What has 2020 done to the UK’s alcohol consumption?

 What has 2020 done to the UK’s alcohol consumption?

Alcohol stats expert Colin Angus trawls through a lot of data to work out Brits’ drinking habits in this exceptional year

Colin Angus

02 December 2020 – To say 2020 has been tumultuous would be something of an understatement. It’s been a strange old year full of crisis and, well, more crisis. If stereotypes are to be believed, then the pub or the drinks cabinet is one of the first ports of call for the British when hard times strike. So it might seem reasonable to suspect that we’ve all been drinking more this year. Yet at the same time, pubs have been closed, or severely restricted, since late March, and we drink a lot in pubs. So maybe we’re drinking less overall?

Mixed messages

We’ve certainly been given conflicting messages about alcohol sales over the course of the year. Back in March when lockdown was announced there were media reports about panic buying and images of bare shelves in supermarkets. There were also a series of stories driven by market research company data which reported that alcohol sales had risen, maybe by as much as 58%. However these stories all focused exclusively on shop-bought alcohol. In 2019, 28% of alcohol sold in Great Britain was bought and drunk in pubs, clubs, cafés and restaurants. If the pubs were closed, we could all buy 40% more alcohol from the supermarket and barely end up drinking more than before.

Alongside these stories, we’ve seen a large number of surveys during and after lockdown which have asked respondents whether they think they’ve been drinking more or less than before the pandemic. You might be suspicious, and with good reason, about the accuracy of measures like this, but the picture they painted, almost unanimously, was one of mixed effects. Some people reported that they had been drinking less or had even given up alcohol entirely, while others reported that they were drinking more than usual. Often there was some degree of polarisation, with people who were drinking within the UK drinking guidelines of 14 units of alcohol a week before lockdown began being much more likely to say they were drinking the same or less, while heavier drinkers were more likely to have increased their drinking. This polarisation was reinforced by a more robust study which found that, in April, the number of people who reported attempting to cut down their drinking increased significantly, while at the same time, so did the number of people reporting that they were drinking at high-risk levels. Taken together, it was hard to make sense of this data. As somebody who has spent more time than most looking at alcohol consumption patterns and data over the last decade, my suspicion was that we were probably drinking less on average, but that some people, particularly heavier drinkers, were drinking more.

Show me the numbers

With this suspicion in mind, I was surprised to see the Office for Budget Responsibility state in their latest economic forecast, published last week, that “The loss in [alcohol duty] receipts from closures of pubs and restaurants has been more than offset by higher sales in supermarkets and other shops”. Luckily, HMRC published their quarterly alcohol duty bulletin a few days later, so I didn’t have to wait long to see where this claim came from.

Sure enough, HMRC state that they collected £313m more in alcohol duty in April-October 2020 than in the same period in 2019, an increase of 4.5%. So, does this mean that alcohol sales have gone up by 4.5%? Well, no. This figure doesn’t account for inflation. If we look at the longer-term trend in alcohol duty receipts, we can see that in cash terms (i.e. before adjusting for inflation) they have been rising steadily for years, while in real terms (i.e. after adjusting for inflation) they have been pretty stable for at least a decade.

One other limitation of this approach is that it only compares 2020 with 2019. Alcohol sales can be quite volatile depending on various factors, including the weather, major sporting events and economic conditions. So to get a better sense of whether 2020 has seen unusually high (or low) alcohol sales, I think it makes more sense to take an average of the data for 2015-19 and compare to that. This is the same approach that the Office for National Statistics have been using to look at excess mortality during the pandemic. So what does this tell us?

Well, by this measure, alcohol duty revenue in 2020 has actually fallen slightly, by just under 1%. But there are some interesting patterns in this. Duty receipts fell very sharply in March and April and then we see much more revenue collected than usual in June and August. It’s tempting to interpret this as showing that we were all very abstemious during lockdown and then had a bit of a party once restrictions were lifted, but that’s not quite right. These numbers reflect the actual payments received by HMRC from the alcohol industry. Usually these are collected within a month of the alcohol being cleared for sale, but in exceptional circumstances it is possible to negotiate a payment extension of up to three months. HMRC themselves highlight this as the likely cause for these unusual spikes – they really relate to alcohol sold a few months previously, but where payment was deferred due to the financial pressures that lockdown imposed on many alcohol producers. This suggests that the dip in March and April was maybe not as big as it seems in reality.

