Research released by Public Health Scotland (PHS) has found that 14% of Scots have purchased alcohol in England since Scotland brought in minimum alcohol prices (MUP). Most of those people purchased the alcohol whilst in England on other business but 3% of Scots, roughly 160,000 people, travelled to England purely to buy cheaper alcohol.
The study was unable to determine the extent to which Scottish people are purchasing English alcohol online, although it did find that 38% of Scots have previously purchased alcohol online, and so we should expect those figures to be higher when online sales are included.
If those figures are replicated in Ireland, given our own introduction of MUP at the beginning of this year, we would expect to see 700,000 people purchase alcohol in Northern Ireland, whilst there on other business, and another 150,000 people to visit Northern Ireland purely to purchase cheaper alcohol.
PHS also attempted to see if Scots purchasing alcohol in England had had any discernible impact on off-licence sales in border regions. An analysis of off-licence sales in Northern England, in the 12 months after MUP was implemented, showed that total alcohol sales increased by roughly 1.14% more than the rest of the country. Sales of cheaper alcohol, of the type which would have been hit hardest by the introduction of MUP, saw the largest increases. Cider; Perry, a type of pear cider; and alcopops all saw their sales increase by roughly 4%. Whilst it is possible these changes are driven by other factors; the particular focus on alcohol types which would be most impacted by MUP would seem to indicate that the increase in sales is due at least partially to Scottish buyers seeking to avoid MUP.
Given that the region of Norther England examined by PHS includes not only towns near the border but large cities, such as Manchester and Liverpool, it is possible that sales in towns and villages directly bordering Scotland have increased by a substancially higher amount and the inclusion of major population centres further from the border is diluting the increase in sales in those areas. Northern England has a population of roughly 15 million people, compared to a population of about 5.4 million in Scotland.
A spokesperson for PHS said that the research showed that “while cross-border purchasing does happen, the extent is small relative to the purchasing behaviours of Scotland’s population as a whole.”