Dr. John Holmes:

To follow up on that, in Scotland a levy on the big supermarkets was proposed. Rather than treat it as a tax and take money from all retailers there would be a levy on the large ones which would claw back some of the additional money they got from alcohol sales.

I am not sure what happened in that regard. Minimum unit pricing has not yet been introduced in Scotland. I am not sure whether that provision made it into the legislation. The committee might consider the introduction of a levy on specific retailers as an alternative to minimum pricing.

On the point about evaluation, obviously we agree that research is necessary. We discussed that issue with officials from the Department prior to the meeting. In Scotland, one of the limitations in terms of how it has been able to evaluate its alcohol strategy has been the lack of good quality baseline data. Data collection needs to be done prior to commencement of the parliamentary process. It is not acceptable to wait until the legislation has been passed to commence data collection. A lack of sufficient baseline data results in a weak evaluation. Data collection needs to commence early if a proper evaluation is to be made.