Luckily, HMRC also provide data on how much alcohol has been cleared for sale. As beer and spirits are taxed based on their alcohol content, we have great data on the volume of alcohol being sold as these two products. Wine and cider, however, are taxed on the basis of their product volume, so we have to make a few assumptions about their alcoholic strength. When we do this, a clearer picture emerges. The amount of alcohol cleared for sale did dip in March, but only very slightly, and this has been more than offset by higher than usual clearances in July – September. Now these figures reflect the amount of alcohol released for sale, not the amount sold, nor the amount actually drunk. It could be that all of this extra alcohol is just stacked up on supermarket shelves, or in our drinks cabinets, but that seems fairly unlikely to me. It is probably true that some pubs did have to throw away some products, particularly beer, which had spoilt during the spring lockdown. In fact, they are entitled to claim back the duty they have paid on this spoilt alcohol. This means that it's likely that the increase in alcohol sales in 2020, compared with previous years, is slightly less than 3.4%, but it's unlikely to be much less.

Have different products been affected differently?

As HMRC report their data separately for beer, cider, spirits and wine, we can actually look at how these different types of alcohol have been affected differently. Looking at revenue, you can see a huge fall in revenue from beer sales during the spring lockdown. In relative terms cider has actually seen an even bigger fall, although it makes up a much smaller proportion of the market. At the same time, duty revenue from wine has picked back up after a dip in the spring, while spirits revenue has increased by almost 9% over the year.

Looking at the figures for alcohol clearances, the picture is very similar, although the drop for beer is much smaller.

Some of these changes are more surprising than others. We would expect beer sales to be most affected by the closure of pubs as typically almost half of all beer sold is drunk in the on-trade (pubs, bars, restaurants and cafés). A much smaller proportion of spirits and wine sales comes from the on-trade, but the fact that we have seen clearances of these products increase this year suggests that either beer drinkers denied the opportunity to have a few pints in their local have switched to spirits, or that people who drank predominantly spirits anyway have increased their consumption from previous years.

In fact some of these product-level changes could well just be continuations of pre-existing trends. Monthly clearances of cider have been falling for years and spirits have been rising, driven to some extent by the ‘gin boom’, since 2015. It certainly does look as though there might have been some switching between beer and wine. Or perhaps beer drinkers are the ones who are taking the opportunity to try and drink a little less, while wine drinkers are drinking more.

Tl;dr

After all of these graphs, what do we really know about drinking in 2020? Alcohol consumption probably did fall overall at the start of lockdown in the spring, but we seem to have more than made up for it in the latter part of the summer and overall alcohol sales have increased in 2020 compared with previous years. Due to the various restrictions and enforced closures that have affected pubs across the UK this year, it seems very likely that 2020 has been a bonanza year for alcohol sales in supermarkets. We have also seen some quite large shifts away from beer and towards wine and particularly spirits. It will be interesting to see whether these are sustained once things (hopefully) start returning to normal in 2021. Finally, it’s important to remember that HMRC data reflects the total revenue and alcohol clearances across the whole population. Whether the small increase in overall alcohol sales reflects a small increase across the whole population, or a large increase in a small number of heavy drinkers, will have a large bearing on what the longer term alcohol-related health impacts of these changes are, and that’s something that we won’t start to find out for some time yet.

Written by Colin Angus, research fellow at the Sheffield Alcohol Research Group within The School of Health and Related Research.

All IAS Blogposts are published with the permission of the author. The views expressed are solely the author's own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Institute of Alcohol Studies.

The piece was originally published by The Institute of Alcohol Studies and republished by theirs and Colin Angus' kind permission.

New research shows alcohol minimum unit price could save almost 8,000 lives in north of England

• High risk drinkers would cut their consumption by the equivalent of 14 bottles of vodka a year
• Evidence from the University of Sheffield’s Alcohol Research Group shows a minimum unit price (MUP) would cut drinking by nearly twice the national average in the North of England
• Introduction of a MUP could also save almost 8000 lives in the North over the next 20 years, almost half of the lives that could be saved as a whole in England
• The call comes only weeks after the NHS in England saw record numbers of hospital admissions due to alcohol

Image CC BY 2.0  Matthew http://bit.ly/3aNezje

Civic leaders are calling for the urgent introduction of a minimum unit price (MUP) for alcohol in England after new evidence from the University of Sheffield’s Alcohol Research Group revealed that it could save almost 8,000 lives across the North over the next 20 years.

The call comes just days before MUP is introduced in Wales; almost two years since its arrival in Scotland; and weeks after England saw hospital admissions caused by alcohol reach record levels.

The research from the University of Sheffield reveals that a 50p MUP in England would see alcohol consumption in some areas in the North falling by almost twice the national average, leading to greater reductions in alcohol attributable deaths, hospital admissions and crimes.

Almost half of the deaths and hospital admissions prevented and 39 per cent of the crimes avoided would come from the three Northern regions – the North West, North East and Yorkshire and the Humber.

