A minimum price for alcohol will have a high political cost

The Telegraph reports today that the Prime Minister has asked for work to be done across Whitehall on how a minimum price for alcohol could be set. As the paper’s leader column makes clear, this will not be a politically easy thing to do.

When I interviewed the Health Secretary Andrew Lansley for the Christmas issue of The Spectator a few weeks back, he was clear about why he didn’t like the concept of a minimum price:

‘I don’t like a minimum price, we are acting against below cost selling. My problem with a minimum price, well I have two problems. One is it’s regressive, so there are perfectly normal families who just don’t happen to have much money who like to buy cheap beer or cheap wine. Should they be prevented? No, I don’t think so and if you put in a minimum price, one of the journalists calculated that if you set it at 50p a unit it would add £600 million to the profits of retailers and drinks manufacturers which doesn’t seem to me to be the right thing to do in these circumstances.’