It is a brave Scottish government that would take on the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA), but that is what Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP government did. And, after a long fight through the courts, it has prevailed. The UK supreme court has now ruled that it is legal for Scotland to set a minimum price for alcohol, against fierce opposition from the SWA and other drinks organisations.
Yes, Lord Mance said for the supreme court, there would be some distortion of the market, but it was a “proportionate means” of achieving a legitimate aim. He found that the objections did not outweigh “the health benefits which are intended by minimum pricing”.
Scotland will now be able to impose a minimum 50p-a-unit price for alcohol, with resulting price rises for everything from cider to spirits – including, of course, whisky.
Not for the first time, a devolved government has pioneered a progressive policy that successive UK governments have considered, and fought shy of. In 2005 Scotland was the first to pass a law banning smoking in public places; Wales and England followed a year later. Last year Scotland became the first to ban smoking in cars carrying children. Wales was the first to introduce a 5p charge for plastic bags – in 2011 – to be followed by England only in 2015.
Opponents complained in every case that the provisions would be hard to enforce, that compliance would be low, and that the effects would be negligible.
On the matter of compliance, at least, the critics have been proved wrong: the laws have been widely observed. As to the effects, smoking in Scotland fell from 31% of the population to 21% between 2013 and 2015, and plastic bag usage in Wales fell by 70% in the first year of charging. The fall in England was even greater.
Whether minimum alcohol pricing has the effect the Scottish government intends – to improve public health by reducing consumption, especially of strong beer and cider– remains to be seen. Public health innovations need time to demonstrate their worth. Some opponents argued that the price increases would be highest at the lower end of the market, so penalising poor people, while other consumers would hardly be affected. The SWA, for its part, argued that minimum pricing could have the effect of reducing exports and encouraging others to put up trade barriers.
Supporters of the move, on the other hand, say minimum pricing could reduce the number of lives lost from drinking by more than 100 a year. And, even though the effect of the smoking ban in public places was almost immediately beneficial, most public health innovations need time to demonstrate their worth.
What this measure will do, however, is send a forceful signal about the Scottish government’s priorities and its political will to pursue them. And here, two conclusions can be drawn. Time was when Scotland was used by the UK government as a test-bed for the predictably unpopular, and ultimately failed, poll tax. Today the position is reversed. The now-devolved governments can introduce forward-looking policies on their own initiative, which other parts of the country can observe – and emulate. That is beneficial in itself.
The second is that UK governments can and should be more courageous when it comes to legislating for public health. Time and again they have shrunk from introducing measures, such as restrictions on sugar content or certain types of fat, on food labelling, on advertising of “junk” food, on the proliferation of machines dispensing unhealthy drinks and snacks in schools and hospitals. Often, it seems, they have been lobbied into submission by sections of the food and drinks industries – the shelving of a “traffic lights” food labelling system being a particularly notorious example. They have also been reluctant to use the judicial system.
The Scottish government and the supreme court have now shown that public health considerations do not have to take second place to market, competition or any other factors: they have merit in their own right. Westminster should take note.
• Mary Dejevsky is a Guardian columnist
