Uncorrected Evidence 368

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 368-iii

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

HEALTH COMMITTEE

ALCOHOL

Thursday 14 May 2009

DR PETRA MEIER and MS LILA RABINOVICH

MR DAVID NORTH, MR JEREMY BLOOD,

MR JEREMY BEADLES and MR MIKE BENNER

MR MIKE CRAIK

Evidence heard in Public Questions 258 - 458

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Health Committee

on Thursday 14 May 2009

Members present

Mr Kevin Barron, in the Chair

Charlotte Atkins

Sandra Gidley

Stephen Hesford

Dr Doug Naysmith

Mr Lee Scott

Dr Howard Stoate

Dr Richard Taylor

________________

Witnesses: Dr Petra Meier, University of Sheffield, and Ms Lila Rabinovich, RAND, gave evidence.

Q258 Chairman: Good morning. Could I welcome you to what is our third evidence session of our inquiry into alcohol. I wonder if I could ask you if you could give us your names and current positions you hold for the record.

Ms Rabinovich: My name is Lila Rabinovich. I am an analyst at RAND Europe. We are a public policy research organisation, independent and not-for-profit.

Dr Meier: My name is Dr Petra Meier. I am a senior lecturer in public health at Sheffield University.

Q259 Chairman: Thank you. I have got an opening question for both of you. I wonder if you could summarise the most important findings of your two different reports, and how can you be so certain that they are robust?

Ms Rabinovich: We conducted a study for the European Commission. They wanted us to look at the link between alcohol affordability, consumption and harms across the whole of the EU. They also wanted us to give them an overview of alcohol taxation in the region and to discuss whether price was an adequate policy lever in light of the findings of our research. Some of the key findings regarding taxation were that the minimum excise duty rates set by the European Union have not changed since 1992 which means there has been about a 30% reduction in the real value of taxation. It is not entirely significant in that most countries across the EU exceed the minimum rate anyway, but some countries not by a very significant amount. The excise duty rates within Member States have also experienced somewhat of a decline across the EU, although this hides some differences within countries and in the UK in particular it has not been the case that there has been a significant reduction in excise duty rates. We also looked at trends in affordability of alcohol. What we found was that there has been an increase in affordability in all of the 20 countries that we had data for, except Italy. In eight out of the 20 countries it has gone up by more than 50% since 1996, which is a very significant amount. In the UK it has gone up by about 70%, which is more than most other western European countries. We found that most of the change in affordability was driven by changes in disposable income, so about 84% of the change in affordability was driven by increases in income and only about 16% driven by changes in the relative price of alcohol.

Q260 Chairman: We may cover some of these more detailed areas in later questions. Petra, I wonder if I could ask you the most important findings and how robust is your report?

Dr Meier: This was a study funded by the Department of Health to do systematic reviews of the evidence linking price to consumption, price to harm, consumption to harm and to look at advertising and consumption. Three separate areas to do systematic reviews on. Then to model the likely effects of a range of different policy scenarios going from our general price increases through to various levels of minimum prices per unit of alcohol and also various ways of restricting off-trade promotions, price-based promotions. That was what we set out to do. The main findings from the systematic reviews are that the evidence on the link between pricing and consumption and pricing and harm is generally very strong, very consistent and has been contributed to over the last 40 years. The link between advertising and consumption is somewhat less well developed and there is indicative evidence, as we like to call it. That is if the evidence points in a certain direction but is not entirely conclusive. We have got very good evidence on the link between alcohol consumption and harm at various levels of consumption. Those are the systematic review findings. In terms of the modelling, there were two parts. First, because some of the policy options we looked at target part of the alcohol market, for example minimum pricing targets very clearly the cheaper end of the market and much more the off-trade than the on-trade, so more the supermarkets and off-licences compared to pubs, clubs and restaurants, it was important to first get a feeling for who consumes what kind of alcohol and what are the drinking preferences. The main findings there were that what we call the harmful drinkers, so probably the top 10% of the drinking population who drink most of the alcohol, have got a very clear preference for cheaper alcohol, on average they pay about 70p per unit, whereas moderate drinkers, the people who drink less than the Government's recommended limit, would pay about Ł1 per unit on average. That hides a variation between the off-trade and the on-trade. In the off-trade the units are much, much cheaper. The average is about 42p per unit in the off-trade and Ł1.12 in the on-trade, so quite a significant difference there. In both settings harmful drinkers drink more cheaply and pay less per unit of alcohol than moderate drinkers. There is obviously a vast difference in terms of how much is consumed. Harmful drinkers on average consume 3,600 units a year and moderate drinkers 240 units a year. That is the difference we are talking about if we look at the different ones.

Q261 Sandra Gidley: Sorry, can you say those figures again?

Dr Meier: 3,600 units a year for the harmful drinkers and 240 for an average moderate drinker. Those kinds of differences are important when we look at the policy effects because, of course, if you change unit price in particular harmful drinkers will be affected more by these policy changes just by virtue of them drinking so many more units. Any change that you make on the average unit price in the off-trade will affect harmful drinkers more because they drink more and also pay less on average per unit so any increase in price would be more pronounced. Generally all policies that lead to price increases are effective at reducing harms in health, employment and in terms of crime levels. General price increases, those that target the whole market, tend to be somewhat more effective at reducing harms across the board. Where minimum prices are particularly effective is at targeting cheap alcohol and therefore having a proportionately larger effect on people who drink more, so the difference between overall harms and the targeting of the different policies. I know there has been a lot of discussion about different levels of minimum pricing, but to give you an idea of how different minimum prices work on consumption and that feeds through ---

Q262 Chairman: We will be asking questions on that. I think what you are both saying is there is a responsiveness of demand to changes in the price of alcohol and you both agree with that as a general principle.

Ms Rabinovich: Yes, although it is worth noting that in the case of our research we looked at the responsiveness of consumption with regards to changes in affordability which is a composite measure of price and income. We did not look specifically at price.

Q263 Dr Stoate: I want to tease out a few more details about minimum pricing because obviously that is an important and very topical issue at the moment. I would like to know what you think would be the effects, for example, of a 50 pence minimum price for a unit compared perhaps to a 40 pence minimum. What do you think would be the relative effect firstly on heavy drinkers and then on moderate drinkers?

Dr Meier: The effectiveness of minimum unit prices goes up quite steeply, so whilst a 20p minimum unit price does not have much of an effect at all on death rates, hospital admissions and so on, you see increases at 30, 40 or 50p. For example, in terms of deaths, 30p would be 300 deaths a year, 40p would be 1,400 deaths a year and 50p would be 3,400. It is a steep increase in effectiveness.

Q264 Dr Stoate: You are saying quite categorically that if the minimum price was 50p per unit, which would make a bottle of wine Ł4.50, you are talking about 3,000 deaths a year saved?

Dr Meier: Yes.

Q265 Dr Stoate: How robust is that data? Where is your scientific evidence?

Dr Meier: The scientific evidence comes from a variety of sources. We have used pricing data from the Expenditure and Food Survey and cross-validated that with data from ACNielsen. We have got consumption data from the General Household Survey and general purchasing levels from the Expenditure and Food Survey. We used the UK and international literature for the relationship between consumption and harm. In terms of death rates there are good studies, meta-analyses, on how changes in consumption relate to changes in mortality rates. Liverpool John Moores University has published a report on alcohol attributable fractions that tells us something about what proportion of morbidity in 48 different conditions is associated with alcohol. If you have got cancer rates, for example, it would tell you what proportion of certain cancers is attributable to alcohol. We have used those to estimate what consumption change would relate to in terms of harm outcomes. For the link between price and consumption we have used econometric modelling using the Expenditure and Food Survey data.

Q266 Dr Stoate: You really are categorically saying that if alcohol were 50 pence a unit we would save as many deaths as those on the road every year?

Dr Meier: In the same region, yes. There is a confidence interval around them and certain assumptions are related to some uncertainties in the model but, yes, broadly speaking that is the case.

Q267 Dr Stoate: That is an incredible figure, it really is. One of the things we hear against the idea of more pricing is that it would disproportionately punish moderate and sensible drinkers who would find their prices going up when they have not got a problem. Do you think that is an issue or is this such an important figure that it outweighs those sorts of considerations?

Dr Meier: The effect on spending is also entirely disproportionate. For example, a moderate drinker would only be expected to pay an extra Ł12 a year whereas a harmful drinker, because they buy so many units, and cheaper units at that, would be expected to pay an extra Ł160 a year. For the moderate drinker that is a pound a month. It is not up to us to weigh that. It is up to policymakers to weigh up whether that is a significant change in moderate drinkers' spending or a disproportionate response. Just to put that into context, of course moderate drinkers are not affected by it very much because they drink more expensive alcohol, more of the alcohol in the on-trade, which is not affected, and harmful drinkers are using the kind of alcohol that is targeted by the policy.

Q268 Dr Stoate: Your view is that the moderate drinkers would be marginally affected but heavy drinkers would be hugely benefited?

Dr Meier: Both would be benefited. About 20% of the deaths saved are in the moderate drinkers' group which could be explained, for example, by road deaths, pedestrian deaths that would be avoided if people are not drinking. About 20% of the benefits come from the moderate drinkers although, of course, the harms are mainly concentrated in the harmful drinkers.

Q269 Mr Scott: How do you think that minimum pricing would take effect on off-trade sales as compared to on-trade? That is a question for both of you.

Dr Meier: It depends at the level that you set the minimum price.

Q270 Mr Scott: Let us say 50p.

Dr Meier: Roughly 70% of the off-trade sector would be affected to different degrees. The value lagers and so on would be affected more than your bottle of Jacob's Creek, which is already above that. Generally the off-trade sector would be much more affected. The average unit price in the on-trade sector is already Ł1.12 or something in that region. It would only affect that part of the on-trade sector that really sells very cheaply, which has got very extensive happy hours or free drinks for certain groups, otherwise I do not think they would be particularly affected by this.

Ms Rabinovich: I differ from Petra's view. In our research we did not do any modelling on the possible effect of the particular policies so I cannot comment except from what I have read in Petra's report.

Q271 Dr Taylor: Can we look at some other countries, and I think this is particularly to Lila. How do you respond to what Tesco's have told us in their written submission: "It is too simplistic to apportion responsibility for problem drinking to the price of alcohol alone. If low-cost alcohol were the only factor then countries such as France and Spain, where prices are much lower than in the UK, would have similar problems, and countries like Finland, where alcohol is expensive and its availability restricted, would not". How do you counter that?

Ms Rabinovich: There are many aspects to that question. First of all, at no point in our research do we say that price is the only factor influencing consumption. In fact, it is very clear that it is not and we know that cultural and socioeconomic changes also have an important effect, for example urbanisation, changes in taste, competition from non-alcoholic drinks, all of them seem to have an effect on consumption as well. Having said that, the other issue is we do not compare the way in which individual countries respond to price. We do not compare how Finnish people respond to price versus UK people. What we look at is relative to what the situation was in 1996, which is the first year for which we have data, how has affordability changed and how have people within individual countries responded to that change. What happened in Finland, for example, which traditionally had much higher prices than most other European countries, was that affordability went up by a very significant amount because prices went down when taxation went down in 2004, but it was a trend that had begun earlier. Consumption went up and harms went up as well. France and Spain are completely different countries and affordability did go up in those countries but the changes in harms and consumption do not match the changes that were experienced in Finland. It is not about comparing one country with another, it is about looking at what happened relative to an earlier situation within each country.

Q272 Dr Taylor: You accept that there are many other factors as well as price?

Ms Rabinovich: Absolutely, yes. If that was not the case then Finland, which has a high price, would not have a problem, an increase in taxation and price would get rid of all alcohol consumption or alcohol harms, but that is never the case. Pricing policy can only be one of many alcohol policies.

Q273 Dr Taylor: In your experience is the culture in Finland, for example, the culture of going out to get drunk rather than just going out to have a drink?

Ms Rabinovich: I cannot say other than from what we have seen in the literature and the evidence appears to be that there has been an increase in binge drinking and going out to drink until one is drunk in Finland. Further than that I cannot really comment, I have not been to Finland.

Q274 Dr Naysmith: The studies that you have carried out are different and looking at different things but in the same sort of area. Both studies suggest that minimum pricing would result in cost savings for the National Health Service and the criminal justice system in particular. What is the evidence for saying that? How would these cost savings be broken down?

Dr Meier: How did we arrive at the cost savings? We got unit costs for healthcare and we used Home Office figures to estimate the costs associated with each type of crime and breaking those down by violent crime and burglaries, so the crimes that are attributable to alcohol. It is probably fair to say that our evidence base on health is much wider. There are literally thousands of studies on health so the findings are likely to be much more robust. In crime there are studies but much fewer of them to tell you exactly how crime would respond to consumption changes and price changes in particular. We have been using the most recent evidence on that association and the model of that through consumption changes. Our model always looks at price changes, consumption changes and then how would consumption changes be likely to affect crimes. In terms of crimes we have used acute drinking rather than chronic drinking as the driver of crimes, your binge drinking if you will, so the maximum drinking that someone does in a day, whereas most health harms are associated with how much people drink on average.

Ms Rabinovich: Without doing any actual modelling I cannot comment on how you arrive from minimum prices to savings in health.

Q275 Dr Naysmith: Okay. A number of other people have asked how robust these studies are and you have answered that, which I assume is because you are very confident. Have your studies been attacked by anybody who thinks the findings are not as valid as you think they are?

Dr Meier: We know that there is a report that has been commissioned from CEBR to attack our study. We have been trying to get hold of it for a while now and have not been able to see it. I have to say our report has been through lots of peer review by various experts, including economists. There has been a counter-study commissioned by ASDA on pricing which was not particularly scientifically robust, so I am waiting with bated breath to see whether the CEBR study is any better than that.

Q276 Dr Naysmith: How do you know about this CEBR study?

Dr Meier: How do we know about it, because it has been hinted at in the press that there is some kind of counter-study where ---

Q277 Dr Naysmith: What does CEBR stand for?

Dr Meier: Good question! The Centre of something or other Research.

Ms Rabinovich: Business Research.

Q278 Chairman: That is something we can probably get a hold of.

