Shortly before the last election David Cameron predicted that lobbying was “the next big scandal waiting to happen”.
Well, this week an investigation in the British Medical Journal attempted to lift the lid on the lobbying activity of the drinks industry, claiming the government’s consultation on minimum pricing was nothing but a “sham”.
Using Freedom of Information Requests, the 6,000-word BMJ report makes great play of the access granted to the drinks industry by the government, especially the DH. The FOIs reveal dozens of meetings took place between officials, companies and lobby groups, including one just weeks before Theresa May performed her famous U-turn in July, minutes of which were apparently kept secret.
Except they weren’t: a quick glance on the Responsibility Deal website uncovers a record of the meeting and shows how health minister Anna Soubry used it to urge the industry to come up with a package of new measures to tackle problem drinking.
In any case, was it really wrong for the government to be meeting with the industry to push for more action on binge drinking, or should all such work have stopped in the run up to minimum pricing? And if this was such an outrageous covert meeting, why did the likes of then meeting co-chair, Dr Nick Sheron, not to mention a range of health NGOs who were there, not think it was worthy of blowing the whistle?
The BMJ article rails against the alcohol industry’s access to the all-party parliamentary beer group, which it says received £40,000 in donations from leading beer companies. Yet the group’s chair, Andrew Griffiths MP, was a staunch supporter of minimum pricing (as the article points out). A key funder of the group, Molson Coors, is in his constituency, and was also in favour of minimum pricing. (Griffiths’ response to the BMJ’s assertions is reported here.)
It is also frankly laughable to imply that the health lobby do not have the same access to politicians as the beer industry. The health lobby has proved itself be to one of the most effective of all, especially when it comes to drink, and it has come up with many persuasive arguments on the way. But to suggest it has somehow been elbowed out of the corridors of power is a step too far.
The BMJ article uses another Cameron quote, that minimum pricing would mean “900 fewer alcohol-related deaths a year by the end of the decade”. It also quotes at length Dr John Holmes, who headed up the Sheffield University research on which the MUP plans were based, and who accuses the drinks industry of ignoring scientific process by failing to follow “peer review, constructive discussion and balanced arguments”.
What the article doesn’t mention is that at the same time as the government shelved minimum pricing, Holmes’ group radically revised downwards the number of lives MUP would save (as reported by The Grocer). So much for balance.
As for peer review, it is worth noting that Dr Holmes refused to share the latest version of the Sheffield research with The Grocer when approached recently, because the group only wanted the article to appear in a medical journal (accompanied, no doubt, by the traditional open letter in the nationals).
None of which is to suggest the government, or the drinks industry, is blameless in its conduct. Ministers’ handling of MUP has been nothing short of a farce and ever since then government has maintained a deafening silence on what its policy on alcohol actually is.
For its part, the industry, which met months ago to discuss further solutions, has been painfully slow in coming up with them.
The risk is that the inactivity leaves the door open for the passionate supporters of minimum pricing to continue to lobby, adopting the same tactics they accuse the alcohol industry of using.
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