I am grateful to Mr Speaker for allowing me this Adjournment debate, and I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to the Minister, whose reply I look forward to. Earlier this month, the details of the upcoming Government consultation on alcohol labelling—part of the obesity strategy—were leaked to the press. It is a long-overdue consultation and a welcome positive step that should lead to consumers being able to make more informed choices about their own health and wellbeing, but thanks to yet another hostile Government leak, the consultation was roundly attacked and misrepresented by tabloids and industry representatives. It sparked the usual outraged backlash against the nannying state and red tape, when that is simply not the case. I thought I would attempt to put the record straight.
To avoid confusion or misrepresentation, I whole-heartedly support our hospitality industry, and I understand the uphill battle it faces and the devastation that lockdowns and restrictions have caused. There is excitement and anticipation across the country about getting out, socialising, having a drink, seeing live music and enjoying life. We have all missed spending time with family and friends, whether that is relaxing and unwinding or going out and partying.
When we consider the role of alcohol in our society, we see that there is a balance to be struck. As with many things in life, there is the good and there is the bad, because we cannot escape the very real harm alcohol inflicts. The evidence, which I will come to, speaks for itself. Tackling alcohol harm is not about punishing drinkers or landlords, or taking the fun out of socialising. However, we have a responsibility—the Government have a responsibility—to hold the alcohol industry to account, and to ensure its fair and proper regulation.
Alcohol harm is rising, and it has been for many years, however we want to count it. Alcohol is now linked to 80 deaths a day in the UK, many of them of the young, while alcohol-specific deaths are at their highest rates since records began, and the treatment and funding for alcohol addiction are in absolute crisis, yet there appears to be no sense of urgency from Government. Alcohol is responsible for more years of working life lost than the 10 most frequent cancers combined. Before covid, alcohol took up 37% of ambulance time and a quarter of A&E time. For the police, it is even higher, with more than half of police time spent on alcohol-related incidents. All of this comes at a high financial cost, too. Alcohol harm is estimated to cost the UK taxpayer upwards of £27 billion each year.
We know that those in the most deprived communities are disproportionately affected. Despite drinking less on average, they are up to 60% more likely to die from alcohol than more affluent groups. In Liverpool—just one city—there are more than 14,000 alcohol-related hospital admissions every year, and 535 new cases of alcohol-related cancer as well. Alcohol harm and addiction are destroying lives, livelihoods, communities and families.
To return to the matter of today’s debate—alcohol labelling—I would like to ask those listening to remember the last time they looked at a bottle of orange juice. They may remember a number in red detailing the sugar content, a number for how many calories are in the drink, and a whole table with further information on nutritional content. Now picture a bottle of alcohol—wine perhaps. Do they remember seeing any such information about the ingredients, calories or nutritional values? Was there any information about the impact of alcohol on health, or any guidelines for consumption? If I can make a guess, the answer is most likely to be no, or maybe “on some bottles”. That is because none of this information is legally required on alcohol labels. Alcohol products are a conspicuous outlier among consumables. They are exempt from other food and drink labelling requirements, and the only information that is legally required is the volume of the liquid, its strength in ABV—alcohol by volume—and whether any of the 14 most common allergens are present.
In July 2020, the Government unveiled the new obesity strategy. On the subject of labelling, the Health Secretary said:
“it’s only fair that you are given the right information about the food you’re eating to help people to make good decisions.”
He is absolutely right, and what he says is as true for alcoholic drinks as it is for anything else. It is surely bizarre that if we buy a bottle of juice, we get a range of calorie, ingredient and nutritional information, yet if we buy a juice and vodka ready-to-drink product, we will usually not get any of the same information. Similarly, alcohol-free beer and wine must display calorie and nutritional information, yet alcoholic beer and wine does not have to.
Covid-19 has reminded us all of the need to take seriously the impact of diet and lifestyle on our physical and mental health. As we know that alcohol damages health and causes harm, it is inexplicable that alcohol products face less regulation than fruit juices and fizzy drinks, so the Government’s consultation is timely and important.
I want to press the Minister to go further with the consultation than calories, nutritional information and ingredients; it must consider health information as well. The majority of the public agree and want to know what is in their drinks. Opinion polling conducted for the Alcohol Health Alliance shows that 74% of people Toggle showing location ofColumn 334want ingredients on alcohol labels, 62% want nutritional information, including calorie content, and 70% want health warnings.
There is a strong case for displaying calorie information on alcohol labels. For those who drink, alcohol accounts for nearly 10% of their daily calorie intake. Around 3.4 million adults consume an additional day’s worth of calories each week, yet 80% of the public are unaware of the calorie content of the most common alcoholic drinks.
Alcohol harm is also poorly understood by drinkers. Only one in five people know the drinking guidelines, and only one in 10 can identify cancer as a health consequence of alcohol. We have warnings on cigarettes that tobacco can cause cancer, so why is similar information missing from alcohol?
I would like to quote one person with lived experience, who described the lack of health information to me like this:
“I knew little of how many recommended units per week, I knew nothing about the nutritional value, I could tell you how many calories were in a Mars Bar but not the glass of Merlot I was drinking. I knew nothing about the long-term health implications. If I buy a pack of cigarettes I am told they are highly addictive and I am told with every pack what health implication there could be. They are now behind a shutter in the shop – but alcohol? Nothing. I near lost my life to alcohol and the lack of information and regulation makes no sense to me”.