Ms Rabinovich: Generally the argument seems to centre around whether or not moderate drinkers are more or less price sensitive compared to harmful drinkers. There have been a number of studies that seem to suggest that harmful drinkers are somewhat less price sensitive in the region of where if you had a 10% price increase harmful drinkers would decrease their drinking by about 3% whereas the total population would maybe reduce their drinking by about 5%. Our study approaches this slightly differently. We break down responses to different price categories to different beverage types and to off-trade or on-trade price changes, so we cannot really compare our results neatly with those very high level aggregate econometric measures. We have done this breakdown because the pricing policies under discussion do affect only part of the market so it is really important to know how people respond to the price changes in those parts of the market rather than overall alcohol over the whole population.

Q279 Dr Naysmith: Thank you. Have you had any attacks on the robustness of your findings?

Ms Rabinovich: Yes. Like our colleagues from Sheffield we did receive reports commenting on or criticising our study. In particular with the econometric analyses the criticisms were so vague that it was very hard to understand exactly what they were getting at, except they were saying that we did not use the appropriate econometric methods to conduct our analyses and if we had used more suitable means then we would have arrived at more robust results. There was no specification about what more suitable means would be. Like our colleagues in Sheffield we also had our report peer reviewed, including by econometricians. We are relatively confident.

Q280 Dr Naysmith: The measure is you are pretty confident about your findings.

Ms Rabinovich: We are. We are aware of the limitations and they have been highlighted in our reports. There are limitations on data.

Q281 Dr Naysmith: Can I move on to something else, which is how much do you think the fact that the Treasury raises a lot of money through alcohol duty influences their attitude to minimum pricing?

Dr Meier: I really would not know, sorry.

Q282 Dr Naysmith: Do you have any idea from your studies?

Ms Rabinovich: No, we can only guess.

Q283 Dr Naysmith: Would minimum pricing lead to massive profits for producers and sellers of alcohol? Would it have that perverse incentive?

Dr Meier: I do not know about a definition for "massive", but there certainly would be increases in retail revenue largely proportionate to the effects on consumption and so on. We have given headline figures in our report. One of the limitations of the report is that we have not been able to model all the supply side responses that might be possible to the introduction of a minimum price, for example whether there would be different promotional tactics going on or whether people might start including freebies with alcohol, all these kinds of things that might also have an effect on how minimum pricing works in practice. There is not any evidence out there.

Q284 Dr Naysmith: From what you said earlier about the minimum price being a pound or so for on-sales anyway, this would affect supermarkets much more than licensed premises.

Ms Rabinovich: It would affect supermarkets much more, although where the prices in supermarkets increase there is also a switching effect. If the prices become more similar to the on-trade we see quite a bit of switching back from supermarket alcohol to the on-trade sector. We also modelled some positive effect on the on-trade.

Q285 Chairman: What do you think of the Chief Medical Officer's view about the pricing of alcohol?

Dr Meier: We are glad that someone seems to have read the report and understood some of the things. I thought the introduction of the term "passive drinking" was an interesting one. We have not included a lot of those harms, so if you did you would end up with slightly different responses. We do not have a view on the right level of minimum pricing. As an academic institution we can only provide the evidence and say, "Here it is. Use it, please".

Q286 Sandra Gidley: Last week we heard that early intervention by GPs and other clinicians is effective in treating one out of every eight patients. Is there any evidence that minimum pricing would be a more effective policy than clinical intervention?

Dr Meier: No. What we have not done as yet is look at the comparative effectiveness in terms of cost-effectiveness of different things. Work on that is underway, as far as I know, but that has not been done. There is a general list of what the cost-effective policies are and brief interventions, for example, are certainly on that list, but how they have not done that. It is probably not an either/or choice. If you wanted to introduce some of both then you would need to be able to model how different policies interact with each other and at the moment we do not quite know how to do that. If you have got a change in treatment budget and a new policy on brief interventions there may be some changes in alcohol availability and a price increase but it is very difficult to model how those policies would come together.

Ms Rabinovich: There is a little bit of evidence in the drink-driving area of alcohol policy where there is some sense of how different drink-driving policies interact with each other. Fines and random breath-testing, for example, work better together than individually. Like Petra said, there is very little on how the range of different alcohol policies work together or compare in terms of cost-effectiveness.

Q287 Sandra Gidley: Are there any other cost-effective non-clinical policies that have been shown to be successful in reducing alcohol harm?

Dr Meier: Absolutely. There is quite a lot of evidence on minimum purchase age and the enforcement of minimum purchase age, so making it more difficult for underage and also intoxicated persons to get access to alcohol. There is good evidence on some of the availability issues such as licensing hours and outlet density. There is not very much in terms of cost-effectiveness, so far as I know, but certainly effectiveness research which demonstrates that if you restrict trading hours then usually you see consumption and harm going down.

Q288 Sandra Gidley: Are you saying that reducing trading hours in supermarkets would be a good idea? We have 24-hour supermarkets and 24-hour garages now which sell alcohol.

Dr Meier: In the UK it is slightly more difficult because a lot of the research especially on the trading hours is international research rather than UK research, or the UK research I am aware of in terms of the recent Licensing Act, and it is not as conclusive. There is some evidence that we will see a displacement of crime and whatever, but there is not a really clear relationship between the changes in trading hours which is probably due to the fact that affects pubs and not supermarkets. That is the international evidence. Drink-driving laws say lowering blood alcohol content levels. We have got one of the highest ones in the UK amongst European states and those states that have lowered it to 0.5 rather than 0.8, or 0.2 even, have seen drops in drink-driving related problems. Having a lower BAC level for young drivers, novice drivers, is also usually seen as cost-effective. What is less cost-effective or effective as a policy is school-based education, the public service messages, basically counter-advertising warning of the risks of alcohol and also the warning labels on product labelling generally has not been very well supported as an effective policy by recent evidence.

Q289 Sandra Gidley: Have there been countries where that has been universally adopted because here it is voluntary and about 30% of products do not have any warnings on them at all?

Dr Meier: There have been countries where it has been adopted and has produced changes in awareness or knowledge of the limits, but there was not any demonstrable effect in terms of harm reduction.

Ms Rabinovich: I am not sure if you mentioned taxation, but probably the largest body of evidence on effective interventions is on taxation and the consensus is that an increase in taxation where it leads to significant increases in price can have a very important effect in terms of reducing consumptions and harms.

Q290 Charlotte Atkins: I would like to pick up on that taxation point. What effect would "stepped taxation" have on consumption where, for instance, there is a higher tax on beer with more than a 4% alcohol by volume rating or, indeed, for wines which have a higher alcohol by volume rating as well? Does stepped taxation impact on consumption in any real way?

Dr Meier: Absolutely. Linking taxation to the strength of alcohol in the product is a very good idea in public health terms. Basically higher strength beverages do get more expensive compared to lower strength, so having an incentive to consume lower strength beers and wines, and that would certainly counteract the current trend towards stronger and stronger beers, and some countries have seen that. For example, Australia, after introducing tax relief for lower strength alcohol has seen the popularity of that increase by quite a lot. There are things that you can do with taxation to provide incentives to go for lower strength alcoholic beverages.

Q291 Charlotte Atkins: Which countries have been most successful in adopting that approach?

Dr Meier: I am only aware at the moment of research from Canada and Australia. There may be other ones but, as I say, the literature on pricing and taxation is absolutely huge.

Q292 Charlotte Atkins: Based on your research, what system of taxation would you recommend? Would you prefer a taxation approach to a minimum pricing approach? What would your advice be?

Dr Meier: We have been specifically asked not to look at taxation. We have modelled general price increases, which is not the same as taxation. General price increases are actual increases to the product price rather than taxation where the pass-through to product price may not be a one-to-one pass-through everywhere. There is some concern that supermarkets may be able to absorb some of the tax rises, for example. We do not have the data. We have not been asked to look at taxation, so it would be difficult to say from our modelling what the right taxation would be. From what we have seen on minimum pricing generally, having something that works on the basis of alcoholic strength seems to be a good idea. We would assume a similar effect if you went for taxation by ABV, but that is based more on the international evidence than our own work.

Ms Rabinovich: There is a little bit of evidence coming from the US but it is focused mostly on the on-trade where pass-through rates for increases in taxation were higher than the actual increase in taxation, so the price went up by more than the increase in taxation. That was in the on-trade and it was only in the US. There is very little evidence elsewhere of what the effect would be in terms of pass-through rates, especially in the UK where off-trade consumption is so important.

Q293 Stephen Hesford: Do liberal licensing laws encourage people to drink more?

Ms Rabinovich: There seems to be some evidence that it does insofar as where it increases opening hours and outlet density international evidence seems to suggest that encourages people to drink more so consumption and harms go up. I cannot say very much about what happened in the UK, for example, where those things did happen. Petra mentioned before about existing research being inconclusive and not terribly clear within the UK context in particular.

Dr Meier: It is probably important to see that availability works in two ways. One is in terms of making it easy for people to get hold of alcohol around the clock or in terms of walking distance, outlet density. There is also possibly a cultural signal that at the moment we do not understand very well, there is very little research. If you change the availability of alcohol towards making it more available, is that a signal for especially young people about the acceptability of drinking. That is something that is in urgent need of some proper scientific research.

Q294 Stephen Hesford: In terms of comparative studies, how do our licensing laws compare with the continent, for example?

Ms Rabinovich: We did not do a comparative analysis and did not really look at licensing laws that much either. Because there is very little evidence from across the EU on what licensing laws are in all 20 countries that we looked at, I cannot say where the UK ranks compared with the other countries. We know there are countries that have less stringent licensing laws. For example, in some places in Spain and Austria up to the early 2000s there was no licensing for on-trade or off-trade whereas in countries like Sweden and Finland licensing laws are much stricter. They are still stricter even though they have been relaxed over the last couple of decades.

Q295 Stephen Hesford: Just in terms of that narrow inquiry, what can you learn from that? What goes on in those different regimes in terms of harms, availability and those sorts of issues?

Ms Rabinovich: It is really hard to say. For example, in Scandinavia, about which a lot of research and information is available, what happened with alcohol policy was it all became more liberalised over the years, so it was not just changes in licensing. We do not know exactly the attributable proportions.

Q296 Stephen Hesford: You cannot break it down or you have not broken it down?

Ms Rabinovich: No, we have not.

Q297 Stephen Hesford: In your view, from what you have studied should supermarkets and pubs be banned from using price promotions on alcohols, like happy hours and stuff like that?

Dr Meier: We modelled the effect, not to say should they or should they not, of having restrictions on price promotions or a total ban. What I have to say about that is that assumes no change to general trading practice, so assumes that supermarkets would not then just opt for everyday low prices. Assuming they were not able to shift to everyday low prices and you had a ban that worked as intended, that would be about comparable with the 40p minimum price in terms of the overall effectiveness in terms of health and crime harms. That is just to give you a bit of a comparison on what total ban on off-trade promotions would look like.

Q298 Stephen Hesford: Are you saying that in terms of Dr Stoate's questions before about a 50p minimum price that the two would have to go hand-in-hand with banning price promotions?

Dr Meier: We have got a concern that if you just banned price promotions it would be very easy to circumvent by making the normal price drop. If you wanted to play devil's advocate you might end up with lower prices if you just banned promotions and did not do anything else. It could be an effective policy if it was in combination with something else.

Q299 Stephen Hesford: Would that be true for all markets, supermarkets, pubs, or would one be more differentially affected than others

Dr Meier: To be honest, I do not know. I assume because pub promotions are more on the basis of happy hours and not time-based promotions which run over a very long time it would be less likely that pubs would respond by lowering their everyday prices but, to be honest, I do not know. That comes under what I said before, that modelling the supply side responses to any of these policies is incredibly difficult.

Ms Rabinovich: There is a very small number of countries that we know of in the EU that have banned sales below costs in the off-trade but there is no evidence about what the effect was. This is still an area that requires further research.

Chairman: Thank you very much. We will see if we can find the CEBR study. We do know what it stands for as well. We may want to share that with you, Petra, so we can have your views on it if we do find it.

Q300 Stephen Hesford: Did you say that ASDA had done something?

Dr Meier: Yes, saying that the evidence on the link between pricing and consumption was very weak, which surprised us.

Chairman: We may pursue that as well. Could I thank both of you very much for coming along and helping us with this inquiry this morning. Thank you.

Witnesses: Mr David North, Community and Government Director, Tesco; Mr Jeremy Blood, Chief Executive, Scottish and Newcastle, British Beer and Pub Association; Mr Jeremy Beadles, Chief Executive, Wine and Spirit Trade Association; and Mr Mike Benner, Chief Executive, Campaign for Real Ale, gave evidence.

Q301 Chairman: Good morning, gentlemen. Could I thank you for coming along and helping us with this inquiry. This is our third evidence session on our inquiry into alcohol. For the record, could you give us your names and the current positions that you hold?

Mr Benner: I am Mike Benner, Chief Executive of CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, a not-for-profit consumer group.

Mr Blood: I am Jeremy Blood. I am Managing Director of Scottish and Newcastle UK, a leading brewer in the UK, but also a pub owner.

Mr Beadles: Jeremy Beadles, Chief Executive of the Wine and Spirit Trade Association.

Mr North: I am David North, Community and Government Director at Tesco.

Q302 Chairman: I have got a question for all four of you. I recognise that with four witnesses this has a tendency to go on in terms of time, so we will ask specific questions to one or two of you and we will try and keep to the timetable if that is at all possible. I do not want to shut you up, of course. Do you accept that this country has a problem with alcohol or are we just really witnessing the latest "moral panic"?

Mr Benner: Have we got a problem with alcohol consumption? No, I think that alcohol consumption per se can have ---

Q303 Chairman: I was asking about alcohol in general.

Mr Benner: Alcohol consumption can have a positive benefit in lots of people's lives. Moderate consumption of alcohol has been shown from a number of sources that it can have some health benefits. Clearly there are problems with excessive consumption of alcohol and that does lead to problems with crime and disorder. That would be my view. I think moderate consumption can be a good thing for lots of people.

