Minimum pricing and cross-border shopping

"And I would drive 200 miles..."

Scotland's minimum pricing evaluation continues. The latest chapter looks at cross-border booze shopping and the headline claim is that it has been "minimal".

 

Cross-border alcohol purchasing ‘minimal’, research finds

Public Health Scotland report shows very few Scots travelling across the border to buy cheaper alcohol. 

.. The report, released on Tuesday, found that just 3% of the more than 1000 people asked said they had travelled to another part of the UK solely to buy alcohol.

The 3% figure comes from a relatively small survey and relies on people self-reporting, but let's go with it. Is it a small number? It's about 130,000 people. That is actually quite a lot of people travelling to England solely to buy alcohol. Aside from a relatively small number of people living on the borders, it's a 100 mile round trip at a minimum. As the study says...

Analysis shows that substantial bulk purchasing would be needed for individuals to make significant savings whether purchasing in-person or online, once travel and delivery costs are taken into account.

Well, quite. It therefore seems likely that "substantial bulk purchasing" is exactly what they are doing, whether for personal use or private sale. Moreover, the survey found that a further 13% of Scots said they brought back alcohol from England when travelling there for other purposes.

Analysis of off-trade alcohol sales data in the combined areas of North East and North West England in the 12 months following implementation of MUP showed a small increase (1.14%).

But it is not really "small", is it? There are a lot more people in the North of England than in the whole of Scotland - and a lot more alcohol sold there too. If "only" three percent of Scots were travelling South to buy alcohol, they must have been buying a fair quantity to have a measurable impact on overall alcohol sales in the North of England. 

The 1.14% figure was calculated by looking at sales in the North of England and adjusting for sales in the rest of England and Wales. In the North East, in particular, there are some telltale signs that the increase was driven by minimum pricing...

When examining changes in alcohol sales in north-east England in the 12 months following the implementation of MUP, controlled for sales in the rest of England and Wales, we observed a small statistically significant increase in total alcohol sales (1.46%, 95% CI 0.31%, 2.62%, p=0.01). For individual drink types, larger increases in sales of cider (4.51%) and RTDs (5.85%) were observed, and these were statistically significant

Cider and RTDs ("ready to drink" AKA alcopops) were heavily affected by minimum pricing. Sales of perry rose even more, by 6.96%. If I was minded to drive a white van from Edinburgh to Berwick, these are the kind of drinks I'd be buying.

 

If you think that these are small numbers, remember that advocates of MUP are clinging to the claim that alcohol consumption in Scotland fell by 3.5% in 2019. This is the closest thing they have to a "success" since there has been no decline in crime, no decline in A & E attendances, no decline in alcohol-related hospital admissions and alcohol-related deaths are at a ten year high.

 

The report doesn't attempt to calculate what effect the cross-border shopping had on that 3.5%, but it cannot have been trivial. Furthermore, there are people buying alcohol by mail order from England, but the researchers couldn't find any data on that so it is essentially ignored.

The authors downplay the significance of their findings at every turn. For example...

 

The majority (86%) of respondents did not report purchasing alcohol from across the border with England in person.

 

But 14% of them did and that is a lot of people! And if 1.14% of all the booze sold in the North of England was taken to Scotland, that is a lot of booze and it means that the drop in consumption attributed to MUP in 2019 was even smaller than we thought.

Not going very well, is it? 

Finally, let's take a moment to hear from Scotland's public health minister:

“Reducing alcohol-related harm is a key priority for the Scottish Government and the 3.5% decrease in alcohol sales we have seen following the introduction of minimum unit pricing in May 2018 reinforces why Scotland was right to take this innovative step.

“Given the clear and proven link between consumption and harm, minimum unit pricing is the most effective way to tackle cheap, high-strength alcohol that causes so much damage to so many families.

Contrast the highlighted section with the last paragraph of the article:

 

According to figures released last year, alcohol sales in Scotland dropped to the lowest point in 26 years in 2020, but during the same year, deaths linked solely to alcohol increased by 9% to 1190.

When will the penny drop?