The critical thing about the Alcohol (Licensing, Public Health and Criminal Justice) (Scotland) Bill is that it is designed to contribute a number of measures, alongside the Government’s comprehensive strategy on alcohol, to improve Scotland’s relationship with alcohol. As members know, that relationship is worse than the rest of the United Kingdom’s relationship with alcohol, and it needs to be addressed continually. That is why there are 10 separate measures in the bill. Each measure on its own is relatively modest, but I hope that, collectively, they would contribute to improving Scotland’s relationship with alcohol.
For the committee’s scrutiny of the financial memorandum, the most important thing is the fact that any reduction in consumption would produce savings in the medium term and the long term. I will give members just one example. Evidence to the committee says that 105,000 cases that involve alcohol problems come in front of the courts each year. If we can reduce that number, there will be a saving of £2,500 for each summary case that does not come in front of the courts. Perhaps more important, if we can reduce the number of people who go to prison—it has been estimated that just under half of the 45,000 admissions to prisons every year relate to alcohol—the annual saving from each prison place will be £34,000.
There are significant savings to be made. I have not mentioned the national health service, police time and community safety, for example, where major savings could be made. It is interesting that, in all the evidence that has been given to the committee, no one—apart from the NHS—has talked about the savings that would occur. The submissions have all talked about the costs.
I accept that the range of cost estimates for some of the things that are novel is perhaps wider than that which members have faced in dealing with other bills, but I hope that that would partly be addressed by our proposed pilots in some areas, so that we can estimate the cost benefits before the Government proceeds.
I will give a bit of history. When I was the Deputy Minister for Justice, we piloted drug treatment and testing orders, which had failed in England in their initial test. We tested them in Scotland and made some alterations, and we made further alterations before I, as Deputy Minister for Justice, authorised the quite expensive funding to roll them out. Piloting is one method by which the Government can decide whether to proceed.
In the event of a shortfall in funding to licensing boards, licensing fees could be raised, but they have not been raised since 2007. Even to keep them the same in real terms would mean a 23 per cent increase. Not raising fees was fair enough when the economy was in the situation that it was in but, now that it is expanding again, it would be reasonable to consider increasing them. I know that Kenny MacAskill has publicly suggested that that should be the case with other measures.
The other possible source of funding is the social responsibility levy. That was in the Alcohol etc (Scotland) Act 2010, but it has never been implemented. The Government chose—entirely appropriately—to introduce a public health levy, of course, but it has now dropped that, so there is no charge in that field.
According to the University of Sheffield report, if there is a successful court hearing on minimum unit pricing—as members know, the issue is to go back to the Scottish courts for a decision—off-licences will achieve, on 50p minimum unit pricing, more than £100 million in additional profit annually. That substantial profit could be used to adjust downwards alcohol prices that are above the minimum price, which would reduce the effects of minimum pricing substantially.
There is an opportunity to meet the cost of my bill through the social responsibility levy. That is on the statute books now and could be introduced even if we do not achieve minimum unit pricing as a way of pushing the industry—and particularly the retailers—to increase prices.