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Finance Bill

I am not sure that I quite agree with that. There is a limit to how much soft drink prices can be regulated, and I would be slightly nervous about suggesting there should be such regulation. I share the hon. Gentleman's frustration, however; when I am out with my wife, who rarely drinks alcohol, she constantly talks about how expensive an orange juice is relative to the price of beer, in this country at least. That is a fair point. Beer duty was increased by a staggering 17.8 per cent. last year, with two big increases in the space of just nine months. UK pub beer volumes have fallen by 9.3 per cent. in the past 12 months. The proportion of beer sold through the off-trade has risen from about 10 per cent. in 1979 to just under 50 per cent. today, and the trend is accelerating. The rate of decline in beer consumption overall, across both on and off-trades, which is clear over 30 years, is accelerating. According to the British Beer and Pub Association, between March 2006 and March 2007, consumption fell by some 600,000 barrels, between 2007 and 2008 it fell by 1.1 million barrels—that is about twice the rate—and between 2008 and 2009 it fell by some 2.2 million barrels. It seems that almost every year the rate of the deceleration of beer consumption doubles. We are down to a level where just 28.6 million barrels are consumed, across both the on and off-trades and covering all types of beer. Meanwhile, wine consumption fell for the first time this year since records began. According to the World Health Organisation, in 2003 the UK's overall alcohol consumption level was only just above the EU average and was about the same as that of Switzerland and Portugal. The UK will have fallen further down that league table in the five or six years since. Again, that is not to say that this country does not have a problem with alcohol consumption, because it does, but it is worth remembering that consumption has decreased and the type of consumption is changing. These figures show that our problem is less related to overall volumes of consumption and more related to the types, patterns and, especially, the effects of alcohol consumption. In 2003, the UK's consumption per head was already lower than that of either France or Spain—countries that many of us would view as having a more responsible attitude and approach to drinking in general. All that implies that the overall volume of consumption in this country is not necessarily the problem. A recent study that Oxford Economics published in 2008 forecast that, with Labour's alcohol duty escalator in place at retail prices index plus 2 per cent., the sales volume will fall by between 11.5 and 12.4 per cent. over the five financial years following the 2008 Budget. Oxford Economics expects that these rises will""cost between 75,000 and 80,000 people their jobs."" The decline in alcohol consumption may be welcomed by many in this House, but none of the evidence points to a decline in consumption among problem drinkers. The duty rises are just a blanket increase in expense for the great majority who drink responsibly, and I shall return to that point in due course.