 Hi, m LOUD. Welcome to 30th meeting in 2015 of the health and sport committee. I would ask everyone in the room to switch off all mobile phones as they can often interfere with the sound system. I ask that those present to take note that members and clients are using tablet devices instead of their hard copies of the papers. Felly, mae'r ffordd eich ystod yn y byd yng nghyd-gryffwyr yn y gwircheth cyflwynyddiol ac y dysgwyddemon i'r by Barros Cymru. Mae'n gweld i'n ddinif iawn i yr ystod wedi'i ei bod yn gweithdoedd yn Fylwr yn ein cyfrifiad yn ddod hwnnw, gweld i'r byd i'n ddinif iawn i'r byd ynghyd. Mynyddai'n mynd i'r byd i'r byd yn gweithwyr, Carole Baker, Menoeddau i'r byd, gofyn yn gweithrediol, dda'r policy officer community justice a Douglas Forrester, policy manager of the safer communities division. Thank you all for your attendance today. Minister, do you wish to make some opening remarks? If I can make a brief statement, can you? Thank you and then we'll proceed to questions. Thank you very much and I'd like to take this opportunity to make an opening statement to the committee on the alcohol licensing public health criminal justice Scotland bill. The government is grateful for the work undertaken by the health and sport committee and also the finance committee in seeking views from stakeholders and we have studied those with interest. That evidence and the finance committee's report have been extremely valuable in helping the government to reflect on the proposals in the bill. I'd also like to thank Richard Simpson for bringing these issues forward. Dr Simpson has long been an advocate on this matter and whilst we might not always agree on the approaches that we should take, we agree that the overall need for action. I would like to put on record my recognition of the work that Dr Simpson has done on the alcohol agenda. The government has taken time to consider the proposals in Dr Simpson's bill because we all recognise that, while generally things are moving slowly in the right direction on alcohol misuse, they are still a way to go. As committee members will be aware, having now had time to consider their memorandum issued by the Scottish Government last week, we do not support Dr Simpson's bill progressing to stage 2. Whilst we welcome and support the overarching aim of the bill to tackle alcohol misuse, there are difficulties relating to the individual measures, which I'm sure we'll discuss today. This position isn't one of complacency. We don't have a monopoly on ideas. I, along with the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well-being and Support, welcomed views from across the Parliament at the debate in June and we'll continue to do that as work on the next phase of the Scottish Government's alcohol framework continues. However, we do have a track record on taking action on this issue and we will continue to work hard on it through the development of the next phase of the alcohol framework, not forgetting, of course, the numerous alcohol-related provisions of the recent Air Weapons and Licensing Scotland Act 2015. Convener Scotland recently hosted the Global Alcohol Policy Alliance conference and was chosen to do so in recognition of the action that we have taken to tackle alcohol-related harm. During the conference, I had the opportunity to meet some of the world's leading experts on alcohol policy and we will be continuing that dialogue as we develop the next phase of the alcohol framework. To sum up, convener, we support the intent of the bill but believe that the issues that it raises will be better addressed via the next phase of the alcohol framework and we will be happy to work with Dr Simpson as we develop that work. I have to say when I read the memorandum that I was rather surprised because I wasn't necessarily expecting you to support the bill but I did imagine that you would at least find one, two or three proposals acceptable. It seemed very strange that you found all of them unacceptable. I mean, I have to say that to begin with, I was genuinely surprised but I'll just take a couple because obviously it's not up to me to go through all 10 and pre-empt everybody else's questions but just taking the first one, for example, a minimum price for packages, you make the point that any restriction and promotions would be more effective if minimum units and pricing was in place and, as you know, I happen to agree with the Scottish Government on that matter but surely because it's not going the full way in your opinion, surely you would recognise that it would still be a step in the right direction to implement that measure so I'm not entirely clear what the objection to that is. Well, we do agree that minimum and union pricing is the way to go and we've seen with promotions, well, I think we want to concentrate on minimum and union pricing as the way to go and we all know that that and the stakeholders believe that that is the best way to go but the promotions, we know for example with promotions that what could happen is that the price of all the alcohol would reduce so currently 12 packs, the cost per unit is less than the cost of four or eight packs per unit and what would happen it might be that overall the price of each unit would reduce so that has been a consequence of multi-minimum price for packages? Well that's an interesting argument although you don't actually use that in your memorandum but it seems to me that that is an unlikely consequence of what is being suggested but I'm sure others will want to pursue that. Can I just take one other area so as not to hog the questions but last week or perhaps the week before the police were very supportive of the drink banning orders so once again I wasn't entirely clear why you were objecting to those that there is provision for exclusion orders in terms of someone convicted of a violent offence and that was something in the 2005 licensing act but clearly that doesn't cover all the people who may be behaving in an antisocial behaviour in licensed premises so I just wondered what your objection to that particular one was particularly given that the police seem to be quite very supportive of that and I think some other witnesses but the police certainly are the ones that are in my mind. Yes I noted what Police Scotland said and they didn't provide a view on how these drink banning orders would