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Report on industry’s billion units pledge ‘flawed’
A government report that assumes people will continue to drink the same amount of alcohol if it has a lower abv has been blasted by analysts as “flawed”.
The UK alcohol industry pledged to remove one billion units from the market by the end of 2015
In 2012, 33 alcohol producers, retailers and trade organisations committed to “remove one billion units of alcohol sold annually from the UK market by December 2015, mainly through improving consumer choice of lower alcohol products” as part of the Public Health Responsibility Deal.
The analysis, UK alcohol industry’s “billion units pledge”: interim evaluation flawed, was published on the British Medical Journal website by the University of Sheffield’s John Holmes, senior research fellow, Colin Angus, research associate, and Petra Meier, professor of public health.
The team found several problems with the most recent evaluation and has advised the report should be scrapped and new targets should be set.
“Although the latest interim analysis claims that the pledge has been met, we believe that data used in the analysis may not be fit for purpose, that the report makes simplistic assumptions about consumer responses to the pledge, and takes insufficient notice of confounding factors,” the analysis explained.
In response to the report, Miles Beale, chief executive, Wine and Spirit Trade Association (WSTA), has refuted the analysts’ claims.
“It is disappointing that the public health lobbyists have again spurned an opportunity to achieve public health goals through joint working with industry and government,” he said. “It is no surprise that, rather than praise the industry for the good work it has done in taking over 1bn units out of the UK market their latest production summarily dismisses a goal they helped set and which has been achieved a year early.
“Thanks to the voluntary efforts of progressive industry, there are more low alcohol products on the shelves than ever before, giving consumers greater choice, and some of the UK’s most iconic brands have seen reductions in strength.
“You have to question the motives and credibility of critics who refuse to countenance any other policy that ones they propose, especially in the face of welcome, surprising progress that has exceeded all fair expectations. We can only hope for a change in their approach.”
“Simplistic approach”
The analysts highlighted that the government report assumes people will continue to drink the same amount of alcohol if it has a lower strength abv, which the analysts believe is a flawed “simplistic approach”.
As such, the researchers have advised that a better approach is needed due to concerns over the “validity” of the conclusion that the pledge has been met.
“It is not clear whether a robust or quantitative evaluation of the billion unit pledge is possible with currently unavailable data,” the analysis concluded. “We recommend the billion unit target is abandoned in favour of measurable alternatives.
“We also recommend that the Department of Health withdraws the 2014 interim report, requests stakeholders not to cite its conclusions, and reviews the evaluation approach.”
Data discrepancy
Two sources are used for the interim evaluation, the first of which is HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) excise duty (alcohol tax) information that shows how much alcohol is sold in the UK each year.
While spirits and beer are taxed according to their alcohol strength, wine and cider are not meaning information on the number of alcohol units in the market for wine and cider is not known.
As a result, the report used a further market research data on alcohol retail sales in the UK to determine roughly how many units of cider and wine were sold, but the figures are 9% lower than the equivalent estimate from HMRC in 2011 and 14% less than 2013.
“The increase in the discrepancy over time is important because it is larger than the claimed effect of the pledge – a 1.3 billion 9 or 2.6%) reduction in units sold,” the analysis said. “A proportion of this effect could therefore be due to the changing discrepancy between data sources.
“As the government evaluation did not take steps to address these data problems, we conclude that the estimate of the pledge may be invalid irrespective of our concerns.”