Professor Alan Brennan from the University of Sheffield’s School of Health and Related Research who led the research team said: “This research is built on a wealth of evidence which shows that the amount we consume is closely linked to the affordability of alcohol. MUP is linked to the strength of the product and works by setting a floor price below which a product cannot be sold. In that way, it increases the price of the cheapest drinks which are most typically consumed by increasing, and higher risk drinkers.

“The North of England has some of the highest levels of alcohol harm in the country and, as we discovered, some of the cheapest prices, so it was no surprise that it would be particularly effective in those areas.”

Alcohol harm is particularly acute in areas of deprivation even if consumption is no higher – something known as the alcohol harm paradox. The research indicates that the benefits of MUP would be particularly felt in these areas and so would help reduce health inequalities.

Key findings from the research indicate that in the North:

• An estimated 7,816 deaths attributable to alcohol would be prevented over the next 20 years, 48 per cent of the total for England
• Alcohol consumption would fall by 6 per cent in the North of England, with by far the biggest reductions coming amongst the heaviest drinkers. High risk drinkers would cut their consumption by the equivalent of around 14 bottles of vodka a year, while the average moderate drinker would reduce their drinking by less than half a bottle of vodka a year
• Alcohol attributable hospital admissions would reduce by an estimated 13,820, reducing pressure on the NHS, with people from the poorest communities seeing the biggest falls
• The criminal justice system would also benefit, with crimes falling by 21,128 a year
• Researchers estimate that cost savings to the NHS in the North alone would amount to £37m a year

The Association of Directors of Public Health (ADPH) has welcomed the research, with Alice Wiseman, Director of Public Health for Gateshead and ADPH Alcohol Policy Lead, commenting: “This research provides the most detailed picture yet of the effect of MUP in parts of England. Risky drinkers in England consume more than two-thirds of all the alcohol sold and evidence shows a strong link between consumption and affordability. A measure like MUP will have the biggest impact on the heaviest at-risk drinkers, while leaving the average moderate drinker virtually untouched.

“It would also have a huge impact in the North, which has some of the highest levels of alcohol harm in the country, with rates of alcohol-attributable hospital admissions being higher in many places than those found in Wales, where MUP is scheduled to be introduced next week.

“It would play an important role in reducing health inequalities, including by closing the health gap between the North and South. This is a measure whose time has come and it should be introduced in England without delay.”

David Parr, the Chief Executive of Halton Borough Council, which has been calling for MUP, said: “It is clear from the University of Sheffield’s work that the North of England has much to gain from the introduction of MUP in England. It would save lives, cut crime and reduce the pressure on overstretched public services. Critically, it would improve the health in our most vulnerable communities at a time when they are struggling. If this measure is good enough for our neighbours in Scotland and Wales, it is good enough for the North of England. Further delay simply puts more lives at risk and we urge the Government to introduce it without delay.”

Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, chair of the Alcohol Health Alliance, said: “As a liver physician based in Liverpool I have seen the increasing harm caused in northern England by the widespread availability of cheap alcohol. MUP targets those products typically bought by those people who end up in our hospital wards.

“This research provides yet more evidence that MUP is an effective and targeted measure which will reduce harm and reduce the pressure on the NHS. Its introduction would undoubtedly be good news for the North, but it would also save lives in communities across England and I urge the Government to introduce it as soon as possible.”

The Impact of Minimum Unit Pricing of Alcohol on Ambulance Call-outs in Scotland (IMPAACT)

Colin Angus

Colin Angus is involved in a new project to help us better understand how alcohol impacts on ambulance services and how alcohol policy can change this.

Scotland introduced a Minimum Unit Price for Alcohol (MUP) in May 2018. Alcohol places a substantial burden on emergency services and this project will be the first to evaluate the impact on this burden of removing cheap alcohol through MUP.

Colin, a co-investigator on the study, said: "Using detailed ambulance call out data we will identify alcohol-related call outs and assess whether these fell after the policy was introduced, and whether this effect was greater or smaller among different population groups. We will also conduct extensive interviews with front line ambulance staff to examine how they experience and record alcohol-related call outs."

The project is funded by the Scottish Chief Scientist Office. The research is taking place in Scotland and it is being led by the University of Stirling and includes collaborators from the University of Glasgow as well as Sheffield.  A write-up on the funder's website is available at: https://www.cso.scot.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/HIPS1857.pdf

Colin is also involved in a number of other research projects looking at alcohol policy and MUP in particular. Evaluating the different aspects of the policy’s impact in Scotland. Sheffield is leading on a project to assess the impact of MUP on harmful drinkers. 

Further information is available at: http://www.healthscotland.scot/publications/evaluation-of-the-impact-of-minimum-unit-pricing-mup-in-scotland-on-those-drinking-at-harmful-levels