be enforced in practice and in the absence of further detail on how these orders would be enforced and monitored and on the detail of the costs associated with enforcing those orders we're not persuaded by the argument to introduce DBOs. I mean we already have antisocial behaviours orders that provide that mechanism and specifically ASBOS provide a mechanism to ban individuals from licensed premises. How would the enforcement be any different from enforcement of the existing offence in terms of those that are convicted of a violent offence? As we said we think that the antisocial behaviour orders currently provide a mechanism for the police to restrict people from licensed premises or indeed they can be very specific as to where they're restricting a person from. Have they been used for that purpose at all or? At ASBOS. For the purposes of excluding people from licensed premises? The records of ASBOS are recorded by local authorities. We don't keep that information centrally but we could find out if that would help. So you're not opposed to the banning in principle, you just think that... To me, it seems antisocial behaviour orders and drinking ban orders work in the same way. When antisocial behaviour orders can prevent people from doing certain things, going to certain places, whatever specified order, so antisocial behaviour orders can already ban people from licensed premises if the sheriff feels it's necessary to do so. Drinking banning orders seem to serve the same function. That can come under a community payback order or a structured to fair sentence currently. It would appear that it's not happening. I can't imagine why else the police would think that this would be a useful addition. It's obviously a gap in terms of their understanding of the situation. It is currently happening. You can't get people banned from particular licensed premises or areas of a town, for example, where I see one of your colleagues nodding. Sorry, can I add something else? It's also drinking banning orders only appear to apply to premises which are authorized to sell alcohol on the premises. There doesn't appear to be any provision for off-license premises in drinking banning orders whereas antisocial behaviour orders could ban people from off-license premises as well. So that could be a potential gap. Well, maybe that needs to be clarified. I think the intention Dr Simpson has explained to us is that they should apply to all licensed premises. It seems in section 53 of the proposed bill that it's applying only to places where alcohols for sale on the premises. Well, I mean, I'm sure that if there was an ambiguity there, that could be clarified or amended. I'm just trying to tease out whether you're opposed in principle or whether. Well, I don't want to be unkind, but it almost seems—from your memorandum it seems—that if you've decided to oppose the bill and you're looking for lots of different reasons to justify that position. That's not the case. I mean, we've looked at each and every aspect of the bill and there are 10, 12 particular headings of the bill. As I said in my opening statement, we're quite happy to look at anything from any quarter in terms of taking forward our alcohol framework, but in terms of the overall bill, there may be particular parts that compete into our alcohol framework, but in terms of the overall bill, we don't feel that it's necessary at this time. I mean, my last word. I mean, I'm not saying that I support all parts of the bill, but I know I definitely support some parts and some other bits that I want to amend or whatever, but it just seems to me in principle very hard to understand why you would be opposed to everything in the bill. That's why, ending where I began, I was genuinely shocked because I assumed you would come to the same conclusion as I did, that at least you might not think that there were so many positive features in it, but I maybe would say, well, I agree with a large proportion of the bill, although not all of it. Perhaps I would have expected you to say, well, I agree with half of the bill and not all of it, or even I agree with a small proportion of the bill, but not all of it. It just seems a very odd position to take that you oppose everything in the bill. I think that people will find that hard to understand, people outside the Parliament. I think that it's the method on which you take forward any of the proposals in the bill, whether you start on picking on bits that you unpick from a bill and take bits out. That's hugely complicated and the bill is only a first stage. There's all the work behind that. I think that the Government would say what we believe is that it's better to take it forward in the next stage of the alcohol framework rather than divert from that, I think. Can I just ask a supplementary to that before we go on? I've got a bid for another supplementary, so if you want to speak about that, I think that Bob wants to come in on supplementary as well. You said that you thought that it would be better to take it forward under the alcohol framework. Which aspects of the bill would you take forward under the alcohol framework? We're currently working on that and whether there's anything specific in the bill to take forward. For example, one of the main things from the Gapa Sea conference was advertising. I think that there's a lot of work that can be done in that area but, of course, we come up against devolved versus retained legislation there but there are things that we can't take forward from that. Given that minimum unit pricing isn't in force, it's unlikely to come into force in the near future, what are you proposing in your new alcohol framework that will actually make a difference to people's consumption of alcohol? Well, in terms of minimum unit pricing, stakeholders agree and certainly the Gapa Conference agreed that minimum unit pricing was the best way to go. I'm not as pessimistic as you are. Of course, it's going through a legal challenge but most people agree that minimum unit pricing, if it can be achieved, is the best way to go. Obviously, while we're not just sitting back and waiting for that to happen, officials are working very hard to make sure that we win that court case so that their time is taken up to a large extent, making sure that we are successful in that challenge. So you have no new proposals as to how