Mr Blood: Yes, the way the alcohol culture operates in the United Kingdom does lead to some areas of misuse and those are well documented and we need to address those. My commercial enlightened self-interest - I hope it is enlightened - is that we want a sustainable market for our products in the future, so for us it is important that we address and recognise where alcohol is misused and the problems it causes.

Mr Beadles: Without doubt we have had an issue with problem drinking within the United Kingdom for many centuries, if not thousands of years. It is a cultural thing and a problem that we seriously need to tackle. I do think that some of the coverage over the last three years has been very high profile and I do not think there is enough understanding that consumption levels within the United Kingdom have been dropping since 2004 and binge drink statistics have also shown a drop since 2000 and 2002. We need to understand why consumption is dropping and how we can build on that and, therefore, how we can tackle problem drinking.

Mr North: I would start from the position that most people purchase alcohol and consume it responsibly, and we see in our shops that is the case. Most people buy alcohol as part of their weekly grocery shop and then consume it responsibly. I take Jeremy's point that some of the trends are helpful, however I would say in reading the reports that the Chief Medical Officer and others have produced that there are worrying trends and also issues that need to be addressed in terms of deaths from alcohol related causes or abuse, whether that is in a social or personal setting.

Q304 Chairman: Do you accept that alcohol is a potentially dangerous product?

Mr Blood: Yes, that is why you need a licence to sell it.

Q305 Chairman: So it should not be sold in the same way as eggs or bread?

Mr Benner: I think that is absolutely right. It is not comparable to baked beans or washing powder, it is a regulated product and, therefore, needs to be controlled, which is why minimum pricing could be a way of achieving that.

Q306 Chairman: Does anybody else have a view?

Mr Beadles: I would not disagree, it is a licensed product, it has a huge level of regulatory framework around it and there are 35 pieces of legislation that relate to the sale, consumption and misuse of alcohol. I think it should be seen in that regard. We have to be wary of demonising the product. The majority of consumers enjoy alcohol responsibly and the majority of producers produce fine products that the consumers enjoy.

Q307 Chairman: David, you do not have direct responsibility within Tesco for alcohol, but what is your view about selling it in the same way as eggs and bread?

Mr North: I would agree with others that it is not sold in the same way as eggs or bread, and nor should it be. If you were to come into our stores obviously you cannot purchase alcohol if you are under-18. If you come down the alcohol aisle of one of our stores you will see that we put a lot of information there for the customer so that the customer can be aware, and I would say better aware, of the consequences of abusing alcohol.

Q308 Sandra Gidley: What information? If I go down the drink aisle in any supermarket, and it is not just the drink aisles, it is as you go in and halfway through the store, the information is all about, "This one is nice and fruity, this one is dry", and all the rest of it. I have never seen any health information. Are you saying that Tesco now puts health awareness information in their alcohol aisle?

Mr North: Absolutely. I was in a number of our stores yesterday and you will see the point of sale information very visible at every few feet in the store that, for example, will tell you the Chief Medical Officer's recommendations on alcohol intake. It will tell you, for example, that it is good to drink water alongside alcohol and that you should space your consumption.

Q309 Sandra Gidley: How recently is this?

Mr Beadles: Can I step in and say that the Wine and Spirit Trade Association working with the Drink Aware Trust, which is the industry-funded charity, developed point of sale materials which reflected the Chief Medical Officer's health advice and also gave sensible drinking tips for the industry. They were produced towards September and have rolled out in a number of stores. They are not in every store yet, there is no doubt about that, but there are a number of store groups that have developed them. It is an ongoing process and we will be building it. I would be very happy to send copies to the Committee so you can see them.

Q310 Dr Stoate: Can I just ask Tesco how much money you put into the Drink Aware Trust?

Mr North: I do not have the number.

Q311 Dr Stoate: Could you provide it for us, please, it would be very useful?

Mr North: Yes, of course.

Q312 Chairman: I have a local Tesco but it does not have just an alcohol aisle. Going back five or ten years most supermarkets had an alcohol aisle but many of them do not now, they put alcohol at the ends of aisles that sell many different and varied things, do they not?

Mr North: Most of our alcohol is sold on the alcohol aisles and there are usually one or two aisles in the store.

Q313 Chairman: You fall over promotions when you walk into some supermarkets. With the size of supermarkets nowadays it could be 100 or 200 metres away from the alcohol aisle.

Mr North: Yes. You are absolutely right, Chairman, some alcohol is sold away from the alcohol aisle. Almost always those will be promotions, particularly around particular celebrations, whether it is Christmas or Easter. At the moment we have got a wine festival in our stores so you will see those products are sold on our promotion aisles in some cases.

Q314 Chairman: Do you think it is all right to promote alcohol, and I am not saying that Tesco does this but a major supermarket did, at the end of a children's clothes aisle?

Mr Beadles: I do not believe that it is appropriate to sell alcohol and to market it there. In fact, the industry codes on the subject say that alcohol should not be promoted alongside anything that would appeal to children. There will always be instances where store managers get it wrong, and we have dealt with a number of those over the past six months where consumers have complained to us that they think a product has been inappropriately placed, and in all instances we have stepped in and the retailer has removed and changed the product location.

Q315 Dr Stoate: We have a photograph here of a supermarket taken in February 2009 with children's clothing and a huge rack of wine at the end of the same aisle. Obviously it does happen.

Mr Beadles: It does happen. The industry code suggests that it should not happen, that it should not be marketed alongside that, and when consumers make representations to us we take it up with the retailers.

Q316 Sandra Gidley: Is it not right to say that store managers these days actually have very little autonomy, particularly in a large supermarket, because the placement of products is quite a fine art? You are making the store manager a bit of a scapegoat, are you not, by blaming him?

Mr Beadles: I am not intending to make him a scapegoat and that is not what I am saying. In a lot of the instances where we see it the store manager or a member of staff has been replenishing stock and got it wrong, and we do step in. We had one recently where they had just had a large shipment of teddy bears in and they were trying to find anywhere in-store to put them and one pile had ended up near a stack of beer. A consumer complained and we had them removed straight away. It is not something that the industry believes should happen, but where it does happen then any reference that is made to us is taken up. Licensing officers quite often come through to us on this subject and retailers are very quick to make the changes.

Q317 Dr Taylor: Is it within the code to put huge stacks of cut-price Stella or whatever it is right at the entrance where you almost fall over it and have to walk round it?

Mr Beadles: We do not have any restrictions within our retail codes on that element. It is an issue we have struggled with, to be honest, in terms of wording because of the different store environments. If you have a limitation that says you cannot have alcohol within a five or ten foot radius at the front of the store, if you only operate an off-licence that means you cannot have any of your product within ten foot of the front of the store. We have struggled with this issue and I am not sure that we have reached a satisfactory conclusion. It is not something that we have managed to develop any codification on.

Q318 Dr Taylor: So it could be reasonable to suggest that large supermarkets at least should not put their loss leaders, cheap offers, right by the front door?

Mr Beadles: There are certain commercial restrictions in terms of us getting retailers to agree where they can or cannot place promotional activities under the Competition Act, I am afraid. Certainly this is a matter that we have had discussion with the Home Office about.

Q319 Chairman: Jeremy, have you got anything that you could share with the Committee in relation to that particular aspect in terms of trying to get cooperation from some supermarkets and you cannot?

Mr Beadles: To be honest, I think we could get some cooperation if we could write a clause, if we were allowed, under Competition Law to agree where we were able to market things. I cannot get supermarkets to agree where they do or do not place promotional activity. We have recommendations about avoiding theft and things like that, but we cannot reach that conclusion.

Q320 Charlotte Atkins: Can I just clarify something with Mr North? Is it not the case that all Tesco stores have to abide by a centralised weekly direction from the marketing department about where products should be located so there is no discretion by the local store manager about where they can put their products?

Mr North: There is always some discretion on the part of the store manager about where they can put products although, as you imply, the layout of stores is something that has developed over time and on which there is quite a lot of central direction. I would agree with what Jeremy said in reply to a previous question, the very direct question of would we seek to place alcohol either through central direction or a store manager's discretion at the end of a children's clothing or children's product aisle and the answer is we would not seek to do that either through a central direction or, indeed, through a local manager's discretion. Obviously if one is running a thousand or more stores then there may well be regrettable cases where that comes about for one reason or another but we would seek to act on those. On the question about alcohol being sold at the store entrance, that is something we sometimes do, or away from the alcohol aisle. That is something you will see in our stores. Most customers who, as I have said, purchase alcohol responsibly and consume it responsibly actually find that helpful because it is something they can put into their trolleys. I urge that we do not get into the business of thinking that every customer who buys alcohol, whether on promotion or otherwise, is likely to go and abuse that alcohol.

Q321 Charlotte Atkins: Could you just clarify, is it correct that your marketing department does actually issue centralised weekly direction to all your stores? It is a weekly instruction about where products should be placed.

Mr North: Where products are placed in stores is due to a lot of central direction, yes, that is right.

Q322 Charlotte Atkins: Would that be on a weekly basis or is that more generally monthly or annually?

Mr North: It will depend.

Chairman: I have to say, I suggested to the witnesses that we try and stick to the script a little but that has gone completely awry in the last ten minutes.

Q323 Sandra Gidley: We hear a lot about voluntary codes and whilst I appreciate that off-licences and very small outlets cannot be told not to display alcohol within a short distance, there is no way they can work round that, most large supermarkets could quite easily adopt a voluntary code on this. Why is the supermarket sector not doing this? Mr North, I think, he is from the supermarket sector.

Mr North: On which specific point, sorry?

Q324 Sandra Gidley: Why do the supermarkets not adopt a voluntary code on not piling them high and selling them cheap at the store entrances when it comes to alcohol? You can actually put the beer at the bottom of your trolley; it is not that difficult.

Mr North: With respect, I come back to the point I made to take a view on whether the vast majority of customers purchase alcohol responsibly or irresponsibly, and our evidence is that they buy it responsibly. If one were to adopt that sort of a code we would have to say if you look in a supermarket of a certain size where people very much on the whole are buying their weekly shop does placing a promotion at a visible point encourage people to abuse alcohol consumption, I think we take the view that by and large it does not.

Q325 Sandra Gidley: It encourages them to buy it otherwise you would not put it there. I am not saying whether it is responsible or irresponsible, but if you accept that the vast majority of under-age access to alcohol is from the stash in mum and dad's garage, the very fact that you are tempting people with these products as they go in the stores and that is the first thing they see, "I'll have one of those", you would not put it there if you did not think you were going to sell a lot more. Put aside for one moment whether it is responsible or irresponsible drinkers buying it, we have an alcohol problem. Why are the supermarkets not coming together with a voluntary code to look as though they are trying to deal with this?

Mr North: I think what we do is try and understand the impact of promotions. As I have said, most customers buy alcohol responsibly and consume it responsibly. In our store young people aged between 18 and 25 do not disproportionately buy alcohol compared to other customer groups. Most customers, and this is looking at alcohol sold on promotion, buy it alongside their weekly food shopping and do not disproportionately buy it on a Friday or Saturday evening, for example. Customers are attracted to promotions and I would not say that they were not. Alcohol, as your previous witnesses explained, remains something that for most people is a significant financial purchase and, therefore, promotions on alcohol are attractive. What we generally see when people buy alcohol on promotion is that they trade up, and I think that is many people's experience, that when alcohol is on promotion they do not necessarily buy at the lowest price point, what they see is an opportunity to try something that is of a slightly higher price point. On your point about how much they then consume, the other thing we see is that where customers buy alcohol from us on promotion, as we track that through subsequent purchasing over the following weeks their purchasing will fall over those weeks. In other words, most people act sensibly, they buy alcohol on promotion, they do use that as a basis for stocking up at home, and then they consume it responsibly over a period of time.

Mr Blood: The OFT has given us very clear guidance on what we can and cannot agree within a voluntary code. Where we can we have made those agreements. One of the issues that the OFT has advised us on that we have to be very careful about in a voluntary arrangement is the placing of promotional activities within stores. It is a discussion that we have had and the OFT has been very clear with us that there is a line and the placement of promotional activities in stores is a competitive and commercial issue and, therefore, a voluntary agreement on that at this moment in time is something that they advise us not to step over.

Q326 Chairman: What do you think the effect would be of restricting alcohol promotion or otherwise to one aisle as it used to be ten years ago? What would be the effect on sales?

Mr Beadles: There is some quite interesting work on this. Morrisons has 11 stores in the UK that for historical reasons have got separate alcohol aisles and ASDA has provided some data from Northern Ireland where they have separate alcohol aisles. What we see within those sales is it increases the sale of alcohol. We think the reason for that overall is that people who have to go through a separate purchase experience stock up more. They are inconvenienced by having to go through a separate area and a separate till and, therefore, they stock up more as a result of it. What we see less of is people putting a single bottle of wine in the basket on the way through; what we see more of is bulk purchasing when they go into the separate area. The stores that Morrisons attract outperform the rest of their store network throughout the United Kingdom.

Q327 Dr Stoate: That is completely at odds with the academic research we heard this morning that was told to us by Sheffield University which says if you have alcohol in a completely separate aisle you see reductions in consumption by up to 40%. I find it very difficult to see where you get your figures from.

Mr Beadles: Morrisons and ASDA provided the statistics for the Scottish Government. It is from their sales data. I am very happy to provide it to you.

Q328 Chairman: I would be very pleased if you could do that. David, before we do move on to the script, as it were, you mentioned the issue about people who would buy wherever in your stores and would then buy less over the next few weeks. I assume you know that on the basis of the use of loyalty cards and things like that. Could you share any of that information with us about how promotion affects it? Has anybody looked at it independent of Tesco's? Could it be shared with the Committee where these types of promotions do not, as a lot of people assume, encourage more buying and potentially more consumption of alcohol?

Mr Beadles: We can certainly share data that has been done across the entire industry which shows the people who are most likely to buy into promotional activities are ABC1 consumers over the age of 45 and the people least likely to buy are DE consumers under the age of 28. This has got data about their shopping patterns and how they behave thereafter. That information is in the public domain so I am very happy to provide it to you.

