The next item is the Stage 4 debate on the Public Health (Minimum Price for Alcohol) (Wales) Bill. Before we proceed with that discussion, I understand that the Bill needs the consent of Her Majesty and the Duke of Cornwall. Therefore, in accordance with Standing Order 26.67, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services must signify consent before we can hold this debate. Cabinet Secretary, can you confirm that the required consents have been given? Can you confirm?

Can you confirm that the—

Llywydd, I have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen and the Duke of Cornwall to acquaint the Assembly that Her Majesty and the Duke, having been informed of the purport of the Public Health (Minimum Price for Alcohol) (Wales) Bill, have given their consent to this Bill.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary, which allows us to move forward to the debate on Stage 4 of the Public Health (Minimum Price for Alcohol) (Wales) Bill. I call on the Cabinet Secretary to move the motion—Vaughan Gething.

Motion NDM6746 Vaughan Gething

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales in accordance with Standing Order 26.47:

Approves the Public Health (Minimum Price for Alcohol) (Wales) Bill.

Motion moved.

Thank you, Llywydd. I'm very pleased to move the motion and open the Stage 4 debate for the Public Health (Minimum Price for Alcohol) (Wales) Bill.

We have of course been working on this Bill for a number of years. We first consulted on minimum pricing for alcohol in 2014, as part of the public health White Paper, and I would like to start by thanking my ministerial colleagues Mark Drakeford and Rebecca Evans for their work to shape and develop this landmark legislation. I'd like to thank Assembly Members for their support and for the scrutiny that has taken place during the passage of the Bill. In particular, I'd like to thank the three committees—the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, the Finance Committee and the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee—for their scrutiny. I'd also like to thank external stakeholders for their continued engagement since the introduction of the Bill last October, but also in terms of their previous contributions, including their responses to the consultation on a draft Bill in 2015 that I led as the then Deputy Minister.

This Bill is specifically concerned with the protection of life and health. It provides for a minimum price for the sale and supply of alcohol in Wales and will make it an offence for alcohol to be sold or supplied by retailers from qualifying premises below that price. The minimum price for the supply of alcohol in Wales will be calculated by a multiplier of the minimum unit price that will be specified in regulations, the percentage strength of the alcohol and its volume. It will not increase the price of every alcoholic drink, only those currently sold below the applicable minimum price. 

The legislation will also put in place a series of offences and penalties relating to the new system. It provides additional powers and duties for local authorities to enable them to enforce the minimum pricing system.

There have long been calls for the Welsh Government to do more to address the damage and health harms caused by the excessive consumption of alcohol, and this legislation does exactly that. Because when it comes to consumption, we know that the price of alcohol matters. By using price as a lever in this way, we can target and reduce the amount of alcohol being consumed by hazardous and harmful drinkers, whilst minimising the impacts on more moderate drinkers. This will help to improve a number of key health outcomes, including reducing the number of alcohol-related deaths and alcohol-related hospital admissions. And it's the formula on the face of the Bill that enables us to target cheap alcohol that is high in strength and high in volume—the type of alcohol that is disproportionately consumed by hazardous and harmful drinkers. It's worth noting that hazardous and harmful drinkers make up 28 per cent of the drinker population, according to research undertaken this year by the University of Sheffield, but they consume 75 per cent of all alcohol sold. 

During the passage of this Bill, many have cited the data on alcohol-related harms in Wales, and it always makes for difficult reading, and so it should. I want to repeat some of it here today. There were over 500 alcohol-related deaths in Wales last year alone and over 54,000 alcohol-related hospital admissions last year alone. Direct healthcare costs attributable to alcohol amount to an estimated £159 million in the last year alone. But even more of an issue is the devastation that lies behind those figures—the families, the communities and consequences for NHS staff and support services, as they all cope with the aftermath of alcohol-related death, disease and harm every day. 

This legislation provides us with an opportunity to make a significant difference. It gives us a chance to do more to address alcohol-related harm and, ultimately, gives us a chance to do more to try and save lives. Since we introduced the Bill to the Assembly last October, we've heard from a range of different public health experts and service providers. Many have recognised the difference that this legislation could make.

In written evidence to the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, the Welsh NHS Confederation stated that 

'There is compelling evidence, both from across the UK and internationally, that introducing a MUP in Wales would lead to significant improvements in health and well-being of the population.'

And in oral evidence to the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, the Cardiff and Vale University Local Health Board representative argued that

'minimum unit pricing is an absolutely critical piece of a jigsaw, without which many of the other interventions we provide and the work that we do don't achieve their full benefit.' 

Alcohol Research UK have noted that the

'benefits will accrue more in poorer communities....Those communities are less resilient to alcohol problems.'

That said, there is no doubt that this Bill is novel and experimental. Only Scotland has introduced a minimum price for alcohol in this way, with their legislation for minimum pricing coming into force on 1 May this year. The experimental nature of this legislation is exactly why we have included a sunset clause and review provisions in the Bill, and those provisions have been widely endorsed. But I would like to use today's opportunity to reiterate that the review provisions in the legislation will be underpinned by a robust five-year evaluation, and I will continue to update Members as we take that work forward. 