to tell alcohol consumption? Well, in terms of what happens at the moment, for example, on alcohol brief interventions, there's more work that we can do there in making sure that they are as robust and as effective that they can be. As I said, advertising is an area that we could also look at and making sure that alcohol and drug partnerships are working to the best of their ability. There are 41 measures in the alcohol framework already and there are aspects of that that can be looked at to make sure that we are working to the best level possible. You know, the restricting in-store alcohol marketing material, for example, developing promotional activity codes of practice, there's lots in the framework which we can take forward. So it seems that there are no new proposals. Can I maybe then turn to one? I'll get you back in immediately. I would restrict myself to the supplementary, what was the substantive question, which was in relation to drinking banning orders. I understand from Mr Chisholm, and we are seeking to scrutinise this bill. I want some clarity around this area. The Government seems to be suggesting that any powers that would be extended via drinking banning orders are already covered in relation to antisocial behaviour legislation. I think that that was the substantive point that the Government was making. Can I just clarify that as the Government position? Yes. Right. That is the Government position. The question was also asked, and I find it a very interesting question in relation to whether or not Asbo's were currently used for that purpose. I'll be asking the same question to Dr Simpson when he's got the opportunity, because that's the kind of thing that I'd expect the person proposing this bill to already have analysed, but I'll have the opportunity to ask that question later. Has the Scottish Government got any systematic information that Asbo's have or haven't been used for that purpose? We were talking about that earlier, Jennifer. Do you want to come in on that? Antisocial behaviour, we don't keep information central, and information is held by local authorities. Antisocial behaviour orders can be used to ban people from licensed premises if it's an alcohol-related offence, if the sheriff deans that necessary. The power is there to do so. It strikes me that perhaps one of the things that should happen is that the relevant bodies are reminded that they already have that power, but given the fact that no information is held, let me put one final point to the witnesses this morning. Now, if that power already exists and it's being used, it would seem to me that there's no need to duplicate power that already exists. If that power exists and it's not being used, then surely that's because there's a lack of information that the power exists or the relevant bodies have decided it's not a desirable power to use particularly often. Do the witnesses believe that drinking banning orders extends in any way the tools that are in the box to deal with antisocial behaviour and the problem of drinking in our communities? That's a justice issue rather than a public health issue. I think that one of the difficulties that we had around the proposal was a lack of detail on how they would be enforced and what the associated costs might be to that and also a lack of evidence in England and Wales when they had drinking banning orders. They haven't done an evaluation at this stage, so it was difficult to see how they could be applied in Scotland in the absence of that. I appreciate that, and we'll leave it here, but that's a judicial question but a just-as-a-question, but it's the kind of question that my constituents would probably want me to ask, which is why I did so. I think that's true, and we got good evidence last week, Minister, from Police Scotland, who said that this would be a useful tool in the box, so we have got our answer on that. Can I just say, convener, that I think that drinking banning orders haven't been taken forward in England and Wales and the evidence and evaluation isn't there? There are, we might come to it later, there are other measures that have been taken forward that have proved very successful, that again in your response you haven't been able to support, despite successful application down south. In terms, not in banning orders, no, but other measures are said within that have been rejected and proved successful down south, so we can't, if we apply that principle, we would be supporting some of those measures here, but we have good evidence from Police Scotland, again a useful tool in the box. Rhoda? Can I maybe turn to one of the measures, I think, that is successful down south, the bottle marking? Again, an element of the bill that was welcomed by Police Scotland. Can I ask why you've rejected it? Bottle marking, we don't support the proposal at this time. We believe that it would impose considerable burdens on the trade and would not provide evidence of any offence that has been committed, so the police might find a bottle that's marked and it comes from a particular store but it can't tell who has bought that particular bottle. We heard in the call for evidence that one national retailer said that it would cost £3.3 million, they quoted, to comply with mandatory bottle marking. We believe that the widespread use of bottle marking would be disproportionate and we don't believe that. We remain to be convinced that we need legislation in this area. Bottle marking is on request by the police. Do you believe, then, that the natural progression from what you're saying is that the police would abuse that power? No, I didn't say that the police would abuse that power at all. We have a number of measures in place already to discourage underage dynking, for example. There's a challenge 25 scheme and we know that it's an offence to proxy purchase. In the recent air weapons and licensing Scotland bill, there will be an offence to supply alcohol to someone underage in a public place, so there are measures in place already to help the police to do that. Given that the police have said that it would be helpful, given that it's something that has been trialled elsewhere in the UK and has been very successful and given your answer to the previous question about getting results from measures in the bill, that is one that has proven that it would work. I can't really