need some acrobats!

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So what was it you said about passive smoking, again?

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Do I get the feeling that the nannying fussbuckets arguments are beginning to collapse - here's Dick Puddlecote reporting on this man's views:

He points out that wood smoke is twice as dangerous as that emitted by cigars and cigarettes; that diesel emissions dwarf the dangers of smoke in a casino which allows it; that passive smoke exposure is on a par with emissions from clothes dryers, popcorn poppers, candles, irons and toasters; and that nicotine itself is a benign concern.

So that just about wraps it up for the passive smoking kills argument then? So can we have our pubs back?

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Mistrust, technology and the failures of modern policing

Sir Paul Stevenson, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner (or “Scotland Yard Chief” as the papers like to put it) has observed that the police have lost the public’s trust. In what amounted to a veiled criticism of his fellow top coppers, Sir Paul said:

‘This is more to do with the psychological contract between the citizen and police. And occasionally the citizen might be forgiven for thinking the psychological contract has been broken. They are on the streets and police are in buildings and vehicles, not doing other things. That is the critical issue,' he said.

‘It is a psychological contract, we are not saying the public should do this on their own. We should be out there. We should be saying, 'we want to be on the streets on your behalf. We want to make them safe'.’

He added: ‘Too often in recent years police have fallen into the trap of engaging in social engineering and associated social work, filling gaps left by other agencies. In years gone by we have lost the sense of the importance of visible street patrols - effecting as best as we can, uniform governance of the streets and public places, owning the streets on behalf of the public so that we can enjoy using them.’

Over recent days I have had cause to think about the relationship between the ordinary person and the police. For various reasons the matter of the police, how they operate and the nature of modern policing has cropped up and Sir Paul’s observations struck me as being significant.

Last week, I chaired Bradford Council’s Safer & Stronger Communities Scrutiny Committee where we received a report into “serious acquisitive crime” from officials including a police inspector. In case you don’t know, “serious acquisitive crime” covers domestic burglary, theft of and from a motor vehicle, and robbery.

During the discussion one councillor – as it happens, a Labour councillor – was uncompromising in his criticism of the police’s performance. And it’s hard to take issue with him (representing as he does one of Bradford’s most crime-ridden wards) as he complained that there had been too many excuses for the failure to reduce levels of burglary in the City. What worried me was that the police response was to wave shrouds – ‘it will get much worse after the cuts’ – rather than to address the historic failure. I am reminded that West Yorkshire Police could find 1,600 officers to police fewer that a thousand protesters but are unable to get enough policemen out there catching burglars.

Instead, as Sir Paul noted, police officers are safely and warmly ensconced in comfortable offices away from the questioning, informed engagement with the public that should be the essence of policing. The system falls back on failed technology as a replacement for real people.

CCTV – in Bradford city centre where millions has been spent installing one of the most comprehensive systems for surveillance, the pictures cannot (in most cases) be used for evidential purposes as they are not good enough. And where cameras can zoom in on a suspect, the people operating the system fail more often than not to do this. A waste of money as a system but worse, an excuse for the police to withdraw from patrolling on foot

ANPR – again police in Bradford are forever extolling the wonders of the “automatic number plate recognition” system that rings the city. But this really achieves nothing where plates are obscured, cars are stolen or the numbers are false. Again we replace engaging with the public by sitting before a screen.

Helicopters – hardly a night passes without the police chopper taking to the skies tracking some criminal of other. But again, the chopper can’t do anything other than follow someone, can’t act quickly enough to deal with events on the ground and is very expensive. People want coppers on the streets not in the skies.

Fancy radio systems – police forces spent untold millions on sophisticated radio systems allowing greater communications “security” and a more rapid, secure response. Which, of course, is why every copper uses the mobile phone!

I could go on to talk about over-complicated statistical analysis systems, some really sexy GIS (as a map geek I love this but as a politician and taxpayer I see no point) and loads of really smart souped up motors to hare about in. This is a failed system.

I now hear – from the decent folk who used to trust the police - endless stories of the rudeness of police officers, the targeting of minor offences by middle class people and a complete obsession with minor infractions. If the “twitter joke trial” was a one-off example of over-reaction it would be serious but it is not a one-off example of our criminal justice system’s overkill. Just this weekend I’ve heard of how police use questioning to trap people into admission (before any arrest or issuing of a ticket), how an angry motoring incident is blown up into arrests, charges and criminal investigation and how police officers collude to protect one of their own from allegations of assault.

I do not know whether all these tales are true but the police should be very concerned. Decent, folk living ordinary lives and causing no trouble no longer trust or respect the police – they see the cops not as a community force protecting them but as a threat. Almost as some kind of occupying army – the enforcement arm of a nannying, interfering, controlling Government.

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Anyone know how to make moonshine? Thoughts on the economics of minimum booze prices.

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Today the Prime Minister came out in support of a proposal to introduce a 50p per unit minimum price for alcohol within Greater Manchester. Now, leaving aside the absence of any border control in this conurbation and the obvious fact that driving from Bolton to a supermarket in Bacup isn’t exactly a great trip, we should maybe consider the economic impact of minimum pricing.

The core argument – and we have to start somewhere – is that a relatively low minimum price will only impact off-sales since pub and restaurant sales are typically over £1 per unit. Here’s one study’s conclusions:

Only alcohol sold for home consumption would see an increase in prices, and reduction in sales would generally spare pubs and restaurants. While consuming more units of alcohol than other groups, higher income and high managerial groups would be less affected by this pricing policy.

However, this isn’t the view held everywhere. The Centre for Economics and Business Research (in a study funded by a brewer) criticised the theoretical basis for the argument and the evidence. Most importantly, while the evidence shows (not surprisingly) a relationship between price and consumption this is weakest for the heaviest drinkers.

However, when overall alcohol consumption levels and prices are taken into account, heavier drinkers are less responsive to price changes than moderate drinkers. The University of Sheffield study estimates that hazardous and harmful drinkers have a
price elasticity of -0.21 across all alcohol products – this implies that a 10 per cent increase in price would only lead to a 2.1 per cent reduction in consumption amongst heavier drinkers.

However, we still see a “positive” impact from minimum pricing albeit a small one. However, this is a pretty blunt implement that, in effect, targets the poor (note the findings from the first study cited). More importantly, minimum pricing has an impact on supply – there is an incentive for the producers of alcohol sold currently at below 50p per unit to increase their supply so as to take advantage of the excess profits implied by the minimum price. With higher profits the producers (and their retail agents) can afford to invest more in promotion.

The most likely outcome of this surplus reducing investment is promotion targeted at drinkers currently buying alcohol at higher prices – either in pubs or for home consumption. The impact of this would be negative for the pub trade and counter to the expectations of those promoting minimum pricing. And we have not yet considered moonshine!

All-in-all it seems unlikely that minimum pricing will address the core issue of the ‘problem drinker’. And we have to set this against falling consumption and fewer alcohol-related emergency admissions. Whatever we’re doing at present, its working and, rather than penalising people for only being able to afford cheap booze, maybe we should focus our efforts on the relatively small number of problem drinkers.

Anyone know how to make moonshine?

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