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Yes, thank you.

That discussion was really helpful. I thank Scottish Labour, Scottish National Party and Scottish Green members for their support for the policy. Everyone’s comments on the work that is still to be done, the way in which we fund the sector, and the analysis and work that we must do on a public health levy are not lost on me. I will take them all away as action points.

I want to reassure members on funding. There is record funding of £112 million. I am absolutely committed to ensuring that it will be spent in exactly the right places.

I also want to respond to Tess White’s and Sandesh Gulhane’s remarks querying who might support the policy. We have seen the letter in The Lancet and the comments of the Association of Directors of Public Health north-east that Emma Harper referenced. We have seen the views of the 80 organisations that work with people and support them day in and day out. We have seen case studies such as those that have been carried out by the Simon Community Scotland. We have also seen modelling numbers that tell us that the lives of 156 people have been saved. That is not an insignificant number; it represents 156 loved ones. We should never forget that those are not just numbers; there are people behind them.

I turn to the point about treatment. The 40 per cent drop that we have experienced here has also been experienced in England, and the UK Government is looking at the reasons for that.

It is just not true to say that nothing else has been done on the matter. I will give the committee a list of actions that we are currently progressing to tackle the issues, whether they concern harmful, hazardous or dependent drinkers. We are working with the UK Government to produce new clinical guidelines on alcohol treatment for the whole UK. There is an alcohol brief intervention review and there are national specifications on alcohol and drugs. All ADPs already offer psychological counselling, in-patient alcohol-detox services and access to medication, and most offer community detox, ABIs and alcohol hospital liaison. It is therefore just not true to say that nothing is being done, because all those measures are already in place.

As for the proposed right to addiction recovery bill, for months I have been asking to see details of it, but we have not received them. I generally do not respond to social media comments on Government business, but just last week I did so to our colleague Annie Wells, who asked me whether I would support such a bill. I said that I would be happy to meet her to discuss it. We now have a date for that in the diary. I will be happy to discuss the bill then, but we still need to see the detail to understand what it would do.

I am glad to see that many members here support consideration of a public health levy. Mr Gulhane—some of your colleagues might be a bit disgruntled about your having said that you support that, because many of them do not. I am keen to work with you on all such aspects.

All the organisations that have written to us agree that minimum unit pricing works. They also agree that it is not a silver bullet. It has achieved its aim. Gillian Mackay is right: at the heart of the matter are the people whose lives will be made immeasurably better, and that is why lived and living experience is at the heart of all the work that I will do.

I ask the committee to support the Alcohol (Minimum Pricing) (Scotland) Act 2012 (Continuation) Order 2024 and the Alcohol (Minimum Price per Unit) (Scotland) Amendment Order 2024, which seeks to change the level from 50p per unit to 65p per unit. I thank the committee for its deliberations. None of what has been said is lost on me and all of it will inform my work.

Last week, I met the industry partnership group to discuss further proposals and how we might work together on the issue, which is something that I am very committed to doing. According to some of the analysis, particularly that carried out by academics and Public Health Scotland, there has been a definitive drop in the use of some of those more highly-potent and very cheap ciders and similar types of alcohol.

That has been particularly the case among young people—that is, those under the age of 25. According to the health and wellbeing survey done in schools, the numbers of young people who would access that type of cheap high-alcohol product are declining quite quickly. At the time of the original debates on minimum unit pricing, it was called “pocket-money alcohol”; it is not that now. If there has been any impact on the industry at all, it has been on cider producers in Scotland, who are experiencing a real decline in the sale of that type of alcohol.

According to our analysis, there seems to have been no impact on that type of alcohol, because its unit price in the off-trade was already well in excess of 65p, while the unit price in the on-trade sits at about an average of £2.04. We have not seen any impact on the off-trade. In any case, the policy was targeted not at that sort of product, but at the high-alcohol, low-price products that were available. We have not seen an impact on those other products at all.

I do not agree with that characterisation of the evaluation. The Scottish Government tasked Public Health Scotland with undertaking an independent evaluation of minimum unit pricing. There were two overarching evaluation questions. The first was:

“To what extent has implementing MUP in Scotland contributed to reducing alcohol-related health and social harms?”

and the second was:

“Are some people and businesses more affected (positively or negatively) than others?”

The evaluation plan for minimum unit pricing contains a portfolio of studies that were either undertaken by Public Health Scotland or which PHS commissioned external research bodies to undertake and which, through open procurement processes, were separately funded and led by academic partners. A slew of information was taken into account and Public Health Scotland took a theory-based approach to the evaluation of minimum unit pricing, its implementation, compliance, the alcohol market, alcohol consumption and alcohol harms.

