The government’s 10-Year Health Plan has failed to include any measures on the price, availability, or marketing of alcohol. It only includes a promise to consult on improving labelling and support the zero and low alcohol sector.
The 10-Year Health Plan was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to re-evaluate the nation’s relationship with alcohol and tackle the shocking rise in alcohol harm. Deaths are at record highs, increasing 38% in the UK since 2019 and almost doubling since 2001. There are 1 million hospital admissions linked to alcohol every year in England alone. This harm hits our most deprived communities the hardest, with a third of deaths being in the poorest 20%, despite these communities drinking the least.
Jem Roberts, IAS’s Head of External Affairs, said:
It’s frankly embarrassing to launch a ‘prevention’ plan that ignores the most effective ways to prevent alcohol harm. Deaths are at their highest level in decades and have risen over 40% in recent years – yet the government has dodged proven policies like minimum unit pricing, marketing restrictions, and availability controls.
Alcohol is the second biggest cause of death and disability among working-age people. It hits the poorest hardest and drains the economy – costing nearly 180,000 working years in England alone. Prevention doesn’t just save lives, it supports economic growth by boosting productivity and freeing up money currently lost to harm.
We support clearer labelling, but it must be developed independently. The alcohol industry has kept people in the dark for years – and it has no place writing public health policy. If ministers can’t act now, we need a full independent review – like the Khan Review for tobacco – to cut through industry noise and deliver real change.”
Research shows that without action to reduce this harm, deaths and hospitalisations will continue to spiral. If drinking patterns do not return to pre-pandemic levels, by 2035 there could be over 147 thousand additional cases of alcohol-related liver disease, cancer, and heart disease, and over 9 thousand extra premature deaths. Many of these additional deaths have already been seen in recent years.
This harm is preventable. And government prevention policy is crucial to turn the tide. For many decades we have known the most effective ways of reducing alcohol harm are to increase the price, reduce availability, and restrict marketing. The 10-Year Plan has none of these policies and therefore isn’t even an attempt to ‘shift from treatment to prevention’, as it claims to be.
The single most effective policy to reduce alcohol harm is Minimum Unit Pricing (MUP), which reportedly the Plan included in a draft before it was ruled out. MUP in Scotland was found to reduce the most deaths in Scotland’s most deprived communities and among men. This would be the perfect policy for a government claiming to want to reduce health inequalities and about to launch a Men’s Health Strategy.
But there is no single policy that will be enough, and is why we have repeatedly called for a National Alcohol Strategy that introduces all of the most effective policies including: MUP; alcohol duty rates that cover the cost of alcohol harm; revision of the Licensing Act to reduce alcohol’s excessive availability; comprehensive bans on alcohol marketing; mandatory labelling on products including health warnings; and a reduction in the drink driving limit to match the rest of Europe.
People are being kept in the dark about how harmful alcohol truly is. It is the second leading cause of death and disability among working age people, higher even than smoking. All too often it cuts lives short, tearing families and communities apart. But powerful lobbying from the alcohol industry has led to the industry being treated by the government as a legitimate partner in developing policy. It gives them power to push back on any health policy that may reduce corporate profit and growth. We wouldn’t let the tobacco industry have so much control on policy, so why is the alcohol industry allowed so much access?
Introducing genuine prevention policies is the only way to significantly reduce alcohol harm and would help us recognise the true harm that alcohol causes to communities across the UK. The 10-Year Plan has categorically failed to understand this. We hope that future health policy in this parliament will learn from these mistakes.