Iain Stewart MP: A minimum unit price for alcohol has few discernible benefits – and plenty of downsides

Iain Stewart is Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes South. Follow Iain on Twitter.

I have considerable reservations about the efficacy of a minimum unit price for alcohol (MUP). I am concerned that it will penalise responsible drinkers but not tackle the problems of binge drinking.

I was therefore interested to see the edition of the Metro recently with a front-page story about a bold claim that a 30p rise in the price of a pint "can cut deaths by a third".  It is important to look carefully at these claims.

They are based on research from the University of Victoria Centre for Addictions Research of British Columbia, Canada which asserts that between 2002 and 2009 a 10% increase in the average minimum price for all alcoholic drinks was associated with a 32% reduction in alcohol-related deaths.

Yet official hospital records paint a different picture. They show that the number of deaths from alcohol actually went up from 1073 in 2002 to 1169 in 2009! I am therefore concerned about the statistics on which UK MUP policy is being built.

Iain Stewart MP: The English think they're being robbed by the Scots. The Scots think they're being robbed by the English. But what's the truth?

Iain Stewart is the Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes South. Formerly a head-hunter, Iain was head of research for the Scottish Conservatives in the 1990s and co-authored “It’s Our Money, Who Spends It?” about the Barnett Formula and fiscal autonomy for Scotland.

And so the Barnett Formula once again steps into the political spotlight; this time as one of Conservative Home’s prescriptions for securing a Conservative majority in 2015. Reforming the formula is regularly cited as a mechanism through which, proponents argue, tensions and unfairness in the Union may be resolved.

Yet the formula endures into its fourth decade and successive Governments have parked reform in the “too difficult” box. The 2001 comment by Lord Foulkes, then a junior Scotland Office minister, is telling,

“If the SNP think that Barnett is too mean and the English Tories think that it is too generous, most sensible people would think that it is just about right”.

I do not write in defence of Barnett. Indeed, if we are entering a debate on what form “devo-max” might take, it is probably timely to consider whether Barnett remains fit for purpose. The formula is, however, a much misunderstood mechanism which is, in reality, only one component of a complex fiscal arrangement between Scotland (and Wales and North Ireland) and the UK Government.