Q329 Chairman: Is there anything in the public domain that shows the effect of promotions? David said quite clearly that if some people are going to buy a three-for-two on cans of beer or whatever, you know that they will buy less the next time they are in. Have you got anything specific around promotions to see what does take place when alcohol is sold in that way?

Mr Beadles: Certainly ASDA, Morrisons, and I think Tesco's, have provided data to the Scottish Government that demonstrates people buy into promotions and then have a longer period before they buy alcohol again. As it is public domain documentation I will provide it to the Committee.

Q330 Dr Stoate: I want to move on to the on-trade and I have a couple of questions for our beer producers and consumers. We have got here a study that shows in one nightclub medium consumption on any night out for men was 20 units and women 13 units. That was on one night out in one nightclub. That is pretty frightening. I will start with you, Jeremy. What is the trade doing to try and encourage responsible drinking within establishments?

Mr Blood: The industry does a lot and has done a lot over the last few years by funding the Drink Aware Trust and looking at education. It is important that educating people about being responsible on a Saturday night means they are not massively receptive to that education, they have got a different headset on, they are out there to enjoy themselves. We genuinely believe that education, information, raising awareness and changing the culture of people about binge drinking is something that should happen with different interventions at different times. We genuinely believe as suppliers and marketers of the product we are not often the best people to do that educating. We lack credibility and people say, "Why are you telling us to drink less when you want to sell more?" It lacks credibility. That is why we set up the Drink Aware Trust. We fund the Drink Aware Trust but it is independent. We are delighted that we have got independent health people working with us on that education message. We are doing a lot there. We do an awful lot in the way we supervise and manage licensed premises. We have done an awful lot on Challenge 21 and Challenge 18 in recent years. I recognise there is still some way to go to improve the performance of the on-trade in that area but I would also claim that there has been a big change in the culture of under-age drinking.

Q331 Dr Stoate: I think you would have to agree that someone having consumed 20 units is likely to be fairly intoxicated.

Mr Blood: Yes.

Q332 Dr Stoate: You also know that it is against the law to supply alcohol to somebody who appears intoxicated.

Mr Blood: Absolutely.

Q333 Dr Stoate: How on earth can a medium drinking level in one club be 20 units when people must be the worse for alcohol and they must, therefore, by definition be served alcohol when they are intoxicated clearly in breach of the law? How do you possibly answer that?

Mr Blood: In recent years there has been a real step change in the amount of education and training of bar staff and licensees.

Q334 Dr Stoate: Yet they are still serving drink in vast quantities to people who are clearly intoxicated.

Mr Blood: It is against the licensing regulations and conditions they have got. At the moment there is very limited enforcement of those regulations. I would see it as a combination of education of our bar staff and licensees and better enforcement. We would strongly support enforcement of the licensing conditions that you should not serve drunk people.

Q335 Dr Stoate: The police need to enforce against the abuses in the industry, is that what you are claiming?

Mr Blood: The right combination is education and information when people are receptive to it; better training and responsible supervision combined with enforcement. All three of those will be the most effective way. There is a role for all participants: the Drink Aware Trust, which we fund, that has the authenticity of being independent; our training and raising our performance in our pubs; and enforcement. That will help everybody behave and perform better.

Q336 Dr Stoate: Can I ask you about "vertical drinking" establishments? What is your view on vertical drinking establishments where effectively the evidence is that people tend to drink more standing up?

Mr Benner: First, I would agree with Jeremy about the importance of education and information. The more information for consumers, the better. I think there is a need for a cultural shift towards more responsible and social drinking. CAMRA has never been a great fan of vertical drinking establishments and there is a problem that they do dominate too many of our high streets. The issue there is that they are usually aimed at that younger high volume drinking group to turn over as many sales as possible and that is often to the exclusion of older people and families. Our interest is clearly about well-run community pubs because the nature of a community pub is that it applies to a cross-section of people and that creates that socially controlled environment where people are more likely to drink responsibly and interact with other people in the community. There have been problems with that. Obviously where there are not enough seats and where there is nowhere to put your drink, it is fair to assume that is more likely to lead to an increased rate of consumption of alcohol in those premises.

Q337 Dr Stoate: So CAMRA is not in favour of vertical drinking establishments as a principle?

Mr Benner: No. We are a consumer group, so we are about choice, and the great thing about the British pubs market is that it is a very diverse market with lots of outlets that appeal to different groups. Nevertheless, I think there is a bit of a colonisation of our high streets at the moment with those particular kinds of establishments to the detriment of community pubs and the communities that they serve.

Q338 Sandra Gidley: I do not know who can answer this, maybe Jeremy Blood or Mike Benner. When you go into vertical drinking establishments, what is the average consumption? We have had figures from one club but what is the average consumption a night in a vertical drinking establishment?

Mr Benner: I do not have that information, I am afraid.

Mr Blood: Vertical drinking establishments, and I do not recognise or cannot categorise which outlets would fall into that category, so it is not that I can tell you it is these 2,000 outlets and this is the average consumption, are very difficult to define. We do not run managed houses so we do not have data capture per consumer of what they do.

Q339 Sandra Gidley: There have been comparisons done with the average consumption of a vertical drinking establishment compared to your more traditional pub which some of us oldies round the Committee here might frequent.

Mr Blood: Sometimes the vertical versus sitting categorisation is not always helpful. For some town centre venues, when younger people go out for what we might call higher energy Saturday nights there would be a higher rate of consumption than if you go out for a drink on a Tuesday evening in your local community pub, but those are choices that consumers make about the mood they are in and what they are looking for when they go out, whether it is a quiet chat with their neighbour or friend or to watch the football or a fun night out in town. To me why people choose to go out drives the different consumptions on an evening, not whether it is vertical or not.

Q340 Sandra Gidley: Surely the industry must have done some research on whether people drink more if they are standing up and there are no chairs. I cannot believe that such a sophisticated industry would not have done that research. If not, you are missing a trick.

Mr Blood: Thank you for the advice. I have been in the business for 20 years and I have never done that research. What I would recognise, and I am not trying to be clever or blasé about it, is the industry does design some town centre venues to suit younger people - not under-age people, younger people - for more active evenings out, and they do want to mix and mingle with a wide number of people, so they do not want lots of banquette seating and small tables, they want a different style of social interaction. Yes, it is a successful and proper way to run town centre venues, but we do not do it to increase the rate of drinking.

Q341 Sandra Gidley: You mean to tell me you are a business and you do not do things to increase the sale of the alcohol. Come on!

Mr Blood: I did not say that. I said we do not do it to increase the rate of drinking. Those pubs are designed in that style to attract those people on Friday and Saturday nights. The vertical nature of it or the open spaces are not done, in my opinion, to increase the rate of alcohol consumption.

Q342 Sandra Gidley: Let me put the question to you in a different way, because I am finding it very hard to believe that nobody in your trade has done any research on this. When a pub has a refurb and chucks out all the chairs and changes to the more modern vertical drinking style, what effect does that have on beer sales? What is the average percentage increase or decrease? Surely somebody has noted those figures in their takings every week.

Mr Blood: Yes, absolutely. If you do a refurb of a pub you would expect a rate of return on your capital, otherwise they would not be refurbished, absolutely, and it will lead to consumption, but your question was, "Are you doing it to increase the rate of consumption?", and that is not the purpose. The purpose is to increase the number of customers that you have and make the place more popular. It is not about the rate of consumption, it is about making a place that is attractive to people on Friday and Saturday nights.

Q343 Sandra Gidley: Surely you do not really care as long as you sell more beer. I will be honest: if I had a pub and was selling beer, I would be thinking of ways to increase the takings; it is business. When pubs have had that refurb from one style to another, what is the average change in sales?

Mr Blood: There is no average change, because sometimes refurbishments are successful and sometimes they are not successful; sometimes they can double sales, sometimes they can increase sales by 20%. There is no formula or mechanic for saying if you take out chairs you will increase sales, or if you turn the volume up of the music you will increase sales. Many pubs are more successful for the demographic, the market opportunity in that town centre. There is no formula for doing it.

Q344 Sandra Gidley: So your organisation has absolutely no data on this.

Mr Blood: No data on what happens to the rate of consumption, no.

Q345 Sandra Gidley: Let us move away from rate of consumption. Do you have any data on sales?

Mr Blood: Obviously; yes.

Q346 Sandra Gidley: So what is the effect?

Mr Blood: There is a huge variation.

Q347 Sandra Gidley: Are you able to release some of that data to us so that we can see that variation?

Mr Blood: Yes, on some of our capital investments for a variety of styles, but capital investment in community pubs does prove that the provision there will increase sales and volumes, and if you refurbish a pub it will increase the sales of that pub because it makes it more appealing to more customers.

Q348 Sandra Gidley: I think you are avoiding the point, with respect. Let us try a slightly different tack to see if you have a little bit more idea about this. A lot of pubs offer spirits alongside a pint of lager. Does that increase the rate of consumption?

Mr Blood: No pubs that we have do those styles of promotions, so I do not have the data specifically. Presumably they would not do the promotions if they did not the feel it affected the rate of consumption. Where people do it they believe that there is a commercial benefit, and that will be related to how much alcohol they sell.

Q349 Dr Taylor: Going on still with you two, I am afraid, to chains of pubs. We are told that Enterprise Inns and Punch Taverns control about a third of all pubs in the UK and that these chains usually require the tenant landlords to source their beers from a particular supplier. Is this a beneficial development?

Mr Benner: Certainly from CAMRA's point of view, we are supportive of the principles of the beer tie. It has worked well for many companies for 100 years or so, and I think if the beer tie was scrapped it would lead to a lot of unintended consequences, not least a struggling environment for the various family brewers in the country that rely on that tied estate system. As you are aware, the Business and Enterprise Committee has recommended to the Government that this issue is referred to the Competition Commission. CAMRA's position on that is that the Office of Fair Trading should carry out a market study to establish whether the relationship between lessees, tenants and the pubcos is fair before we go to what could turn into a two or three-year investigation and all the upheaval that that would cause for the industry and for consumers.

Q350 Dr Taylor: We have all got pictures, probably in country areas, of our own ideal country pubs with the avuncular bearded landlord behind the bar. How effective can landlords be at stopping serving to people who are obviously having too much? I am looking at you really, because I think you are a pub owner yourself.

Mr Blood: I think there are two or three things that they can do: (1) The style of pub they run very clearly determines how successful they are in controlling the environment, (2) it is about good training and good intervention, and I know that many of the pub companies (and I think this is one of the benefits of the pub companies) can develop good training for bar staff and licensees on how to deal with that tricky moment. It is not the easiest thing in the world to say no to someone to serve a drink, and I think all the pub companies have got very good training and are learning from the repeated experience of that training as to how to train people and give people the confidence to say no to somebody.

Q351 Dr Taylor: Would it be another advantage of these companies that, if there is a pub that is turning out drunks left right and centre, they can actually get rid of that landlord?

Mr Blood: I do not think they can get rid of that landlord under the terms of most leases. It would require action from the enforcement authorities. If one of our landlords, under the lease arrangements we have, falls foul of the licensing regime and that is picked up upon, then we can act on it, but we cannot act on it on our own opinion because that would give us carte blanche as pub owners to say, "We do not like you. We do not think you are doing it properly", and take away their business and pass it to somebody else. So it is important for the individual lessee that the judgment of whether he is a fit and proper person to run a pub falls with the licensing authorities rather than with us. Again, it is one area where I would argue that stronger and better enforcement would help the industry.

Q352 Dr Taylor: But they could at least take note of the problem.

Mr Blood: Absolutely. All the time we will talk to people about neighbourly complaints and how they can change the style of the way they run their business, but we cannot kick them out, because that would be wrong.

Q353 Dr Taylor: Is it fair to blame pubs for the increasing violence in town centres?

Mr Blood: No, it is not right to blame pubs. You should blame the individuals who are drunk and violent.

Q354 Dr Taylor: Is there evidence to say that more of those come from nightclubs, illicit drinking in parks, than actually in pubs?

Mr Blood: Again, if you do research about how people spend their evenings, people will probably drink at home, they maybe go to a pub, they maybe go to a nightclub and then at the end of the evening have an accident, have a fight, or something like that. As I say, it is quite hard to determine which behaviour led to the anti-social behaviour.

Mr Benner: There is evidence from Liverpool, John Moores University, on preloading, that groups of young people, as much as 50 per cent of those groups, are likely to drink at friends' houses or their own houses to save money, because of the huge price differential between on and off-trade, before they go out on the town.

Q355 Dr Taylor: Do you think the licensing law liberalisation has made any difference to the safety of town centres?

Mr Benner: No, from my position, I think that it is a bit of a myth, the 24-hour licensing idea. My understanding is that the average time that a licensed outlet has stayed open following the new Licensing Act is 21 minutes. I think it is not responsible for the problems that you read about in some newspapers.

Q356 Chairman: Can I ask you a bit further on that, Mike? Do you think that, probably over the last two decades now, when you have wanted to build something that you would call entertainment (and they may not have alcohol in them) that they have been directed to town and city centres in part because they could not disturb, even in urban seats like mine, the rural nature of villages? I have had them turned down, where they wanted to put nightclubs in big pubs that were running out of customers, because of the changing culture in my constituency, and that has been refused on the basis that they can only go into town, and town centres and city centres are where these bigger drinking establishments are being put now, not by licensing law but by planning law. Would you agree with that? Have you ever looked at this?

Mr Blood: I think in many cities and towns the "night-time economy" is a well-used phrase and planners do want to focus that style of entertainment in certain parts of towns. There is also a network effect where, if you are running that style of outlet, it is helpful to be near other outlets that have that style as well because people like to go to more than one of those venues in an evening. So there is a network effect, there is a planning effect and a view from many cities that they want to encourage the night time economy. Several of those features I would recognise in the way that the on-trade has developed in the last 15 years.

Mr Benner: In the mid 1990s there was an obsession that we could create a cafe society in Britain, and that led, I think, to too many new establishments opening up in town centres, but, of course, you cannot really have that cafe society if it is too cold and it is always raining, so it did not quite work, and I think that was to the detriment of other licensed premises, possibly around those town centres, which are more community based.

Q357 Dr Naysmith: Mr Beadles, why do you think the size of wine glass servings in pubs and restaurants has increased significantly in recent years?

