Minney.org Ltd

 

I am very concerned to see the debate going on in Scotland over minimum alcohol pricing.  I hope that MPs will have more integrity in the Palace of Westminster. I hope you will recognise the 30-40 000 lives, and around £2.7bn NHS costs, associated with alcohol problems every year.

 

You and I buy wine and beer at prices probably a lot higher than the unit minimum price of 50p.  You and I are, to tell the truth, probably fairly ordinary – we don’t drink to excess, smoke to excess, nor are we paid vastly outside the normal range.  So who will actually be affected by this minimum price?  I suspect, as do many in the health community, that it will only affect those who are currently killing themselves with cheap drink, and who – frankly – deserve better.

 

You have a history of taking a principled line, of stopping “entertainment and social activities” which are degrading.  I trust you will support a minimum unit price.  I wonder if this is a good time to suggest that alcohol should not be available for sale in shops that also sell food?  Off-licenses can become dens of iniquity again, selling cigarettes, alcohol, and perhaps permitted to sell those foods classified as “snacks” which attract the higher VAT rate.  Supermarkets can restore food to their shelves, food which was pushed out to make room for acres (sorry hectares – we didn’t join the metric system that long ago) of drink – usually at cut prices and heavily promoted.  It would inconvenience me, and it would probably inconvenience you. But it would reduce drinking from volume to pleasure, and would also give an opportunity for off-licenses to reopen (many seem to have been driven out of business by the convenience of supermarket drink) with the regeneration on high streets and jobs that creates.  It has to be a winning formula.

 

Sincerely

 

Hugo