understand, given that the police wanted its proven why you are against it and given that the sums of money are obviously at maximum use and you yourself believe that the police wouldn't misuse that power, therefore it wouldn't have that financial impact. You also had evidence from Alcohol Focus Scotland to raise concerns about this proposal. We know already that, from Sals's findings, only 8 per cent of 15-year-olds reported buying alcohol from a shop. I think that we all know that youngsters get their alcohol not from shops but from family and friends and we don't believe that bottle marking. We think that it would be a disproportionate cost to what the results might be. We have all seen and we all know that young people send older people into the off-license of whatever to buy their alcohol. A prudent owner or worker in an off-license will be aware of what is going on outside their door and take measures to stop it. I have seen that happen to myself where someone has been refused alcohol because the off-license owner knows that they are going to pass it on to somebody outside. Surely bottle marking is even a bigger deterrent because the off-license owner would be even more stringent in the measures that they would take to ensure that it didn't fall into their own hands? I think that there are measures in place already for proxy purchasing to make that an offence and the police already used that. However, it was suggested that whether to be a condition on licensing, meeting the requirement physically to check every can or bottle would be extremely onerous task on the licensing standards officers. We are saying that the cost is disproportionate to the results that may come from that. However, that is not every can and bottle. It is on request of the police. I know that you went on a fact-fising visit to Newcastle to find out more about their alcohol container marking schemes. The primary reason for bottle marking is that it is seen as an intelligence gathering measure rather than a direct means to tackle an alcohol-related disorder. It is also a deterrent. It could be. The newt meal that we take the opportunity to find the visit information on record Minister and we spoke to police, health officials and the local authority enforcement officers. We did find what they claimed was a targeted approach to this. It gave the police lots of intelligence in terms of to eliminate off-license. Those who were not certain to younger people or to others who were selling on, they claimed that it helped those who worked on off-licenses to resist pressure and peer pressure from young people who were coming in requesting alcohol because there are signs and marking and it is a very focused idea. Mr Reid is looking at me quizzically there. No, it was just a pain that passed, was it? He claimed that lots of success are there. Have any of the officials who work in this area examined the initiatives that are being implemented, including minimum pricing and bars in city centres in Newcastle, price-marking, targeting of strong drinks and particular drinks, geography? Has anyone who has been involved in the framework and all the work that has been done to the Scottish Government examined any of the results and initiatives that have been in place in Newcastle over the last four or five years? In relation to the bottle marking, I have been imposed on licensing for three or four years now. I am not aware of any evidence that has crossed my desk in relation to bottle marking. I note also that the SPICE report struggled to find any reports on the bottle marking initiatives in Scotland, although it noted that they had been undertaken. I speak to stakeholders in relation to alcohol licensing all the time. Bottle marking is certainly something that I have discussed informally with licensing standards officers, trade representatives and others from time to time. The general impression that I have got in relation to bottle marking is that there have been at times specific initiatives that have worked quite well. However, those have been short time-limited voluntary initiatives. On that basis, talking about our measure that would potentially—I think that one of the stakeholders mentioned the cost of £3.3 million—it relates to—in my head, I am envisaging a place like Asda with aisle upon aisle of product. Looking at the last self-sustud study from 2013, young people drink pretty much the same as adults drink. They drink a wide variety of products. Do you live near and off-license in your community? I look to everyone. There is an Asda, not far away, and there is a small premises. No, I am off-license in some hard-pressed communities who suffer on a regular basis youths gathering underage drinks, all the consequences of that, whether it is setting fires behind—it is targeting the police and the authorities in Newcastle to pursue it. I was surprised—I think that many of our members are surprised—about the initiatives that Newcastle have been able to implement over the last four or five years. I am just surprised that people who are here with the Minister today have got no knowledge of that, nor did we. We had those papers and facts and figures. We had to go to Newcastle, and we found that Newcastle has implemented minimum pricing and bars in Newcastle. We found that they have successful marking programmes in Newcastle. We have late night levies that are used to divert from alcohol and fund alcohol diversion projects. It is a very interesting place where they have been pursuing these policies for the last four or five years. Maybe somebody should get down there, as my message to you. Fair enough. Thanks. I have Richard Lyle. I have to say that to Newcastle's problems that sometimes we do not have, and crime is at an all-time low in Scotland. I come on to the concerns that I have, and maybe the Government has concerns about this bill. I also have concerns about the bill, and I am sure that other members might have concerns about the bill. Can I contain my comments in regard to containing a marking in off sales? With the greatest respect to Dr Simpson, I have already said that I have worked as a grocer for 14 years, so I know the problems within a shop. It has been suggested by the Scottish Grocer Association that this will put a substantial cost on to grocers, depending on where and even with the point of, if there was a container