Labour should raise price of a pint, says one of its backbenchers

Labour should raise the price of a pint, one of the party’s backbenchers has suggested as part of a call to combat alcohol abuse.

Cat Smith told the Commons on Monday that successive governments had “placated” a multibillion-pound industry by freezing or lowering alcohol duty.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves unveiled Labour’s first Budget in 14 years last Wednesday, when the Government announced it would cut alcohol duty rates for draught products by 1.7% in cash terms from February next year, for a saving of around 1p a pint.

Alcohol duty on most other products is set to rise.

Ms Smith, the MP for Lancaster and Wyre, said: “In the UK, it’s estimated that 17 million working days are lost each year due to alcohol-related sickness. And it’s not just days lost, it’s also decreased productivity, because alcohol abuse can lead to employees arriving late for work and being absent more often.

“And some workplaces, cultures encourage drinking, and I think at that point, colleagues, we have to take a look at our own workplace.”

According to the latest Office for National Statistics data, there were 10,048 deaths in 2022 from alcohol-specific causes – 4.2% higher than in 2021 and 32.8% higher than 2019, when rates of alcohol-specific deaths in the UK had remained “stable” since 2012.

On a rise in alcohol-related deaths, Ms Smith claimed “one of the main reasons for this is that alcohol has become much more affordable due to successive governments cutting alcohol duty rates”.

She added: “This is a short-sighted and naive decision-making and has been out of step with the evidence that experts have been telling us for years.”

Ms Smith pointed to the World Health Organisation’s suggestion that alcohol taxation and pricing policies are “among the most effective and cost-effective alcohol control measures” and said: “Alcohol duty is best placed to do this, and also has the advantage of course of raising the Treasury revenue, because the duty revenue should cover the cost of harm but currently, it covers barely half of the cost of harm to society.

“So my plea to the Government front bench today is this: to stop placating multibillion-pound alcohol industry under the guise of helping pubs because almost every time duty rates have been cut, chancers proclaim it as a victory for pubs and it simply isn’t true – it helps supermarkets far more, allowing them to maintain much cheaper prices on alcohol.”