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Advocacy guide for alcohol harm prevention levy

  • Area of Work: The ALLIANCE
  • Type: News Item
  • Published: 12th November 2024
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Alcohol Focus Scotland have developed the guide to set out what the levy is and how to contact your representatives.

Alcohol harm in Scotland is a public health emergency. Alcohol costs Scotland up to £10 billion every year, including up to £700 million in health and social care costs. The pandemic has added to existing problems, damaging more people’s lives and creating a further burden on our health and social care services.

Currently, retailers retain the additional revenue arising from minimum unit pricing, which has been estimated to be over £30 million per year. The ‘polluter pays’ principle should be applied to the sale of alcohol, meaning retailers should pay a levy towards mitigating the health and social costs caused by the products they sell. This could raise £57m per year for local prevention, treatment, and care services.

An alcohol harm prevention levy to make industry pay their way. Retailers should pay towards mitigating these health and social costs caused by the products they sell – following the ‘polluter pays’ principle. An alcohol harm prevention levy would generate funds for local prevention, treatment, and care services.

The levy would apply to retailers licensed to sell alcohol, via a supplement on non-domestic business rates. This would draw on the tried and tested model of the public health supplement, which applied to large retailers selling both alcohol and tobacco between 2012 and 2015, raising over £95m. The Scottish Government has already committed to revisiting a public heath supplement in advance of the next Budget.

Alcohol Focus Scotland have created a new advocacy guide for this levy, which can be found here.

The guide sets out what the levy is, how to contact the Cabinet Secretary for Local Government and Finance, MSPs and Councillors, and includes template letters to encourage them to support the levy.

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