Following the recent alcohol duty reforms, all alcoholic products are now taxed by strength. This reflects public health priorities and helps to address potentially harmful products like ‘white’ ciders and strong fortified wines, which are often cited by health groups as being abused.

The Chancellor has confirmed that she will set out plans for tax – as well as spending and borrowing – in the usual way at the Budget on 30 October.

HM Treasury welcomes representations as part of this policy making process and Budget submissions will be received through the online portal until 10 September.

The Department is developing a Joint Action Plan with NHS England to address co-occurring mental health and drug/alcohol-related conditions. This programme of work aims to improve access to mental health services for people with drug and alcohol misuse conditions, as well as improve the links between mental health and substance misuse services.

The Department is continuing to work with NHS England on this programme, and we aim to publish the Joint Action Plan in 2024.

The Department updated the previous 2012 estimate to reflect inflation based on the latest available data. In 2021, the cost of alcohol to society was estimated at £25 billion. The Department has also initiated a longer-term piece of work to refine this estimate, beginning with a review of existing evidence of the impact of alcohol consumption on the National Health Service and labour market productivity.

The substance misuse workforce strategic plan will outline the actions needed in the next year, next three years, next five years and next 10 years to build back quality in the drug and alcohol workforce and develop a sustainable pipeline into the sector. It will be underpinned by a capability framework, which will provide new guidance on the knowledge and skills required for core roles amongst the drug and alcohol treatment and recovery workforce. It is being designed to be used alongside a newly developed workforce calculator.

There has been extensive engagement with the sector on the development of these products. The first part of the capability framework will be published by December 2023 and will be followed by the strategic plan. The workforce calculator is due to be published in spring 2024.

The substance misuse workforce strategic plan will outline the actions needed in the next year, next three years, next five years and next 10 years to build back quality in the drug and alcohol workforce and develop a sustainable pipeline into the sector. It will be underpinned by a capability framework, which will provide new guidance on the knowledge and skills required for core roles amongst the drug and alcohol treatment and recovery workforce. It is being designed to be used alongside a newly developed workforce calculator.

There has been extensive engagement with the sector on the development of these products. The first part of the capability framework will be published by December 2023 and will be followed by the strategic plan. The workforce calculator is due to be published in spring 2024.

The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) published a toolkit for local authorities in August 2023 to help local authorities compare treatment numbers to their estimated dependent populations and identify whether specific referral pathways need strengthening. The toolkit also contains guidance on good practice to reduce the level of unmet need and target priority or underserved groups.

Alongside the toolkit, two case studies were published on how local areas have taken successful action to reduce unmet need for alcohol treatment.

The toolkit is available to local commissioners and service providers in the restricted area of the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System website and has been accessed approximately 2,000 times each month since its launch. OHID continues to develop the toolkit report by adding components, including support for local authorities to improve pathways from the criminal justice system.

Other steps taken by OHID to support system improvement and the sharing of local best-practice include regional events and working groups for commissioners and service providers.

The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) published a toolkit for local authorities in August 2023 to help local authorities compare treatment numbers to their estimated dependent populations and identify whether specific referral pathways need strengthening. The toolkit also contains guidance on good practice to reduce the level of unmet need and target priority or underserved groups.

Alongside the toolkit, two case studies were published on how local areas have taken successful action to reduce unmet need for alcohol treatment.

The toolkit is available to local commissioners and service providers in the restricted area of the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System website and has been accessed approximately 2,000 times each month since its launch. OHID continues to develop the toolkit report by adding components, including support for local authorities to improve pathways from the criminal justice system.

Other steps taken by OHID to support system improvement and the sharing of local best-practice include regional events and working groups for commissioners and service providers.

We are continuing to invest in the rollout of Alcohol Care Teams to the 25% of eligible hospital sites with the highest rates of deprivation and alcohol-related mortality, as committed to in the NHS Long Term Plan. At the end of March 2023, 31 out of 47 sites reported that they were optimally staffed, in line with the NHS Long Term Plan commitments.

Initial modelling for the NHS Long Term Plan was based on the case study carried out by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and estimated that Alcohol Care Teams (ACTs) would prevent 50,000 admissions over 5 years. A copy of the case study is available at the following link:

https://www.bsg.org.uk/clinical-resource/alcohol-care-teams-reducing-acute-hospital-admissions-and-improving-quality-of-care/

Impact of ACTs will be assessed through proACTIVE, a cost-effectiveness evaluation funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research and led by the research collaborative, which is due to report in 2024. More information about the evaluation is available at the following link:

https://www.hull.ac.uk/work-with-us/research/institutes/health-trials/study/proactive

The Government maintains an interest in the impact of minimum unit pricing in Scotland and looks forward to seeing the findings from the final evaluation. We will consider those findings in detail once available.

From March 2020, NHS England has funded a phased roll out of optimally staffed Alcohol Care Teams in 25% of hospital sites located in areas of highest need in England, 47 out of 189 hospitals. All of these services are now in delivery with 22 out of 47 services optimally staffed.