Mr Beadles: There is data that shows that the standard measure in the pub trade is a 175 ml glass rather than a 125 ml. I think that varies greatly from region to region. There are lots of more rural parts of the country, certainly in the north of England, where a 125 glass is still prevalent. In city centre establishments we see more 250 ml glasses prevalent, and I think that that has been a move in a lot of city centre establishments because that is what consumers have wanted in terms of not wanting to return to the bar. I think we are seeing a trend more recently in terms of people buying a bottle of wine to share and, therefore, the size of the glass is not relevant at that point: you buy a bottle and four glasses. Our perspective is very much that consumers should have a choice of a 125, a 175 or a 250 ml glass. They should not have a choice of glass; they should have a choice of measures. I do not advocate that we should all have to buy new glasses but, I think, a different measure of wine.

Q358 Dr Naysmith: You think it is in response to consumer demand.

Mr Beadles: Yes, I do.

Q359 Dr Naysmith: Although there is lots of evidence that some people say they would rather have a small glass, the 125 glass, why is it that in some establishments they do not provide 125 ml glasses?

Mr Beadles: As I say, I think they should. I think that the establishments should provide 125, 175 and 250 measures and give consumers a choice.

Q360 Dr Naysmith: Why do they not?

Mr Beadles: Because I think the market has moved in that direction. There are not that many consumers that I am aware of that have been asking for smaller glasses, but I think that consumers should have the choice and be able to make their own decisions about these things and should be aware of the size of the glass that they have got.

Q361 Dr Naysmith: What happens in most establishments is people go up to the bar and say, "A glass of red wine." Most people do not know what size they are getting until they have got it in their hand. Actually there is very little to suggest that, if you want a smaller measure of wine, you should ask for a smaller glass but in some establishments, when they do, there is not one available. Do you think that this increase in the size of glass has had any harm on public health?

Mr Beadles: I do not know whether it has had any harm on public health. I do not know what the relationship there is. I am in a slight difficulty in answering this question as I do not speak on behalf of the pub industry, I speak on behalf of the wine industry, not the people who are serving it within the pub industry. Again I go back to my point, which is that I do believe as consumers we should have the choice of a small, medium or large glass.

Q362 Dr Naysmith: And it should be made quite clear that the different sizes are available?

Mr Beadles: Yes. I do not advocate more glasses, I am advocating measures, because I do not believe we should all have to go out and buy new glasses.

Q363 Dr Naysmith: What do you think about this, Mr Blood?

Mr Blood: I think that people are drinking a lot more wine at home and getting used to pouring themselves a glass of wine at home, and when people are at home the glass they pour tends to be much closer to the 175 size than the 125 that was the tradition in pubs. There has undoubtedly been a change from the norm over the last 15 years. Obviously pub retailers benefit from that, they sell more and they get a higher price. It has been in the interests of the pub industry to support that consumer drift. I think now the most responsible way that we should move forward, as Jeremy has said, is that we need to look at ourselves and start selling the three different sizes and giving people full choice.

Q364 Dr Naysmith: Mr Beadles, you probably know quite a lot about community alcohol partnerships, and the one at St Neots has got quite a lot of praise recently.

Mr Beadles: It has.

Q365 Dr Naysmith: What lessons do you think we can learn from that?

Mr Beadles: I think we can learn a lot of lessons. I would, firstly, like to say that that was a small pilot project - the numbers from it are great, but it is a small project with numbers that are on a short timescale - but from that we are really rolling out at great speed into different parts of the country. The one we are most excited about is in Kent, where we have a partnership with Kent County Council and Kent Constabulary. We are extending the remit beyond simply looking to tackle under age sales and under age drinking and looking to tackle more of, I suppose, the 18-24 drinking categories. Particularly in Canterbury, we are linking up for the first time with the on-trade, which we are very excited about. So we are putting this altogether. What we think we are developing is not a silver bullet, but we think it is a solution that can work. It needs to be tailored to every single circumstance. For example, we have got one going in the Isle of Wight. The Isle of Wight market place is radically different from some of the towns in Kent, and they have got different issues and different problems, and so we have to come up with different solutions, but what it does is it brings the businesses, the police, the local authority, health, education together along with the community and the community themselves get involved in (1) identifying what their particular problems are and (2) coming up with the solutions, and then the different partners put the solutions to work. I think what it does is it builds up a trust element between business and the police and trading standards authorities in particular. In Kent we are looking at educational pilots and working in schools; so we are linking up in schools in Kent. I think that is a huge step forward. I think we need to concentrate much more in this country on the quality of standard of alcohol education we give to young people in schools, and we are making the link back to the parents. A lot of the time you have got kids trying to buy alcohol in stores, they are drinking in parks and things like that: some of the time the parents are aware, but a lot of the time they are not. I think we need to make the link back to those parents, and we do that with the schools as well so that we are beginning to get this working. As I say, we are very pleased with the progress that we are making. We now have about nine of them rolling out in different scales around the country, and we have got more planned. Croydon are announcing this week that they are going to do a community outlook partnership in Croydon and Canterbury University are going to be tracking the data in Kent so that we have got a proper academic study that backs the success of the project.

Q366 Dr Naysmith: Some cynical people would say that this is just a bit of public relations to try and pretend that you are doing something about the problem. I am not saying that; I am just asking what your response would be if you were asked that question.

Mr Beadles: I think businesses have got some serious skill in the game. PR is great, but actually we have got some serious skill in the game. If you lose your licence, if you are a small business you are probably out of a job and you will be making your workforce redundant; if you are a large business, a superstore losing its licence could equate to ten or 15 million pounds worth of sales over a six-month period, so substantial skill in the game. For us a lot of it is about making sure that we build relationships with the licensees and the police officers to get over that, because we recognise that there are some people in our industry who do not meet the standards that we think they should do, and one of the things that we found working in community alcohol partnerships is that we identify all the businesses in the locality, we ask them all to participate, all the local independent businesses are offered the opportunity to go through training provided for free by one of the major multiple retailers to bring them up to the standard, we will provide them with all the poster materials, et cetera, and get them involved. If at that point they are not prepared to play the game, if they are still selling to kids and things like that, then we ask the police to enforce against them and to take their licence away. So it is a key element to it, it is not just a PR exercise: it is actually about tackling the problems.

Q367 Chairman: Jeremy, is another key element that 129 young people were stopped and searched by the police?

Mr Beadles: It depends what you mean by "stopped and searched".

Q368 Chairman: I am quoting from Cambridgeshire County Council's report on St Neots. Is that a key element? Do we not have that type of law enforcement?

Mr Beadles: When the police refer to "stop and search" in this instance, what they are talking about is going into parks and finding young people with cans of beer, cider, wine and taking the alcohol off them and taking them home to their parents. In this instance, that is what the police are referring to in terms of "stop and search". I am very happy to provide the committee with confirmation of that, because it is a question that has been raised with me in another venue about how the police have used this terminology. This is not about shaking down young people in the streets in that kind of way.

Q369 Stephen Hesford: To Jeremy really and to David. In terms of your contribution to the Drink Aware Trust, how much you give them a year and stuff, do you know off the top of your head how much you do pay?

Mr Blood: I do not know off the top of my head.

Q370 Stephen Hesford: Do you know what your advertising spend is, your marketing spend?

Mr Blood: Yes.

Q371 Stephen Hesford: What is that?

Mr Blood: Obviously, it is commercially sensitive. We do not publish it as a figure, but it is in excess of Ł50 million.

Q372 Stephen Hesford: In terms of your contribution to the Drink Aware Trust and in terms of the Ł50 million, what relationship between the two figures, roughly, might there be?

Mr Blood: The Drink Aware Trust per annum is one or two million, a much smaller quantity.

Q373 Stephen Hesford: Drink Aware Trust: one or two million. Advertising: 50 million. Do you think that is responsible? Is it proportionate?

Mr Blood: As a business we collect over a billion pounds in excise revenue; so our advertising spend compared to our revenue collection for excise is hugely disproportionate as well. I am not ashamed of the numbers, but I do not think they are comparable. I do not think they sit side by side.

Q374 Stephen Hesford: You are comfortable with that?

Mr Blood: Yes.

Q375 Stephen Hesford: David, the same question. I think you said you did not know before.

Mr North: It is somewhere around Ł75,000, I believe.

Q376 Stephen Hesford: Seventy five thousand pounds; and your advertising spend on alcohol promotion?

Mr North: I do not have the numbers on advertising spend.

Q377 Stephen Hesford: Roughly?

Mr North: I am afraid I do not have the numbers.

Q378 Stephen Hesford: Can you supply them to us?

Mr North: I can supply them to you. The comment I would make, though, if I can, is that I am not sure that I would measure our approach to trying tackle the problem of---

Q379 Stephen Hesford: No, but it is our inquiry. We might.

Mr North: But I do not think that the amount that we pay directly to the Drink Aware Trust is a measure of our commitment to tackling alcohol harm.

Q380 Stephen Hesford: Seventy-five thousand pounds in a multi-billion pound company is tiny, almost derisory, do you not think?

Mr North: I have explained to the committee what we are doing. All of our own brand alcohol is labelled with the Department of Health's recommended labelling. I have explained that we have "point of sale" information that is intended to encourage safe drinking. We train our staff a great deal. We have had a policy called Think 21, Challenge 21 as the Government and others call it. We are extending it over the course of the coming week to Think 25, so that we are going to be asking our staff and training our staff again to challenge everybody who they believe is 25 and under and to say, "Can you prove that you are 18?" We are also very committed to the community alcohol partnerships that I think, for the first time really, start to address some of the key underlying issues here about how we raise awareness among young people and among families about what levels of alcohol consumption actually cause harm, and, indeed, one issue that I think as a society we should be very clear on, which is what is the legal age of drinking. In many cases people do not understand that. I am afraid I think that measuring our direct commitment to the Drink Aware Trust as a facet of our commitment to this issue is wrong.

Stephen Hesford: I think you protest too much. I think I have hit a nerve. What do you say?

Chairman: Can we move on!

Q381 Stephen Hesford: You said before, David, that your evidence is that your customers behave responsibly in relation to alcohol. What evidence do you have for that? Why do you know that?

Mr North: We do a lot of customer research, both through our club card purchasing and directly in conversations with customers and through focus groups.

Q382 Stephen Hesford: Can you supply that to us, your focus group work, that enables you to say with confidence that your consumers behave responsibly?

Mr North: Yes. We have summarised that in the evidence.

Q383 Stephen Hesford: I know you have, but could you supply some of the raw data to us?

Mr North: Yes.

Q384 Stephen Hesford: Jeremy, you said before that the OFT warned you away from some kind of voluntary agreement about marketing and where you place things? Can you supply us with the correspondence with the OFT which actually sets out that they were telling you, basically, not to come to this voluntary agreement?

Mr Blood: We can supply the correspondence which sets out the conversations that we had with them about the lives that we could get to, and we can also supply advice from our own lawyers. A lot of the time the OFT ask us to take our own advice on this; so we are happy to supply that.

Q385 Stephen Hesford: Minimum pricing. This is for everyone who wants to come in on this. The Sheffield report on minimum pricing, especially in relation to elasticity of demand for alcohol, Jeremy Blood: do you accept the findings of the Sheffield report? Would you be in favour of minimum pricing?

Mr Blood: We are not in favour of minimum pricing. I have read the Sheffield report. It draws conclusions about affordability and price. We accept some of the conclusions. Other independent economic advice draws slightly different conclusions from it. As with all research, there is a range of conclusions that can be drawn from what is a complex set of data. Why do we, in principle, not support minimum pricing? We believe that where misuse is happening and where people are drinking more than is good for them or using alcohol in the wrong way, those are the people that will not change their behaviour if you apply minimum pricing, they will carry on misusing, and you will not address the proper concerns that society has got about the misuse of alcohol through that blanket approach.

Q386 Stephen Hesford: Do you not accept that there must be, like any product, some kind of relationship between price and consumption?

Mr Blood: Of course, there is price elasticity. Yes, of course there is.

Q387 Stephen Hesford: In relation to tobacco, for example, if you increase the price of cigarettes, demand tends to go down, consumption tends to go down, and that is a well trodden public health path. What is the difference between that well trodden public health path and alcohol?

Mr Blood: Most people who use alcohol use it responsibly and it does not affect their health or damage it. If you use minimum pricing ,or pricing, as a way to drive down consumption, in our view you are not addressing the people who are misusing alcohol, you are addressing the majority of people who are using it responsibly, so you are not addressing where the problems lie. We would much rather see action to address where there are problems from alcohol.

Q388 Stephen Hesford: The other Jeremy, in relation to the Sheffield report.

Mr Beadles: We take the same view, and we think there are other economic studies by CUBR and Oxford Economics that I think should be taken into account by this committee. We certainly take the view that the people who misuse alcohol are the least responsive to price changes. We do not argue at all that there is a relationship between price and consumption, but we do think that there is a lot of evidence to suggest that there is not a direct link between price and alcohol misuse. If we look at the pricing of alcohol across Europe, there are ranges of different levels of pricing which do not accord to alcohol harm. We actually have a very high duty rate in this country already, and the average price on alcohol in comparison to our European neighbours is very substantially larger. The average bottle of wine in this market costs Ł4.20; the average bottle of wine in France costs Ł1.40. We are not convinced that there is any relationship of that nature. Evidence from around the world where pricing mechanisms, taxation mechanisms have been used - because actually minimum price has never been introduced on a national basis - suggest that it can affect consumption but it does not affect misuse.

Q389 Dr Stoate: We have heard evidence this morning, which has been peer reviewed and is academically based, that if the minimum price per unit were 50 pence it would save 3,000 deaths a year. Are you saying that is complete rubbish? I think that is a pretty compelling argument, and it has been peer reviewed, backed up by many academic studies. We think 3,000 deaths a year with a minimum price of 50 pence per unit is quite compelling, but you do not agree with any of it?

Mr Beadles: I would like to reduce the number of alcohol-related deaths, but I do not agree that introducing a minimum price would have that direct effect.

Q390 Dr Stoate: You totally dispute the evidence that we have heard this morning.