marking and we went to Asda, I am sure that it would be thousands upon thousands upon thousands of cans and bottles that would need to be marked. Have you ever walked up the aisles in Asda? How many? How much? Like two aisles containing drinks. If there were a particular problem outside Asda in any town, they would have to mark quite a lot of stuff. It is actually £3.7 million, not £3.3 million, as the estimated cost per annum to shops. However, Dr Simpson suggested in response to some of the comments that licensing fees have not been increased since 2007, and that even keeping the same in real terms would mean a 23 per cent increase. Would she accept that grocers should be faced with a 23 per cent increase in the licensing fee across the whole of Scotland to pay for that? That is a local issue for licensing boards themselves, but clearly, if you were faced with a 23 per cent increase in one go, that would be a severe dent to the businesses and the profitability of the business. As I say, that is up to the local licensing authority, as I understand it. The Scottish Government had done to take a review of licensing fees a short while ago. Unfortunately, we were not able to attain sufficient evidence from local authorities to really do as much as we would like to in relation to that. That is why the recent Air Weapons and Licensing Scotland Bill included a provision that will require licensing boards to report on their income and expenditure. That will enable us to gather the evidence on local authorities' costs in relation to licensing to allow us to review the fees properly, which we intend to do in due course. That will allow us to look at the structure of the fees and the maximum fees that could be charged. However, the intention with the licensing regime is always that the licensing regime fees are set to recover the costs of the local authorities, and the local authorities do not make a profit on the licensing fees. We have within the current situation that the police could, if they wished to check on—people were reporting concerns and the container said that if there were concerns outside your local licensing of sales—the police can go and do test purchases through getting under specific youth to go in. Is that youth quite a lot in Scotland? It is within the legislation that the police can use in the run exercises from time to time. Certainly, I am on a community council and I am aware that test purchasing has been carried out locally. Minister, you made a comment during the statement about the bottle marking and the stickers that you wanted to put on in the shop. It was also said by the police and by the Glossos Federation in Evidence Stat. Where stickers could be used does not necessarily mean that it was purchased by a youth because—I will explain this—someone could go into an adult and their parents could give them a couple of cans of beer, take them home and put them in the fridge. Unfortunately, sibling could take the can of beer out of the fridge and go down the park or whatever. That does not necessarily prove that the shop sold the drink to the child. It may have sat in the fridge for the past couple of months. Who knows? Yes, you are absolutely right. You have answered your own question. We know that most youngsters get their drink from family and friends. Where there is an issue, as you highlighted, convener of people outside an off licence, there is the Scottish Government working with the industry partnership on the proxy campaign. For example, in North Lanarkshire, community safety partnership has undertaken a test purchase pilot scheme recently in Motherwell and Wishaw. That has resulted in a reduction in crime in our antisocial behaviour. It resulted in 84 offences being detected over a four-month period. There are initiatives throughout the country. That is just one example of where there is an issue of antisocial behaviour that the police together with the industry work together. I should say that the police in Newcastle work very closely with the industry. That is why they have made a lot of progress there. However, just like the test purchase in Lanarkshire, that is not a continuous scheme. It will be used appropriately, targeted and it will be an initiative that will last three months or six months and then move on to another area. It is not in place all of the time, is it? It can be if the police recognise that there is an on-going problem, then they can do that. Obviously, lessons are learned and behaviour can be changed as a result of that, so you do not need to continue it. No, I agree, but I was referring back to the earlier remarks that any of those initiatives are to be used to the maximum. Every cannon has this to be marked up and these powers have to be used continuously. That is not the way those powers, in any shape or circumstance, would be used. Existing powers are used to target particular instances, geographical positions and whether there is a problem and whether the police in many cases request it. Is that not the case? Yes, it is where the police working with the local industry, both partners, see that there is a problem and they work to resolve it. Normally, they see an on-going benefit from that, even though the resources may not be continued to be put in at that particular level. I have not finished my question. You had three questions. Other people had four and five. Can I just ask one more question? Have you proceed with it quickly? I have a couple of people waiting. In regard to the alcohol drinks containing caffeine, it is a question in case I do not get back in. Dr Simpson pointed towards research that suggests that 5,000 crimes in Strachlide had been committed by people drinking a certain type of caffeine tonic wine. Basically, we are suggesting that a ban on that could reduce this figure. Do you agree with that? We do not feel that targeting one particular drink is effective. A lot has been said about one particular drink but it is the amount that people drink rather than the type of drink that is the problem here. You can get the same effect by mixing other drinks, as you can with the particular drink that you might be referring to. We do not believe that targeting particular drinks is necessary. I wonder whether I could go back to the marking and the proxy parts for a second. Minister, do you believe that we have sufficient