Public Health England’s evidence review recommended a range of evidence-based policies which could be effective at reducing alcohol harm, including those related to taxation, regulating marketing and clinical interventions.

The Government is reforming alcohol duty to tax all alcohol according to strength, which will be implemented from 1 August 2023. The Government is currently reviewing how online advertising is regulated in the United Kingdom, including age-restricted or potentially harmful content, such as alcohol advertising. The consultation closed on 8 June 2022 and a response will be issued in due course.

Local authorities and the National Health Service are responsible for the provision of high-quality services to prevent, mitigate and treat alcohol-related health harm. This includes the identification of people at risk and brief advice, an alcohol risk assessment in the NHS Health Check and specialist services for dependent drinkers. Information and brief advice is also included at new general practitioner registrations and within the standard contract for secondary care. Through the drugs strategy, the Government is investing £532 million into local authority commissioned substance misuse treatment services in England, which include treatment for both drug and alcohol addiction.

No specific assessment has been made. However, the former Public Health England published an assessment of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of policies to reduce alcohol-related harm in England in December 2016. This included a review of the evidence on the public health burden of alcohol in England and policy responses to reduce the health, social and economic harm.

The UK Government’s drugs strategy, From harm to hope: A 10-year drugs plan to cut crime and save lives, sets out commitments across six departments: the Department of Health and Social Care, Home Office, Ministry of Justice, Department of Work and Pensions, Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and the Department for Education. These departments are and will continue to be responsible for considering the Public Sector Equality Duty for each of their policies and developing and maintaining full equality impact assessments for them.

As the cross-government unit responsible for driving, coordinating and overseeing delivery of the strategy, the Joint Combating Drugs Unit prepared an equality statement that considers the overarching impact of the strategy on groups with protected characteristics.

The Government is committed to tackling substance misuse and working with Dame Carol Black to ensure high quality services are in place to support people dependent on drugs.

On 27 July we published an initial response to Part 1 and Part 2 of Dame Carol Black’s review, outlining the urgent action needed to turn the tide on drug-related deaths and get more people access to higher quality services. As part of this response, the government committed to publishing a new drug strategy which will respond in full to Dame Carol’s recommendations.

The strategy will build on the £148m package the Government announced in January, which included £80m for drug treatment services right across England. The strategy will present our whole of government approach to drive down drug supply and demand, including support for people through treatment and recovery.

There is a programme of work underway to address alcohol-related health harms and their impact on life chances, including the establishment of specialist alcohol care teams in hospitals and supporting children of alcohol dependent parents. The new Office for Health Improvement and Disparities will spearhead efforts to improve treatment and support and we have made the largest increase to drug and alcohol treatment funding for 15 years, with £80 million of new investment.

We have also committed to publish a new United Kingdom-wide cross-Government addiction strategy which will consider a range of issues, including drugs, alcohol and problem gambling.

The level of violence in our prisons is too high. Illicit trade in items such as mobile phones and drugs – facilitated by supply routes such as drones – is a significant driver of the increase in assaults on staff and other prisoners.

We are fully committed to addressing the increase in violence and assaults by increasing staffing levels and improving prisoner-staff relationships. We are making swift progress in strengthening the frontline, with 20,003 individual prison officers in post at the end of August – an increase of 1,290 since October 2016. Alongside this, we are moving to a new key worker model which will mean every residential prison officer supporting a caseload of around 6 prisoners. This will mean prisoners have a consistent, named officer to challenge and support them away from violence and reoffending. We have invested in 5,600 body-worn cameras across the prison estate, rolled out alongside training in staff interaction with prisoners, to support better relationships and give high-quality evidence to support prosecutions where assaults do take place.

We are likewise determined to tackle the illegal flow of drugs and mobile phones into our prisons. Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) has established national and regional intelligence units, which are working with law enforcement partners to develop intelligence on offenders who are involved in the illicit economy, so that we can carry out operations to find and disrupt criminal activity in prisons. We are building on this by investing £3 million to create an HMPPS Serious Organised Crime Unit, which will work closely with the Home Office and police forces to further disrupt organised crime in prisons.

We are the first jurisdiction in the world to develop tests for psychoactive substances in prisons, and are using these and over 300 trained sniffer dogs in order to detect those using and supplying them. Anyone found with contraband will be subject to disciplinary action and police investigation. We have invested £2 million to equip every prison in England and Wales with technology to strengthen searching and security, including portable detection poles which can be deployed at fixed points such as reception, and extra portable signal detectors to use on the wings to support searches. We are working with mobile network operators to deliver ground-breaking technology, which will stop mobiles smuggled into prisons from working.

We are also bearing down on the supply routes through which illicit items enter prisons. To date, there have been over 40 arrests and 15 convictions of criminals involved in drone activity – resulting in those convicted being sentenced to a total of more than 40 years in jail. In April 2017 we set up a specialist team of prison and police officers to improve our efforts to intercept and capture drones and bring the criminals involved to justice. We are working closely with government partners on the UK’s response to the drone threat and the development of counter drone technology. This is keeping us at the forefront of the work being progressed nationally and internationally to stop criminal use of drones.