Mr Beadles: Yes, I do, because I think the basis on which it is made is that people who misuse alcohol drink cheaper drinks than people who are moderate drinkers - we are not convinced that that is the case - and that they, as a result of a price increase, would stop drinking or would slow their drinking - again we are not convinced that is the case. Therefore, we are not convinced that there is a direct run-through between pricing going up and those people who drink to excess reducing their alcohol consumption.

Q391 Dr Stoate: That is bizarre. We know that those resistant drinkers are less responsive to price but, nevertheless, they are responsive to price and, because they drink so many more units, they actually end up with a bigger drop in consumption than moderate drinkers.

Mr Beadles: There is no doubt that if you get to any level on price you will create a responsiveness. I do not believe that 50p a unit would have that responsiveness. I have no doubt that if you got up to 80, 90, one pound a unit, you would have a responsiveness in terms of behaviour but, also, at that point the moderate consumer would be seriously punished for their drinking.

Q392 Stephen Hesford: To David. In terms of minimum pricing, we have heard that some supermarkets and other organisations in principle would not mind a minimum pricing arrangement. What is Tesco's attitude to that?

Mr North: I was here this morning to listen to the evidence from the Sheffield researchers and I thought they made a very clear case that an increase in price could have a substantial impact, both in terms of reducing consumption and, indeed, in terms of targeting those who are at most risk of causing harm to themselves, or more widely. Our position for sometime now has been that we are very prepared to play an active and constructive role in discussions on minimum pricing or, indeed, the whole issue of pricing. What we have said is two things really. One is that for that to be effective it has to be done across the industry rather than on a unilateral basis, but, second, for reasons of competition policy, competition law, those are not things, frustratingly, that the industry can lead by themselves: those discussions have to be led by government. Reading what the Home Office said yesterday in their Draft Mandatory Code, they said that is not something they will pursue for now. So there seems to be some gap between what the Government is saying on this and the evidence that the Government commissioned through Sheffield University. The Government has, however, said that they want to continue to gather evidence on this. I think I would reiterate what I said, which is that on this issue we are prepared to play a constructive part.

Q393 Stephen Hesford: So, in principle, you are not against it, but you think it needs more discussion as to how we get there.

Mr North: I think I would find it difficult to dispute what the researchers have said in terms of the relationship between price and consumption and potentially on to alcohol harm. I think there clearly has to be a balance struck, and it seems to me this debate is about the balance to be struck between targeting intervention at a level that focuses on those who are causing harm and that does not disadvantage what the Government has referred to as "a sensible majority". So I think that debate does have to continue and, yes, we play a constructive part in that.

Q394 Chairman: Mike, could I ask you on that: could minimum pricing save the Government?

Mr Benner: Pub beer prices over the last 20 years have increased by over 140% compared to increases over the same period in the off-trade of 39%. So the price differential between on and off-trade is widening and, of course, that is shifting consumption towards the off-trade and outside the regulators' environment of the pub. So we are supportive of a minimum pricing structure that would stamp out loss leaders and, therefore, make it more attractive for people to drink in pubs.

Q395 Chairman: You think it would?

Mr Benner: I do think it would. I think the price ratio at the moment is about five to one. If a minimum price of around 40 pence was introduced, that would make the ratio about three to one. Therefore, I think that is enough for there to be a shift in consumption towards drinking in community pubs.

Q396 Chairman: Jeremy Blood, we heard earlier in the first session about the report that has not been seen yet but tends to potentially undermine the Sheffield report in terms of elasticity of demand of alcohol and the RAND report as well. You alluded earlier to the fact that other studies do not agree with that. Were you talking about this particular study?

Mr Blood: Yes, those are the ones, and we would like to submit those reports as evidence.

Q397 Chairman: Has it been published yet, what you all submitted?

Mr Beadles: I do not think that the full report has been published yet. The summary, I believe, the committee has been sent.

Q398 Chairman: Oh, I am sorry.

Mr Beadles: I know they were very keen to come and give evidence to you.

Q399 Chairman: The one that we waved at you is the RAND one and not the other one, the Sheffield one.

Mr Blood: Yes, that is the one I was referring to. I misled you; I am sorry.

Dr Naysmith: It is the one that has been commissioned by SAB Miller. Is that the one?

Q400 Chairman: I was going to ask who actually paid for this study to be done, or both of these studies, if there are two?

Mr Blood: I believe it was SAB Miller.

Chairman: We will move on to Charlotte.

Q401 Charlotte Atkins: Mr North, we heard earlier from Mr Benner that probably 50% of young people pre-load before they go out to maybe a pub or a bar of some sort. What would you say encourages young people to pre-load?

Mr North: I am not sure I have the answer to that question. It is a trend that I think has developed over, probably, I would guess, the past 30 years or so. It is not a trend that I remember when I was a young person in those sorts of age categories. As we heard from the Sheffield researchers this morning, probably the greatest trend over the past 20 or 30 years in this country in terms of the growing access to alcohol has been growing affluence rather than access directly to alcohol. I suspect that would have something to do with it, that there is more alcohol in people's homes, or whatever, but I am not an expert on that subject.

Q402 Charlotte Atkins: Mr Benner has just been saying that there is a great divergence between the price of alcohol in pubs, which has been going up, and the price of alcohol in supermarkets, which has been going rapidly down. Do you think that has an implication in encouraging particularly young people to pre-load on the basis of either promotions in supermarkets or historically low prices of alcohol in supermarkets?

Mr North: The price of alcohol in our shops and, I think, in other supermarkets has not been coming down, for example, relative to the price of food. I would not want to you think that somehow alcohol prices have, in real terms, come down greater than food prices. Does that contribute to the risk that young people will pre-load? It is a complicated issue about why it is that people choose to drink in their home, choose then to go out and drink some more. I am not sure I would be able to say that price was the primary factor in encouraging young people to do that.

Q403 Charlotte Atkins: Do you think it is acceptable to sell beer more cheaply than water?

Mr North: Again, I am not sure that there is a direct comparison to be had there. I certainly would not want people to reach the conclusion that somehow those were two interchangeable products - they are not - but some bottled waters sell at premium prices and some sell at lower prices. As I think I have already said, we would accept the conclusions that Sheffield and others have reached that the price of alcohol has a bearing on consumption and they have a bearing on those who choose to harm themselves through excessive consumption. As I have said, we are prepared to play a constructive role on that, but that is one that has to be led by government and has to involve the whole industry.

Q404 Charlotte Atkins: So you do not think that the supermarket sector has anything to apologise for in terms of the very low price of alcohol units that are sold via the supermarket aisle or the promotional display?

Mr North: I do not think we would do the subject of tackling alcohol abuse service by focusing solely on the issue of price, and I think that is what I heard from others who have given evidence. I do think price has a part to play. The retail of alcohol and, indeed, the on-trade are highly competitive sectors on the whole. Like other areas, this is one where competition, I think, has been to the great benefit of the majority of people in this country by being able to afford more, in many cases, on low incomes, and that is something that we are very cognisant of as a retailer, but I would accept, as I have said, that there is a linkage between the price of alcohol for a small group of people and the risk of alcohol abuse and, as I said, we play a constructive role on that.

Q405 Charlotte Atkins: Can you tell us what has been your most successful price promotion on alcohol in recent times?

Mr North: I am afraid I could not tell you without notice of the question.

Q406 Charlotte Atkins: Would you say that most of your promotions in terms of alcohol take place at Christmas and in the summer, or is it right the way through the year?

Mr North: Christmas, obviously, is the most important period in terms of promotion. It is a time when people feel that alcohol plays a part in family celebrations, et cetera. As I think I was mentioning earlier, we have got a wine festival on at the moment. What that tends to do is encourage our customers to try, on promotion, wines that are generally at a slightly higher price point than they would normally purchase at, and that is something we see in our evidence: that when people buy a promotion, generally they are trying at a 20% higher price than they would normally buy were that product not on promotion, if you follow.

Q407 Charlotte Atkins: Your margins are not universal, are they? You have different promotions in different stores. Is that correct? You do not have a national scheme whereby you have promotions in every store. You have different promotions in different stores.

Mr North: No, promotions tend to be national.

Q408 Charlotte Atkins: So to suggest, as has been suggested to us, that the biggest promotions are targeted at stores in areas of highest deprivations or in areas where there are more students is not true?

Mr North: I think that would be untrue.

Q409 Dr Stoate: Most of the question has been covered, but you have said, Mr North, quite rightly in our view, that there is a link between price and consumption and ultimately a link between price and harm. I think most people would accept that, and I think you are honest enough to say so. What I would then say is: how do you justify loss leaders now? We find it difficult to understand how some supermarkets are prepared to sell alcohol at below cost. How do you justify that?

Mr North: We do not set out to sell alcohol below cost, and I think most of our alcohol is not sold below cost, most of it is not, indeed, sold on promotion. It is, as I have said, however, a highly competitive sector and customers do find the idea of promotions on alcohol something that is an important part of the way that they shop in supermarkets and elsewhere, and, as I think I have said, most people, most families are purchasing alcohol responsibly and then consuming it responsibly. The question is how do we help those people who are not consuming and purchasing responsibly. I think the whole debate on pricing, as the Government has said, is about trying to strike that balance.

Q410 Dr Stoate: A final point then. Do you believe it is ever acceptable to sell alcohol at below the price of water? There are many examples where, for example, lagers on promotion actually work out per litre less than bottled water.

Mr North: The difficulty, with respect, I have with that question is I am not sure why it is sensible to compare alcohol with water. I do not think we would ever want to make that comparison. I would say that alcohol is cheaper than a lot of products, one of which, in some cases, might be premium types of bottled water.

Q411 Dr Stoate: The reason we are asking it is simply because we want to know whether supermarkets and others are behaving responsibly, and, obviously, in our report we will need to take a view on whether it is responsible for any organisation, effectively, to price something so cheaply that it is almost bound to encourage excess in some people.

Mr North: I do not think the fact that it would be possible to find isolated examples where alcohol is cheaper than premium water is a major contributor to the debate on alcohol.

Q412 Dr Stoate: No, but price is, and that is what we are trying to get to, and obviously we have to compare it to something. There is no point in comparing the price of alcohol with baked beans, but we do believe that it is reasonable to compare alcoholic drinks with soft drinks. We are just using that as an example.

Mr North: Yes, but what we say in our stores and on our point-of-shelf labelling is precisely the opposite of that, which is that customers who consume alcohol also need to make sure that they keep their hydration levels up, et cetera, and consuming water is therefore important.

Q413 Dr Stoate: I will have to look out for these labels. I confess, I have never seen them, and I do go to Tesco fairly regularly. I will look out for them in future.

Mr North: I would be delighted to show them to you.

Mr Beadles: I have found one for the committee. It is a Tesco brand promotion.

Q414 Chairman: Jeremy Blood, can I ask you about this thing in relation to comparative prices between alcohol and other drinks? What about this issue about the cost of soft drinks in public houses being the same as alcohol? Is that something you would agree with?

Mr Blood: As I said, in the business that we run we are leased pubs, so we do not control the retail pricing in the pubs - I wanted to explain that - but, generally yes, a pint of a soft drink can, in some pubs, be comparable with the price of an alcohol drink.

Q415 Chairman: If I go in a pub and I am driving, I would have a soft drink. Do you not think that might encourage people to go for the stronger rather than the less strong, if you are paying the same price? I do not mean people who are driving.

Mr Blood: I think for people who want to drink soft drinks, there is usually a very clear choice why they want to do it and they will buy them.

Q416 Chairman: You do not think if some somebody was offered alcohol at a pound and somebody was offered a soft drink at a pound or 50p, that they would probably go for the latter as opposed to one of those drinks at a pound, alcohol or a soft drink? What would marketing say about that? Would it not say they would be more likely to by the 50 pence drink?

Mr Blood: It goes back to price elasticity again. If you sell products more cheaply you will sell more of them. I would not dispute that if you sold soft drinks more cheaply you would sell more soft drinks in pubs.

Q417 Chairman: Have any studies been done on that at all to your knowledge?

Mr Blood: No sort of controlled public studies, but, yes, retailers will play around with price and if you sell something more cheaply you will sell more of it. I do not dispute that.

Q418 Dr Naysmith: Mr Beadles can start with this but it is really for everyone. For quite a long time now since there has been concern about excessive alcohol consumption, the trade has been interested in voluntary arrangements and voluntary agreements, saying that they want to do something about it. You will all be familiar with the recent KPMG evaluation of voluntary agreements, and they showed extensive breaches of the voluntary code. Why do you think these voluntary approaches fail?

Mr Beadles: I do not think they fail, firstly. I think KPMG actually showed a lot of very good practice. I think the issue with a totally voluntary approach is that it only applies to the people who are in and sign up to it. When we looked at the businesses from an off-trade perspective, which, therefore, would fall within our membership and the producer side and their compliance, their compliance level was very high, but when you are trying to take that voluntary approach down to small independent businesses and people who are genuinely not interested in this stuff, then it is very tricky. I think a voluntary approach has an advantage. It tends to be faster and it gets to the core of big business quicker, but it is not going to ever get overall coverage. Having said that, there is lots of legislation that is not complied with by lots of business as well. So I think voluntary approaches have a hugely important role to play, but you have always got to recognise that there will be some people who sit outside them.

Q419 Dr Naysmith: You are not suggesting that KPMG's findings were those who were not signed up to the voluntary agreements, are you?

Mr Beadles: There were a lot of them who were not signed up to the voluntary agreements. A lot of the businesses they found were not compliant; were not signing up. Any business who is in our membership is operating at that point in time Challenge 21, now moving towards Challenge 25; so any business that was in our membership would have been signed up to that approach. There are businesses who are not in our membership who may not have been signed up to that approach.

Q420 Dr Naysmith: I will have to look at the KPMG report again, but are you saying that none of the breaches, or some of them---

Mr Beadles: No, there were a few, but not substantial ones.

Q421 Dr Naysmith: Why do pubs continue to serve drinks to people who are intoxicated? I know we have touched on this already, but there are voluntary agreements about it.