current legislation in place at the moment, along with the voluntary schemes? I think that you indicated that we have, but I want to get it very clear in my head that the raft of legislation that is available to us at the moment enables us to use that specific legislation and the voluntary schemes in specific target areas where it is believed that there are problems. Do you believe that the legislation and the voluntary schemes are currently at a place that it could be invoked if required? I am in no doubt that we could obviously do more, but I think that the legislation that is in place currently has shown to be effective where it is used in partnership between the police, the local authority licensing and the industry themselves. The figures from the North Lanarkshire initiative are really quite starkling in terms of the reduction in crime and antisocial behaviour that they saw. It is up to where there is a problem identified. I do believe that what we have in place at the moment goes a long way to help the industry and communities to tackle the problem. Do you also believe that the intelligence that is there is shared widely enough across the specific health board areas and with Police Scotland in general to take that forward and to use perhaps good exemplars of practice in tackling those problems? Do you think that that information is shared widely enough, or is it just within the health board or local authority area that they are keeping it to themselves and not sharing it? I think that the industry themselves share the information quite widely, the Scottish Government industry alcohol partnership has done a great deal of work in that area. The industry itself is keen to help in local areas where the police may identify a problem. I think that the industry share it. I am not sure whether licensing boards share it and obviously the police will share it. Do you believe that the Government has a role to try and to take that forward? We are really looking at the fact of raising that awareness because awareness in itself does not resolve a problem. You need other measures there, but raising awareness around the issues and in certain specific areas would certainly help. In relation to that, do you not believe that because there is a raft of different legislation around that perhaps consolidation of legislation around licensing in the sale of alcohol would be beneficial to the trade? I think that in lots of areas people believe that there should be consolidation of legislation. We are keen that legislation is not unduly burdensome and that is why the recent Air, Weapons and Licensing Scotland act focused on addressing areas within existing legislation that we felt could be operating in a better way than it currently does rather than having major revisions. We are keen and committed to fully implementing the provisions that have already been passed by the Scottish Parliament and ensuring that the proper supporting secondary legislation is updated where necessary. Do you think that it is something that the Government would look at? One of the problems that seems to exist is that there is a deal of confusion as to which legislation pathway people are needing to go down. Do you not think that consolidation of the legislation around that may help? Indeed, it would probably help to clarify what is a legislative process and what is voluntary. Sometimes the two are confused in people's minds and perhaps in taking forward enforcement sometimes that there may be some degree of confusion. Do you think that there is a place and that it is something that the Government could or may look at given the evidence that we have heard around Dr Simpson's bill? I think that that is for political parties and Scottish ministers to determine in future legislative work and in future bills taking into account the full range of priorities that they have. I take on board what you say and other members have said about the fact of making sure that best practice is circulated as widely as possible and that the secondary legislation that is enacted is as clear and concise as possible. It has been interesting because it is such a very difficult bill to scrutinise systematically throughout it all. We seem to have scrutinised relatively well 0.6 and 0.8 in relation to restrictions on alcohol advertising and drinking banning orders, and the Government position seems to be that there is a duplication in overlapping how much of those powers seem to exist. I had a brief supplementary point before I go into my substantive question, which is in relation to container marking and off sales. One of my concerns in relation to that was that it was a police-led intervention on a licensing decision. My understanding is that, where the police insist on the marking provisions, the licensing committee should agree to it. If they do not agree to it, they must write with detailed reasons back to the police to why they have not acquiesced to that. I am not sure whether the bottle marking scheme on a statutory basis works, because it can give very strong evidence that it works on a voluntary and partnership basis, and I think that that was quite compelling on a voluntary and focused partnership basis. However, I do have some concerns about police-led licensing decisions. Of course, the police have very strong views on things, but the whole point is that the licensing committee looks at a broader range of issues and has a broader perspective outwith specifically what the police may have. I am wondering whether there is any views in relation to police-led intervention in relation to that aspect of licensing. It is an interesting point that you raised. The way that the provision is drafted is unusual, and it does not call to my mind anything another provision elsewhere in the act that would sit alongside it. In effect, the police have an ability to ask for the bottle marking to be imposed. It is something that, presumably, the police would incur no costs in asking, and it would be up to them to the extent that they would police it. Then it would be for the board to determine whether they agreed with it and explain why not if they did not agree. Similarly, the board would have relatively modest costs in relation to it. The costs would be passed on to the traders themselves, and they would have relatively little ability to dispute or disagree or raise