I also intend to consult on the proposed level of the minimum unit price as soon as possible and, again, I will continue to update Assembly Members on our plans for this consultation and associated timings.      

Angela Burns. 

Thank you, Presiding Officer, although I don't know why I should thank you in some ways because this Bill makes me despair. It is here that we have yet another example of Welsh Government rushing through shoddily constructed legislation in pursuit of a policy objective that none would argue with. Indeed, the Welsh Conservatives had a commitment to enacting measures in our last manifesto to tackle the prevalence of inappropriate alcohol use.

However, during all the committee phases and Stage 3, you have failed to impress, Cabinet Secretary, with your reasoning for refusing to ensure that there is greater clarity of, and clear measurement within, this Bill. You have refused to put the minimum unit price on the face of the Bill. There's no statutory starting point, and therefore the Bill can be seen as an incomplete piece of legislation. It leaves manufacturers in limbo, business in a quandary and does nothing to reassure ordinary people that you are not intending to be punitive, with devastating results for those on low incomes who have every right to enjoy alcohol as much as those whose wallets will feel less of an impact.

During evidence gathering in the Scottish Parliament's deliberations, strong evidence was heard that poorer drinkers will be affected disproportionately by minimum unit pricing, and concerns were raised in our evidence sessions along the same lines. Whilst on the subject of the Bill in Scotland, it does seem extraordinary to me that you were prepared to wait and see how the judicial challenge would pan out but you are not prepared to wait and learn from Scotland's experience with implementation of this novel legislation. That surely would have been helpful, given the raft of unintended consequences that could flow from this Bill, such as the issues of cross-border trade. Unlike Scotland, in Wales, our border with England is porous, is long and densely populated, with high levels of cross-border traffic, but these concerns were brushed aside.

I also remain unconvinced that the potential for unlicensed, smuggled and counterfeit alcohol was properly explored. But my biggest concern is that you could be replacing one addiction with another. A number of charities, including some working with the homeless, and others working with alcoholism and substance abuse, have highlighted the dangers of minimum unit pricing as a blunt, punitive instrument. There's a lot of talk about evidence in relation to this legislation, but little evidence to suggest that these concerns have been allayed or even properly examined. Indeed, the health committee heard evidence from users of an alcohol recovery centre who said that higher prices could push drinkers towards other, more harmful substances.

Additionally, the Huggard Centre, a Cardiff-based homeless charity that many of you will be aware of, warned that raising price alone for legal drugs such as alcohol may simply change one addiction for another and condemn people to a more entrenched and desperate life on the streets—their words, not mine. Consider, last week, the images we saw of young people on the drug Spice, which can be bought now for small change. How can we be convinced that putting up alcohol prices won't simply push more of the poorest in society towards substances like Spice?

The Welsh Conservatives are deeply sceptical that current drug and alcohol rehabilitation services will be enough to help those affected. Addiction is a mental illness, and we all know the issues that exist with the provision of mental health services. With north Wales losing the last of their residential detoxification beds and the third sector highlighting cuts to service provision elsewhere, additional support services do not look likely, and we would like to have your reassurance again that you will provide those.

In short, Cabinet Secretary, this is a sound policy objective, but I would never have brought such a poor quality Bill to the floor of this Chamber. It is simply not joined up, and the only thing—the only thing—that has rescued this Bill from an abstention by the Welsh Conservatives is the sunset clause, but even there, Cabinet Secretary, I issue a warning: you have rejected call after call by members of the opposition for rigorous monitoring of the effects of the Bill on areas ranging from the Bill's impact on addiction support services, on age groups, to the effect on those with small incomes. Nor are there commitments to measure the effects on domestic violence, on substitution, on alcohol-related hospital admissions, to name just a few of the consequences that we, the Welsh Conservatives, have raised at every stage of this Bill's passage.

But this sunset clause will be reviewed and voted on in the future by the Assembly of that day, and that Assembly, those Members, will judge you harshly if you do not collect credible, consistent, outcome-focused evidence that would enable proper scrutiny and sound judgment when reviewing the Public Health (Minimum Price for Alcohol) (Wales) Bill.

This is a public health Bill. Safeguarding, promoting and improving public health is surely one of the main duties that we have. The tools in the battle against smoking are ones that people expect us to use by now, and people support that. It's difficult to imagine any opposition to the smoking ban indoors now, and implementing that law was not difficult because people accepted its purpose—second-hand smoke is bad for you, and people recognised that.

We’re not quite in the same place with this Bill yet. There are doubts, and we shouldn’t ignore those, in terms of why we are doing this, how effective this will be, and we don’t have the full evidence yet. But the evidence is strong that using financial incentives—that is, changing the price of drinks—does affect how much people drink, and I support that as a matter of principle, and it has been part of the Plaid Cymru manifesto for some years.