Mr Beadles: I do not speak on behalf of the pub trade, but the legislation is very clear. There is no voluntary agreement on serving to drunks. The law says you should not serve to someone who is drunk. You do not need a voluntary agreement to sit on top of that. That is the law and, if someone is breaking the law, then the licensing office and the police have the powers to take their licence away.

Q422 Dr Naysmith: Mr Blood.

Mr Blood: That is what I valued before. We have made a step-change as an industry over recent years in the amount of training and awareness of bar staff and licensees. I think if we look at the trading culture six or seven years ago, I do not think it was a focus of attention, not serving people who are intoxicated. We have raised the levels. It is certainly far from perfect, and I am sure that studies could find places where intoxicated people are being served, and that is why we argue for greater enforcement, because I think that combination is the best way to stop drunks being served. I do not think it can be done by one route in isolation.

Q423 Dr Naysmith: Mr North, you earlier, when answering a different question on minimum pricing, sounded as if you would be in favour of a bit more regulation, which is really rather unusual from the supermarket trade, to say we want more regulation, as long as it applied to everyone, I think, is what you more or less said. What do you think of voluntary agreements and their perceived lack of success?

Mr North: I think they can play a part. The best example that occurs to me about a voluntary approach are the community alcohol partnerships, which I think are a very exciting idea. We have taken part in the one in St Neots and are doing so in Kent. I would focus less on the voluntarism than on the fact that one brings together, I think, the right grouping of partners on an issue that is really quite broad: so the enforcement authorities that Jeremy talked about, the retailers, obviously the police, trading standards, schools, youth clubs and charities, and actually trying to get at the heart of some of the real underlying issues, which is do people know what the safe legal age is for drinking, do people know what the right quantity is to consume, et cetera, and to try and approach that in a sensible way, not simply at the check-out or at the bar but in the school and in the home, so that we actually reach something approaching a consensus on this. I would say, on that basis, the voluntary approach has a lot to commend it. The area of pricing, where we said we play a constructive part is one where, I think for legal reasons, we simply cannot take a co-operative voluntary approach across the industry.

Q424 Dr Naysmith: Do you wand to add anything, Mr Benner?

Mr Benner: I would say that in well-run pubs you are unlikely to get a lot of these problems, but I think what the industry does not need right now is more regulations that deal with something that is already in place. The Licensing Act has already got the powers in place to deal with most of these issues, and that would be best used to achieve that.

Dr Naysmith: I think that is a very good point.

Q425 Sandra Gidley: I do not know who what wants to pick up on this. Some people have suggested that there should be a bigger step in the way that alcohol is taxed, according to the alcohol by volume of a particular drink. For example, when beer exceeds 4% alcohol by volume the tax increases in price, and for wine maybe above 13%. Do you think that is a good idea? Would it make any difference?

Mr Beadles: I can start on wine and say that there are already banding levels in wine. So anything under 8% has a different tax rate, anything between eight and 15 has one tax rate, anything above 15 to 22 another and 22 and above another. So there is a step-change in there. In terms of creating more steps within the wine category, I think that would be incredibly complex. Wine is classified by European legislation as being a product between eight and 15 degrees. A strength of wine is not a pre-determined thing; it is determined by the climate and grape variety of the country that it comes from. Global warming has had quite an impact on wine production and alcohol levels. What we are seeing in the wine industry at the moment, and I have spent the last two days at one of the largest wine shows in the world at ExCel, is actually a rather exciting range of newer lower alcohol wines coming back into style and back into freshness. Certainly all of our consumer research shows at this moment in time that consumers are looking for lighter wines, and I think the industry will drive in that direction as a result. We have produced huge levels of consumer research over the last few years that suggests that is the way the industry should go. I would not be in favour of adding that extra complexity into it. A wine is allowed to vary in alcohol level point five degrees ABV either way, so a 12% wine could be 11.5 or 12.5. They vary from batch to batch because it is a product with natural variations and adjustment If you are buying grapes from South Australia the alcohol content of the grape from one part of South Australia to another part may vary. So there is variation in there. I think you would create huge difficulties for the industry in actually even being able to assess the difference on an accurate basis between a 12.5 and a 12% wine in various batches. So I would not be in favour from a wine perspective.

Q426 Sandra Gidley: Beer?

Mr Blood: Beer has a linear approach already: stronger is also more highly taxed. I think it is a very interesting way of looking forward. I would support looking at how you might do that - some tax favouring for low alcohol products and perhaps some higher rates of duty for very strong products - because I think one of the trends, which I do not think has been entirely benign, over the last 20 years has been that the average strength of beer consumed has for 15 years gone up. I do not think that is a good thing. I am pleased that actually in the last two or three years it has started to go down again, which is good news. I want to break the link between brands that are considered to be premium and alcohol strength. I think it is an unhelpful link, and the industry tends to link high prices with high alcoholic strength. If you look at the cider market, there has been a huge growth in premium ciders, so very expensive ciders amongst the more expensive alcohol units in both supermarkets and pubs, and those premium brands are at 4.5%, the bottled ciders, Bulmers and Magners, whereas other ciders are stronger than that. That is an encouraging development, in my view, where we are trying to break down the link between alcohol strength and brands that have high value. I would support looking at things we can do in that area.

Mr Benner: To add to that, Jeremy is right. The average strength of beers, in particular real ales, are starting to come down, so CAMRA would be in favour of a proposal to apply what can already be applied under European law for a zero rate on beers below 2.8% ABV. It is perfectly possible to brew interesting quality beer at around that level, and I think that would be a good step. The other thing that we are pushing for as part of the Excise Directive Review in Europe is that a preferential rate of duty is applied to draft beer or beer sold in pubs, once again, to make it more attractive to people to drink in that regulated environment. At the moment that cannot be applied by Member States but we are taking that proposal to the European Commission.

Q427 Sandra Gidley: Would it make any difference from a supermarket perspective? Would it change the balance of what was sold, do you think?

Mr North: I think we would have to do the analysis, to be honest, to come to a conclusion on that.

Q428 Sandra Gidley: So some agreement there then. This one might divide you. Is it good for public health that the duty on beer has risen above inflation in recent years but the duty on spirits, such as whisky, has not? I suspect the influence of the Scottish whisky industry on the Chancellor and the Prime Minister here. Is that a good thing, that change in shift of taxation?

Mr Beadles: I think the taxation is not linked at this moment in time. Taxation on spirits has historically been considerably higher than on wine.

Q429 Sandra Gidley: Historically, but with the recent changes for spirits, the taxation has not increased as much?

Mr Beadles: Certainly from our perspective, I think that there are different views from different parts of the industry; I am not sure there is a homogeneous view on that question. From a wine perspective, we have had, obviously, a 20% increase in the last year alone, taking us over two pounds a bottle in tax.

Q430 Sandra Gidley: From a public health point of view.

Mr Beadles: My understanding is that the Chancellor does not make duty decisions based on public health grounds, he makes duty decisions based on revenue raising grounds, and, therefore, he is not looking at these issues from a public health perspective. That is my understanding of his statements.

Mr Blood: I think, from my perspective, you will get the logic of my previous answer: if you can use excise duty to encourage consumption of products that are lower or more moderate in alcohol, then I think that is something that is interesting and good. That is my answer.

Mr Benner: Beer still represents over 60% of the wet turn-over through lots of pubs and it is only right that it should be priced accordingly, because, again, pubs are losing out because of that.

Q431 Sandra Gidley: I want to come back to cider. Putting the premium product to one side, although I drink cider I do not touch White Lightning with a barge pole because it has a high alcohol content. A lot of young people seem to buy it because it gets them drunk quicker, and yet the duty on it is comparatively low. Should that anomaly be addressed?

Mr Blood: We produce White Lightning. We bought Paul's business five years ago and inherited a big brand in White Lightning that was sold at 7.5% alcohol. We had two choices on how to develop that brand. Fundamentally I do not feel 100% comfortable with that brand, so we could have withdrawn it completely and that would have left the market. There are many other white ciders out there sold at that strength and that price. What we have done, as leaders, is we have increased the price, we have stopped doing three-litre bottles with 50% extra free, and recently we have reduced the alcohol strength of White Lightning from 7.5% to 5.5%. So we are trying to do it. We could, Pontius Pilate-like, wash our hands of it and abandon it but because we are cider market leaders we are trying to lead the other producers in the market place to try and sell white cider in a more responsible way, in our view. You ask: should we change the anomaly on cider duty? I think there is not unanimity amongst the National Union of Cider Makers on that one, because there are a lot of craft ciders, vintage products, which have got quite a high alcoholic level, that I would encourage. On beer we have done a thing called progressive beer duty, where smaller craft breweries get a more favourable duty regime to protect their interests. I think there is maybe a way of looking to protect the craft vintage artisan production and maybe look at it like that. Again, I would be interested in how we could approach that. I think that is a good area for us to be investigating.

Chairman: I hesitated to say that that was the last question, but it was. Could I thank all four of you for coming along and helping us with this inquiry this morning.

Witnesses: Mr Mike Craik, Chief Constable of Northumbria, Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) Lead for Licensing, gave evidence.

Q432 Chairman: Good afternoon. I wonder if I could ask you to give your name and the position you hold, please?

Mr Craik: I am Mike Craik; I am the Chief Constable of Northumbria Police and I am the Association of Chief Police Officers spokesperson on alcohol and licensing issues.

Q433 Chairman: Once again, thank you for coming along and helping us, and sorry about the delay. Have the more liberal licensing laws that were introduced in 2003 resulted in a continental cafe culture, as predicted by some at that particular time?

Mr Craik: No, on my reading of it, it was intended to help in that direction. I do not think it has achieved that, and that would be an unrealistic expectation.

Q434 Chairman: We have been told that the Government regulations make it difficult for local authorities to reject applications now. Do you agree, in your role, that that is the case either in Northumberland or elsewhere?

Mr Craik: Yes, and, of course, this comes from conversations with partners and that sort of thing. We are not the licensing authority, but I think there is an anxiety, that they feel constrained by the legal power of the big organisations. In industry they can turn up with lots of very expensive barristers and challenge decisions, and I think there is nervousness around that, being robust in the face of what is a particularly powerful industry around that. My view is I would like to see, certainly some of my colleagues would like to see, more licensing authorities at least trying to be more in tune to what local people say.

Q435 Chairman: We visited New Zealand just a few weeks ago, just before Easter, and we had several conversations there. The Law Commission is looking at changing the licensing law, but one of the organisations, which was an academic organisation that we talked to, said that their big shove was actually to empower the community; whether that would be a planning authority, or whatever, I do not know, but to empower the community to say, no, and the wider voice of the community had to be consulted before further licences were issued. What is your view about that?

Mr Craik: My personal, professional view (and I hesitate because I have not consulted all 43 of the chiefs around this): I would be supportive of that. I would like to see the local community having a more powerful voice in how licences were granted and to what extent they were granted in communities, because you will not get the perception of a cafe culture if people feel they have no say in how it is coming about and things just happen without their contribution towards it. We have done a lot of work with my local authorities in Tyne and Wear and the issue of the public perception of how on how things work is vital. Even when we have reduced crime and reduced disorder, they do not make the connection that it is us that is doing it unless we do a lot of work to enable them to see that it is the partnership that is providing that service that actually works for us. I think it is absolutely vital that you listen to what the public want, show them what it is you intend to do about it and how you can influence that and how you cannot, because they will accept the fact you cannot sometimes, and then go back to them with the outcomes of that, successful or otherwise, and if they are unsuccessful you say, "What else would you like us to try and do to solve this problem for you?"

Q436 Chairman: Would it be easy for you, through ACPO, to get the views of other police forces, as it were, reasonably quickly on the issues that you have just talked about there, to get the wider views, as it were?

Mr Craik: If you want that specific view on whether we support that broader public involvement.

Q437 Chairman: Yes, what would be your position?

Mr Craik: My intuition is that they would probably be supportive of that, but if I emailed them all and asked for a response, agreeing or not agreeing to that, then that could be done in fairly short order. If I phrase it in a way that, in the absence of a response, which often happens, I will take it that you are agreeing by your silence to what I am suggesting, then we can produce that for you fairly quickly.

Chairman: I would appreciate it if you could let us have that.

Q438 Dr Naysmith: Following on along the same lines as some of the questions that have already been asked, in my experience - I suppose it is really anecdotal in a way - there are parts of the country where people seem to have more say in what happens in their local community when licences are being granted than others. I was going to ask a similar question to the Chairman. Would it be possible for you to find out through your organisation, whether all these chief constables (43, was it, you said) could tell you, whether it was the case that local people did get a proper say in what happened?

Mr Craik: I would hesitate to ask them to give me a categorical assurance that they understand at every neighbourhood level how people feel about a single issue. I think we would have to get in the surveys to do that. We do do that, but that is on a quarterly basis and it is expensive.

Q439 Dr Naysmith: This information is not readily available.

Mr Craik: It is not readily to hand. It would require a lot of work, and I suspect I would get a very varied picture and answers along the lines of what I have just given you: "How do you expect me to find that out with any degree of certainty when you are asking me what the public think?"

Q440 Charlotte Atkins: From your experience, and you may not be able to answer this, have there been any advantages to having local licensing? I represent a relatively rural area and clearly the sorts of applications you are going to have in a market town are going to be very different to the applications you might have in a city area. Has local licensing been able to allow local licensing committees to reflect those different demands in local areas?

Mr Craik: Yes. I will go back to my experience in my force area. I think my licensing committees and my officers work in a way, in terms of partnership, that they did not previously. I think one of the benefits of that bit of the 2003 Act has enabled us to engage in partnership in a much more successful way. I think a lot depends on the relationship with partners, where they are and how much influence they can actually have. Again, it is difficult. We are always hoping we are providing the service that the public want from us, but until we ask them afterwards or until we hear the feedback from them, we do not actually know. I would say partnership working in terms of licensing applications and refusals and dealing with objections has improved; it is still a bit short of working perfectly, I think.

Q441 Charlotte Atkins: What about the review of existing licences where there has been some concern by local residents about the operating of a particular pub? Is there any evidence that there is community involvement in refusing licences for the future - reviewing licences and taking licences away - because clearly there is one issue about licensing; there is another issue about whether a licence should in fact be revoked?