Alcohol labels are an effective tool to change that situation. A study in Canada showed that consumers exposed to health warnings on labels were three times more likely to be aware of the drinking guidelines and were also more likely to know about the link between alcohol and cancer.
A number of alcohol products voluntarily incorporate unit alcohol content per container, a pregnancy logo or message and active signposting to drinkaware.co.uk. I am grateful to the producers who contacted me ahead of this debate to share updated labels that now include calorie and nutritional information. One of the UK’s biggest pub chains has already taken that step and is providing calorie labelling for all alcoholic drinks on their menus. I am grateful to the Minister for confirming, in answer to my written question, that alcohol sold in licensed venues will also be part of the consultation.
If someone pops into their local supermarket and takes a wander round the booze aisle, it is abundantly clear that there are huge inconsistencies in alcohol packaging. That hit-and-miss approach is just not good enough. It is time to put it right and standardise the approach, as we have done with food labelling. Even on the products that did carry chief medical officer guidelines and nutritional information, there are varying degrees of clarity and visibility.
In their report “Drinking in the dark: How alcohol labelling fails consumers”, Alcohol Change UK and the Alcohol Health Alliance recommend that:
“The UK Government and devolved administrations must give a new or existing independent agency appropriate powers to…enforce what appears on alcohol labels, working in the interests of public health and consumer rights and free from influence and interference from corporate interests.”
I support that recommendation and hope that the Minister will consider it in the consultation, when it gets under way.
Sir Ian Gilmore, a leading figure in Liverpool’s fight against alcohol harm and chair of the Alcohol Health Alliance, said:
“Alcohol labelling in this country is…not fit for purpose if we wish to build a healthier society. The public must be granted the power to make informed decisions about their health by having access to prominent health warnings and information on ingredients, nutrition and alcohol content at the point of purchase. The industry’s reluctance to include this information on their products suggests profits are being put ahead of people’s health.”
Ahead of this debate, I received a letter and information from the Portman Group, the alcohol industry-funded social responsibility body and regulator for alcohol labelling, packaging and promotion in the UK, and I am grateful for that. The Portman Group supports the consultation and its intention to provide consumers with more information on calories, the chief medical officer’s lower-risk guidance and drink-driving. It said that: “we believe this can be done most effectively on a voluntary basis”.
It is encouraging to hear some industry support for the consultation and I look forward to further discussions with it, but with alcohol-specific deaths at their highest on record, it is surely time for a proper review of how the industry is regulated and held to account.
The regulation of alcohol marketing in the UK is fragmented and largely self-regulating. Under the current set-up, the Advertising Standards Authority, funded by the advertising industry, Ofcom and the Portman Group, funded by the alcohol industry, all play a role in regulating marketing, from TV advertising to sponsorship deals to packaging. That is surely ripe for review, to consider how a new model and a new alcohol industry regulator could be made more accountable to the public and be fully independent of the alcohol industry.
I hope that the Minister will use her consultation as an opportunity to mandate wider health information on labels, too. This should, as a minimum, include the CMO’s guidelines, pregnancy warnings, drink-drive warnings and cancer warnings, so that we can make informed personal health choices and collectively seek to reduce alcohol harm.
I accept that alcohol labelling is only one small part of seeking to reduce alcohol harm across society. Any progress on improving labelling should be part of a broader strategy: a national, Government alcohol strategy. The last alcohol strategy was formulated in 2012, and, since then, harms have continued to rise. Over the last decade, we have learnt a lot more about the wider health impacts of alcohol, such as the link between alcohol and cancer. The World Health Organisation is clear that policies on the affordability, availability and promotion of alcohol are the most effective—policies that have also proved effective in reducing smoking.
What can really be said of attempts to reduce the increasing and worsening harms caused by alcohol misuse? Why is it that evidence-based research and policies are being ignored in this way? The Government’s addiction strategy is under way—it was promised in 2020, but we are waiting for it—and we also await the second part of the Dame Carol Black review of drugs. These are very welcome, but now is surely the time for a full-scale review of reducing alcohol harm across society. A focused alcohol strategy would allow a much broader and fuller understanding of the extent of alcohol harm and the measures needed to reduce it.
As it stands today, the UK has the highest number of alcohol-specific deaths on record. Drug and alcohol addiction services have been pushed outside the NHS into cash-strapped local authorities, decimated by funding cuts and fragmented. There are fewer addiction psychiatrists in training than ever. Alcohol is now 74% cheaper than it was in 1987, and in England there are over 300,000 children currently living with at least one adult who drinks at a high-risk level.
This current trajectory cannot continue and the urgent need for a national alcohol strategy cannot be overstated. In their approach to obesity, the Government have shown a willingness to take bold action to protect the public’s health. The same boldness is now required to tackle alcohol harm. The consultation on the labelling of alcohol products is the first step towards improving transparency and accountability across the alcohol industry, and ensuring an evidence-based approach to reducing alcohol harms. I implore the Minister to get it under way, and I look forward to her response.
