I don’t know if Minimum Price alcohol is a good idea or not or know whether it will work.
What I do know is that alcohol abuse is a problem throughout the UK on health, crime and disorder and social grounds and needs to be tackled.
At the present time Governments in Scotland, England and Wales and Northern Ireland (possibly jointly with Eire) are considering implementing such a policy.
It appears however that introducing this legislation would face a legal challenge from the drink manufacturers.
It is also very wasteful and inefficient to introduce bits of legislation throughout the devolved Parliaments (as most of it is).
To introduce this policy in the most efficient manner I would propose that we do not introduce more add on legislation.
Instead lets just change the method the UK government sets excise duty on alcohol.
Excise duty would still have to raise the same amount of revenue as the current system, however instead of being quite arbitrary, the rate set would be a certain amount per alcoholic unit.
This has the benefit of being able to be implemented now, throughout the UK (thus saving time wasted by the governments on debating and implementing) raises the same amount of revenue, a more transparent system that incorporates minimum price alcohol.
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