Mr Craik: You are talking to somebody who does not sit on the licensing committee and does not see or hear what the objections are or whether the outcomes are successful in terms of those who object and those who do not. I would go back to my original point. To be fair to licensing authorities now, the rejections, refusals and revocations are very, very robustly legally challenged, and that puts them in a very difficult position. As much as local councillors may want to provide what local opinion suggests is appropriate for them, they have to get everything right, and that is quite a tough challenge.

Q442 Dr Taylor: Can you give us an estimate, or is there any hard evidence, of the amount of crime that is alcohol related on typical Friday, Saturday nights?

Mr Craik: Yes, I have provided some written evidence. That is local stuff, and I think you need to be very cautious on that. It looks to be about 15%. It is a bit of a bureaucracy to get the officers to tick a box on a crime form that indicates clearly to them, and unequivocally to the point where they feel safe to do it, that it is alcohol related, and you can see year by year that goes up. That is about us getting more compliance and it is not an accurate picture. Fifteen per cent is what it is at the moment. I would suspect it is lots more than that. My own experience going out and arresting people is that it is quite unusual to find people who are not in some way involved in alcohol. It does not mean they are drunk. That is another issue, the offence of drunkenness. It is people's behaviour that gets them arrested, not the level of alcohol in their body. One of my early campaigns around the "The Party is Over", we arrested 9,000 people more for those sorts of offences in that subsequent year, but 5,500 of those were for Public Order Act offences, my strategy being early intervention. If you wait until people are so drunk that they are drunk and incapable, you are probably too late; they end up in the medical professionals hands more likely than ours. Ours is that it is your behaviour that gets you arrested. If you swear once you might get a warning; if you swear twice, you gesticulate, you threaten, you get arrested at that point. The degree of drink may not be drunk by a barman's estimate, by your estimate, by mine, hence the use of Public Order Act offence. Drunk and disorderly, again, does not require you to be drunk and incapable, but to be arrested for drunkenness does require you to be drunk and incapable. It is a cloudy picture, but 15% is probably an absolute minimum. I would suggest it is far more than that. I have anecdotally heard figures of around 40%, and I think if you start looking at domestic incidents as well, domestic violence incidents where officers are called to people's homes that do not result in crimes necessarily, I think drink is a fairly usual factor in those sorts of events.

Q443 Dr Taylor: You obviously go back quite some time. When you were a young copper on the street, was it a rarity to have alcohol-related crime?

Mr Craik: No. The first two arrests I made in Brick Lane as a PC in 1977 were two gentlemen who were drunk and disorderly, both, sadly to say, from Newcastle. The fact they hit me in the face with a cider bottle did not help! Yes, that was, in fact, almost a drunk patrol actually, and we had a van. We were young probationers. It was our task in those days to look for the drunk and disorderly behaviour. So, yes, it has been around. My father and grandfather were police officers, and it goes back to 1921, and, yes, if they were alive they would tell you the same story.

Q444 Dr Taylor: Has the Licensing Act made a difference?

Mr Craik: In terms of overall crime, and one of my colleagues has said this earlier, the overall impact is largely neutral. There has been a temporal shift in where offences occur. We have gone, fortunately, through a period where crime has gone down, disorder has gone down year on year on year across most of the country. Linking that to one single act would be naive and irrational, but things have not got worse. I think neutral is a fairly sensible expression of how it has gone on.

Q445 Dr Naysmith: It is interesting that earlier you used the distinction between drunk and disorderly and public---. What was the phrase?

Mr Craik: Public Order Act offences.

Q446 Dr Naysmith: ---Public Order Act to pick people up early before they were absolutely intoxicated. Yet we know that the law states that publicans should not serve people who are intoxicated. Why is it that this law is not enforced?

Mr Craik: When I saw that, at first I was slightly surprised, and then when we thought about it and we discussed it, probably not. There are two reasons: one is that it is useful in terms of putting pressure on. I have sat and listened to earlier evidence today and I have met with the industry before, and it is clear that the industry responds to pressure - economic pressure, regulated pressure and legal pressure - and the fact that we have that power to arrest for drunkenness and for serving drunks, in my force alone we now have 144 different pub-watch schemes that have banning orders against individuals. Our view is that this enables us to say to pubs, "Do you want to participate in partnership in dealing with this issue, or do you want us to come and police it out of you?" And guess what happens? We find another way of doing business together. I do value partnership and I do value the industry's participation in partnership; I just do not think they do it and they would not do it timely if they were not regulated into it or if the law did not make them comply with these sorts of changes. The second bit is entirely about the practicality of policing. Going into the premises that you described earlier, vertical drinking premises, with 200 people in who have been drinking, trying to pick out the one who got served and whether or not they were more or less drunk than the others is a difficult task for a police officer and a dangerous one actually. I have been out and done this. What my officers do, it goes along the lines of if individuals are troublesome and the bar staff are good enough to point that out, or they are not, then: "Can you come outside, bonny lad. I would like to have a chat with you", and then we deal with them when we control the situation and they are not surrounded by all their friends, and we have a far greater range of offences and powers to deal with them on the street than we have in the premises. So it is actually very sensible and practical to deal with them in another way, and it also allows the licensee to be grateful to us for relieving them of the burden and doing their task for them, which means that when we speak to them later, together with the licensing authorities, we get better co-operation, we get better partnership.

Q447 Dr Naysmith: That all makes a lot of sense and is easy to understand, and yet what is difficult to understand is that there were only two prosecutions of publicans in the whole country in 2006. How can that possibly be true?

Mr Craik: I think it goes along the lines that activity is not a good measure. Are we getting better outcomes in terms of managing town centre violence and disorder in public houses? I think we are. It may sound facetious, but it is not. We tend as a country to value a new Trident missile system. I hope nobody is planning to use it real soon. Alcohol disorder zones are like that as well. We do not have very many of those. They are a powerful weapon in our pocket when it comes to negotiating with licensed premises and town centre management in terms of making sure we get much better compliance with people. I understand the point around the lack of activity: the question is should we now get rid of it because you do not use it? I would be a little bit careful about doing that. There may come a time when there are pubs where we are not getting compliance, we are not getting co-operation where I would want to use it, or officers would want to use it, although there are probably other ways of closing a pub down if it is that difficult.

Q448 Dr Naysmith: There must be some premises in the whole of your area that you have your suspicions about, where there is more regular criminal activity or anti-social disorder when the pub comes out than there are elsewhere. Do you particularly target these premises?

Mr Craik: Yes, and one of the things that we do value about co-operation with the licensing trade is this end-to-end approach rather than just enforcement. ACPO's view is that we have got enough laws, thanks, we do not need any more, we are not sure we ought to be stripping any away, but it is about getting the original plan right for a cafe society and then building towards that, this trade shaping and all the rest of it - "Can we be part of that, please?" - right the way down to the individual management of public houses. When police go into premises, which we do routinely, funnily enough the behaviour changes. Getting the behaviour change is the important bit; not catching people. Catching people is a means to an end and a last resort means, "Can we do it some other way?", but I would always like that big stick behind my back if I have got to walk softly about the place and negotiate with people.

Q449 Stephen Hesford: I think you just said, Mike, that you do not want any more laws, you have got enough powers.

Mr Craik: At the moment that is the ACPO view on licensing.

Q450 Stephen Hesford: That was my question. So there is nothing that comes to mind in terms of additional powers?

Mr Craik: No. In fact ACPO's position at the moment is two-strand. We want to get into this and start to develop partnerships, and this end-to-end management of drinking in public places is something we should share together with our partners, and we think that is absolutely right. It should not just be an enforcement thing. The other thing we want to move to is away from all this doom, gloom and disorder. There are places in my area, and a lot across the country, of Legend - a big market in Newcastle I had it thrown at me in this building earlier this week. My wife and I eat there on a Friday night. You could have a reign of terror with a balloon on a stick on a Thursday evening. It is not the place of Legend, and I think it is time to paint a more positive picture, talk a more positive narrative, something like the Civil Trust, their Purple Flag Scheme, which runs along the lines of green flags for parks, blue flags for beaches, to start building some positive perceptions of the society we want to enjoy safe, sensible social drinking in rather than just having to manage the different places. If we can get moving in that direction and accredit places that require very little policing, then I can focus all my resources, not just on the places that are the problem, but the people that are the problem. I come back to the point I made earlier, it is misuse, mis-sale and misbehaviour. Misbehaviour covers everything from urinating in the street to murder. It is the people who do that, not alcohol itself and not geography that is the key issue. So if I can focus more and more of my efforts on dealing with the people who are the problem and I can share that with other agencies - health, education and so on and so forth - and we can find out who are the people who cost our organisations the most money, who cause the most harm to the community, what can we do divert them away from it as well as interdict and deal with them, what can we do with them and for them as well as to them. I do things to them - it is what cops do - and then the next layer is: who are the next generation? Who are the children, the siblings, the ten year olds, the seven year olds who in five or ten years' time are going to be the 15 year olds who are fighting and drinking in the town centre, and what can we do with education, social services and housing to divert them or prevent them ending up like, mum, dad or their brother or sister? We want to see ourselves on a broader path together with all the other agencies. The barrier to that at the moment is sharing confidential information, but I believe we can get round that.

Q451 Charlotte Atkins: In our last evidence session we heard from a paramedic that they were finding young people as young as ten who had consumed too much drink and were almost comatose in some situations. Are you finding that that is the case in terms of the experience of your police forces, that you are finding younger and younger people being picked up having abused alcohol?

Mr Craik: Yes, I think our findings, our views, would coincide with the research that was published on 6 May that says there are fewer younger people drinking at the moment, just, but they are drinking more, that the age group is young, that adult males, 15 to 24, are drinking slightly less, but they were always bad, and females of that age group are actually getting worse. That would accord with our anecdotal view of life. There are two types of vulnerability round this. When I have been here today the conversation has been around what goes on amongst adults who are allowed to drink in the evening, in the night-time economy. The second problem for us are the kids who drink in the parks, the streets, the housing estates and hang around. If I ask my public, "What is your biggest problem?", it is youth-related disorder and it is founded in alcohol. To what degree that is we cannot measure, but everybody believes it is, that is what the public think it is, and certainly we seize lots of alcohol and we pour that away, and those powers have been really useful for the cops, that power to exclude kids from gathering together, make them move on and not come back for 24 or 48 hours, a very practical bit of stuff, really useful. It makes the problem go away and enables the public to see that somebody has done something, and that is very powerful for the public. Rather than us turn up, the kids are all quiet and behaving themselves but have hidden the drink, even if we do not find the drink with them, we do not catch them misbehaving. Previously we would walk away and leave them and the public would think, "What good were they?" Well now we can actually do something. That ability to be seen to do something is very important, as is seizure, taking the drink and pouring it away. It is a bit of a war of attrition. The first time you find some kids with cans and pour the cans away, they are not very happy, but it does not stop them doing it again. You have to wear them down, you have to be persistent, and it will take time to break through.

Q452 Stephen Hesford: Alcohol disorder under the legislation: my understanding is that the partnerships can charge retailers or outlets for the consequences of public disorder?

Mr Craik: Yes.

Q453 Stephen Hesford: Does that get used?

Mr Craik: It is a bit like arresting for drunkenness for public purposes: it is all right with mum, if you like. It is a very useful negotiating ploy and that is how it tends to be used. Labelling somewhere an alcohol disorder zone, a lot of local councils, I guess, are reluctant to label their own communities - last resort stuff that - so I would not expect, I never did expect that to be used a lot, but it is very, very good for focusing people's attention on what needs to be known in a particular area.

Q454 Stephen Hesford: You have heard the discussion about minimum pricing. Does ACPO have a view on minimum pricing?

Mr Craik: Yes, even before I became the ACPO spokesperson on this I have always said price matters. Alcohol Concern's evidence is clear, it is unequivocal, nobody can come close to rebutting or refuting it today, and I have been in these debates with the industry before. It even accommodates what I think is a slightly specious and selfish argument around punishing moderate drinkers. I do not quite buy that; but that is a personal view, a professional view; not necessarily the ACPO view. The ACPO view is price matters and their unit price approach is very attractive. If you see the break down of how it impacts, it impacts appropriately but disproportionately on the very cheap stuff without impacting disproportionately on what people might say is their reasonable price for drink. I do not think drink is reasonably priced in this country for what it is and what harm it does. I have just been to Singapore and I think Ł27 a bottle is probably about right for wine. Yes, it hurts me, but it does change my behaviour! Without wishing to sound facetious, I have heard, "Why are you punishing me?", on numerous chat shows late at night and early in the morning and there is something of, "They wanted to take the pressures", that comes across from people, and I think what Alcohol Concern propose there is, "We are cops; we go and evidence; that is good evidence", and we support that.

Chairman: Community Alcohol Partnerships: are you familiar with them?

Mr Craik: Yes.

Q455 Chairman: I used a phrase out of a publication about the one at St Neots in Cambridgeshire?

Mr Craik: I have not seen it; I have heard a bit about it this morning.

Q456 Chairman: It does say 129 young people were stopped and searched by the police. Stop and search has a certain reputation to it in certain parts of this country.

Mr Craik: Yes.

Q457 Chairman: Is it helpful that alcohol partnerships or community partnerships use phrases like this, or do you take action like that, if it is as I understand what stop and search means?

Mr Craik: I think that is probably stop and seizure. I think that is probably unhelpful language, certainly in London. It probably would not be noticed where I come from, there would not be a sensitivity to that, but I do understand there is a much better way of expressing that. Again, it is one of those things. They are measuring an activity there; that is not an outcome; that is not life getting better for the people who live there, and I think we need to be a little bit careful not to focus too much on activities unless it produces an outcome in terms of satisfaction or confidence in the public and should focus on: does a disorder go down? Does alcohol related crime go down? Are we making a difference? In fact I do not think that is particularly helpful.

Q458 Chairman: Could I thank you very much indeed for coming along and helping us this afternoon in this inquiry. I do not know when we will be finished with it, I have to say.

Mr Craik: I will contact my colleagues on the New Zealand issues.

Chairman: I would greatly appreciate it if you could do that.