The outcome of the Public Health Scotland evaluation is that minimum unit pricing is estimated to have cut alcohol consumption and deaths attributable to alcohol and that it is likely to have reduced hospital admissions that were wholly attributable to alcohol. The evaluation of minimum unit pricing also told us that it reduced health inequalities, the biggest reduction being seen in the impacts on men and on people living in the 40 per cent most deprived areas.

I would argue that Public Health Scotland took a robust approach. There are people out there who do not agree with the policy and who will have a different opinion, which is absolutely fine. My opinion is based on the work that Public Health Scotland and the University of Sheffield have done for us and on the work of organisations working on the front line—including those made up of people with lived and living experience—who have seen the benefit of minimum unit pricing in the past few years.

The BRIA has additional details about the impact on the industry. You have hit the nail on the head on the reason for taking this approach. Minimum unit pricing is only one tool. People are experiencing an impact not just because of minimum unit pricing; the cost of living crisis is having an impact on everyone. Additional support is being given to ADPs. This year, record funding of £112 million is being provided, and we have made a commitment to provide £250 million over the whole parliamentary session—in other words, for the next two years. All those supports are contained within that.

One way in which we approach the matter is through a whole-family approach. That involves looking at some of the challenges that people have in their lives—homelessness, debt and all of that. All that advice is factored into the supports, and that approach has proven to be incredibly supportive and helpful for people who are in the categories that Paul Sweeney has mentioned.

I refer members to the managed alcohol programme that has been undertaken in Glasgow with the Simon Community Scotland, particularly with people who are homeless. I can make available to the committee a wonderful case study that involves a particular individual who has taken part in the Simon Community’s pilot project. That individual is now in a supported tenancy. They have had income maximisation work done because they were not claiming anything and they did not know that they were entitled to anything, and they have had all the other social supports that they need. That includes the ability to access other types of therapy and support that they need. That person has now become a peer mentor.

Members can see the real benefit of taking a whole-family or person-centred approach. We are really interested in the outcome of the Simon Community’s pilot, particularly for a very vulnerable cohort of our population who are involved in harmful use of alcohol, who are unemployed and homeless, and who have very little family support. That is the person-centred aspect. The other aspect is the whole-family approach, which involves looking at what the family as a whole is entitled to and where we can engage with families to ensure that they get holistic support.

We all understand that approaching one issue with one response will never work in these circumstances, so it has to be a whole-family approach. That is where the third sector, the charity sector, our ADPs and all the professionals who are working in this field become incredibly important, as they enable us to take a multi-agency approach with such individuals.

I would define problematic drinking as hazardous drinking, and that is the focus of this work. MUP impacts on dependent drinkers as well, but there has always been a clear understanding that that group of people, who are more vulnerable and more stigmatised, need a nuanced and more detailed support structure around them. That is the work that we are doing.

I said in my opening remarks that MUP is not a silver bullet; it is not the answer for everyone. However, it gives some of the answers for most people, and we have developed other answers for some of those other people as well.

In the court’s findings?

Yes.

I am absolutely clear that the budget that we have provided for ADPs—which has gone up this year to a record amount—should be spent on ADPs. If I have to go as far as to give a direction, it will be that that money should be spent on ADPs and the work that they have to do, including the detailed work that they do with dependent drinkers. That ties into Mr Sweeney’s question about my contact with IJBs and boards with regard to the work that they are doing, because this is a shared responsibility across health and social care. However, my direction is that that money is to be spent on ADPs and the work that they do on the front line.

To be absolutely honest, I am open-minded about how to do it. We are looking at many ways in which we can tackle it. Every official in the department has different experience, so they come with all that information as well. We will look at whether inflation is the right measure; then we will have an argument about whether it should be the consumer price index or the retail price index. We will work that out.

My mind is open, and you are absolutely right about giving businesses the opportunity to be ready. We listened to their calls. If the uprating to 65p goes through, it will be September before that is implemented. That is the amount of time that businesses thought that they needed. Some people were looking for 12 months, which was stretching it a wee bit; we think that six months is time enough. If it becomes a regular thing, that opportunity will be there.

You will know that the First Minister set a new deal with business. That is why, just last week, I met the alcohol business partnership group to talk about some of its concerns and challenges. I am trying to take as balanced a view as possible. I am not here to make life more difficult for our producers. We have a world-leading food and drinks industry. Its global impact is huge. I would not want to diminish any of that, but we have to get the balance right.