concerns about it. I can see that, for the police that this seems reasonable, but the degree of proportionality and testing in the process is not obvious to me where, in that process, there would be the testing of the evidence and the proportionality of it and whether it was an appropriate thing to do, how long it should apply for, what products it should apply for. I can imagine why the police might be quite keen, because I understand that the provisions also allows them to determine what form the marking would take as well. It gets into an era where I would not have thought necessarily that the police were experts, and in relation to that, they would not necessarily be part of the enforcement regime. That would be a local authority level. I can see why the police would be interested in that, but, as I said, that was my concern in relation to whether who should lead on that strategy, the police or the licensed committee, based on all the stakeholders involved. That was point 8.6, referred to in point 4, a little supplementary one. I am just trying to name check them, because I want to make sure that the committee gets through the range of measures in the bill to get the Government's considered opinion. Point 10, I think, is reasonable to say, was one of the most contentious parts of the bill. I am probably on a safe ground in saying that I cannot really recall anyone being supportive of it, other than the member in charge. That was a notification of offenders' GP from the courts when an individual is guilty or convicted of an offence where alcohol was a contributing factor. There were significant concerns raised. I will not repeat those again for brevity, not something that I am used to doing as brevity at this committee. I am just wondering if the minister could flash out what your concerns would be in relation to GP's being drawn into what might be a judicial sphere and whether that would undermine trust in the GP patient relationship? On consultation, it was not considered an issue that should be taken forward in calls for evidence at the initial proposal. It was quite surprising to see it in the bill. Again, the BMA and others had significant concerns about the proposal, mainly about patient GP confidentiality. I think that the evidence that you had in previous weeks was quite clear that GP's will normally know where a patient has an alcohol problem, and will, through alcohol brief interventions and other methods, make sure that if the patient is willing that something is done about it. The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service also highlighted the implications and the practical problems about ensuring, for example, that the correct GP was identified and notified, and they estimated the cost of about £150,000 per annum and an additional IT cost of around £10 million. However, we always know how IT costs are never accurate. I think that there was widespread opposition from other respondents, including the GMC, alcohol-focused Scotland and others. That is all on the record. I was keen to get ministers to put on the record what your thoughts are. I will say one final aspect on it, and then I will let my colleagues in. There are other aspects of the bill that I would like to come back in, if time permits. One of the concerns that struck me was the fact that, although there would be no duty for the GP to act on the information received, it may feel in relation to the professional code of ethics. I apologise to the terminology that is escaping at the moment, but they may feel that they have got an ethical duty in terms of their code of practice to act on this. It has been raised with myself that those who have issues in relation to alcohol have to be ready, willing and able to receive the support and to feel obliged, as some GPs have told me that they might do, to act at a stage where someone has been through a criminal process may not actually have the desired outcome in relation to reaching out to those in most in need of support for alcohol-based interventions, for example. That is a concern that I would have. Of course, Dr Simpson may be able to elay some of those fears when he gives evidence later. I wonder if you share those concerns. I do share the concerns. If someone has an alcohol problem and it is meant that they have come up against the law, you cannot really determine what their priorities are at that particular time. Perhaps going to the GP is not top of their list or, in fact, going to an alcohol and drug partnership. People need to be wanting to do that at a particular time. The GP services or the alcohol and drug partnerships need to be there and willing and able to help at that particular time. Thank you, minister. I will make it back in later if time permits, because there are still aspects of the deal that we have not been talking about. Yes, just for the record, I have come across some of the question of price and costs of the marking scheme. I am just looking at a report from Mewcastle. Bob Doris was correct, and it is a voluntary scheme. It is targeted, looks for intelligence and dealing with anti-social behaviour and identifying issues and problems on them. However, the community safety officer outlined the cost. There is 12 pence per sticker, and the average intervention was £240 to deal with that and that was posters, stickers and so on. Just a bit proportionate between the figures, but that is what it costs them to do those initiatives and publicity around targeted drinks, targeted areas and whatever, dealing with a problem. £240 to the police or £240 to the agency? £240 to the stickers and the other publicity and information that goes around that area is what we are told. The other issue, just following on from the brief interventions and alcohol awareness training, is an alternative to expertly fines. I am becoming an ambassador for Newcastle here, but they said to the community members who attended that it was an absolute no-brainer. It is self-financing, and that was the option when you were involved in an alcohol-related incident in the city centre of Newcastle on Saturday night, you have an option of reducing your fine from £90 to £45. On the basis of attending a morning training session, which goes through the alcohol issues and alcohol awareness, they have run it for quite a while now. They claim that there is a higher rate of