Taxation is what we’d choose to use, as I’ve said before, but we don’t have the powers. I hope that we will have the powers someday, but, in the absence of that, setting a minimum unit price is an option that is available to us. So, after succeeding in strengthening the original Bill in several ways in its passage through the Assembly, we will vote in favour of this Bill today becoming an Act. We have strengthened it in many ways by influencing the scrutiny that there will be of this Act by the Assembly to evaluate its effectiveness. 

It is vital now that the Government brings very clear evidence to us about the appropriate level of the minimum price, and I do regret that the rushed passage of this Bill has failed to allow the kind of scrutiny that I would like to have seen on that price, but there will be another opportunity, through regulations, for us to be able to look again at that evidence, and measuring and evaluation will be vital in order for us to take the people of Wales with us on this journey. We’ve also insisted that, on the face of the Bill, there is a commitment to teach people about why this legislation can be a part of the suite of tools that we have to help public health.

There is a weakness here in the legislation, and I do regret again that the Government has failed to support that, in terms of looking at how we prevent profiting from this Act, as retailers have to sell alcohol for higher prices. We would have liked to have seen something in legislation that would have ensured that money came in the wake of this legislation to be spent on tackling misuse of alcohol and providing treatment for those who do misuse alcohol and those who drink to excess. We will have to look now at a voluntary levy, but I do think that an opportunity has been missed here. Certainly, I, in future, as we scrutinise and look for ways to strengthen this, will be looking for ways to ensure that there isn’t any profiteering from this.

We’ve heard several times concerns that people on lower incomes will be disproportionately affected, and I’ve thought a lot about this. Of course, it is a scandal that people on lower incomes are more likely to suffer disease or illness because of alcohol misuse: it is an example of social injustice and inequality of opportunity, and we have to tackle these issues through a broad range of policy measures. But what about the impact on people who drink to excess now, and the concerns that moderate drinkers on low incomes will suffer unfairly because of the financial cost? I hope that through the programme of education alongside this legislation more and more people over time will see that it will be possible to adapt their drinking habits in a way that will mean that there won’t be a financial penalty. I hope that industry will respond by reducing alcohol content, for example. People can drink drinks with a lower alcohol content or drink less. Because there is a message now, through this piece of legislation, that we can’t consider alcohol as something benign. 

Above all, let’s see this as a measure for our children. I hope that this legislation will be a tool that can lead to fewer young people in Wales starting to drink to excess, in the way that tougher regulations in the area of smoking has led to a reduction in the number of young smokers. The health of the people of Wales hangs in the balance here.

Calling the Cabinet Secretary to reply to the debate. Vaughan Gething.

Diolch, Llywydd. I want to start by, again, thanking Members not just for contributions in the debate but for the scrutiny of the Bill as well. And, in understanding some of the concerns that Angela Burns has raised today, the tone of those concerns is different from the conversations we've had, but, to be fair, she has raised a number of concerns during the passage of the Bill, both in committee and around it as well. So, they're not new concerns, and I'm happy to acknowledge that.

There is something that we need to do in persuading Members that we're listening to what's happening, not just in getting a Bill passed on trust, but in then acting in that way afterwards. And that is why, as I said in my opening statement, we have an evaluation plan. We'll need to listen. We're happy to share information and work with the committee, which will continue to scrutinise what is happening, in addition to the sunset clause. Because I, of course, acknowledge this is a genuinely novel piece of legislation and we will want to be persuaded there is evidence it's made the real difference to the health of the country that we think it will do. But I don't accept the suggestion made that this is a rushed piece of legislation. We first consulted on this issue in 2014, and it's gone through proper and appropriate scrutiny during its time in the Assembly.

Of course, the Bill does place a duty on Ministers to take steps to promote awareness of the commencement of the legislation, and that includes promoting awareness of the health risks of excessive alcohol consumption and how this Bill and minimum unit pricing is intended to reduce that. That's why I was pleased to work with Rhun ap Iorwerth to bring forward amendments that we supported at Stage 3 to include those provisions in the Bill. And I also want to recognise that the commitment to minimum unit pricing has, of course, appeared in the last two Plaid Cymru manifestos.

But I want to end by re-emphasising that this legislation will not stand on its own. The legislation takes a targeted approach to a very real and evident problem in Wales today, and it will be supported by a range of additional action being taking forward to support those in need, in particular those areas that form part of the Welsh Government's wider substance misuse strategy, and I recognise the points made about how people, who we hope will seek help in larger numbers, need to be supported. But this Bill addresses the reality that Wales, like so many other western countries, has a problem with cheap, strong and readily available alcohol. This legislation is part of helping us to make an important contribution to addressing this issue and improving public health, and I ask Members to vote for it today.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. In accordance with Standing Order 26.50C, a recorded vote must be taken on Stage 4 motions. So, I will defer voting on this motion until voting time. 

Voting deferred until voting time.