re-offending from those who do not attend the alcohol awareness training and claim that it is self-financing. Do you not feel that something like that would be an additional useful method to all the other interventions that the Scottish Government supports at this time? That is one of the areas that you would have thought we would have gained some consensus around. It seems that we have got something useful here as a brief intervention, it is cost effective, it is delivering results, and we are not supporting that. Why would not we if it would be a useful addition to what we already do? I think that we will be looking further at the issue of increasing access for those who need it to alcohol awareness through the development of the next stage of the alcohol framework. It is important to stress the differences in approach between alcohol awareness training, which is compulsory and much more directive, whereas ABIs are optional and motivational. Under community payback orders, for example, where people have been identified through the courts as being alcohol dependent, part of their community payback order will be to get treatment for their alcohol dependency. As I understand it, supervision under a CPO may also require alcohol treatment, but Jennifer, you can perhaps explain that better. As is raised in the policy memorandum, for an alcohol treatment requirement under a community payback order, the individual needs to have a diagnosed dependency. However, there is also a supervision requirement in a CPO, which is a requirement that is used most often in CPOs. Under that, if someone has an issue with alcohol, they can be directed to access alcohol support. From feedback from local authorities from criminal justice social work, that tends to be where people on conviction, where alcohol is thought to be an issue around their offending, where they can access that support. I know that there is a good principle in this. It is about earlier intervention, that people who will develop an alcohol problem are likely to present themselves in the justice system earlier on, present themselves in the employment situation, domestic, and such things that are dealt with more and more now in the early stages, with a ticket rather than a court appearance in that intervention. Of course, with that intervention, you are not compelled to go along to that four-hour session. You can defer. There is an incentive, but you are not compelled to go along. Many of those who do not go along to that training session, go on to get into trouble through alcohol at a later stage, a higher proportion of them. I am struggling to see why initiatives such as this would be dismissed out of hand by the minister of the Scottish Government. Why would we dismiss such a sensible proposal out of hand? It is working and it is cost effective. It is a no-brainer, as we have been told. Because we have alternatives that are working here in Scotland, that is why we have rolled out ABIs not just through GPs, but also in the justice setting. Certainly the new castle has chosen to go down a different route from us, but alcohol brief interventions are working in Scotland. The thing is that what is proposed in the bill is not contradictory to what you are already doing. It is additional to what you are already doing. It was evidence from Newcastle that the percentage of those who re-offended to have not taken up the option was higher than those who had taken up the option. The key thing is that it is an option. I am interested in the memorandum and the reasons given on what you are saying today. I am still mystified by the explanation that you have in the memorandum for not pursuing it, which is different from what you said today. This proposal would create an obligation on Scottish ministers to make future legislation. I am really struggling with that, because this is the legislation that permits it. It is presented as the main objection to it in your memorandum. It creates an obligation on ministers to create future legislation. I am struggling with that, which is why my suspicion is that you are just looking for all sorts of reasons, some of which may be valid. I do not see how that is a valid objection to it. If you could explain that, it would be helpful. I think that the memorandum's intent is to say that what we have coming down the track is a refresh of the existing alcohol framework, which is very well regarded at benchmarks, very well against the World Health Organization. It has a lot of good stuff in it. What we are at the early stages of doing is examining what has worked in relation to that framework. We have a report coming out in March, which is the MESAS evaluation report, which will look at what has worked and then start pulling together lots of fresh ideas and new things that we can put into the framework. We are not saying that all ideas are off the table, we are just saying that there is a process there that we have just started to look at the new framework against which we can test some more of the ideas. I would be interested in the evaluation of the report from Alcohol Awareness Training from Newcastle. From that, we can pull together a framework that prioritises the measures and lifts those that need legislation into legislation and allows those that can be taken forward voluntarily to be taken forward voluntarily. I would not like to suggest that we are ruling out any other measures that are not ours, because that is not the case. It is just a point towards a process that is under way that we have started engagement with the Public Health NGOs on that we would like to engage with the committee on in future. However, we are at the early stages of that, so for us, that legislation possibly pre-empts some of the things that might come out of the alcohol framework. What we want to do is to take a broader look across the piece about what might work. However, there are things that we have heard of in the evidence, particularly the evidence from Newcastle that I would be interested in hearing. We are always keen to find out how we can educate people more around alcohol awareness, as it is part of that. Fixed penalty notices could be an option, but just not at this time, because the framework is not quite ready yet. That is more open minded, so I welcome that. Surely we knew that when we voted to start this process. If that was the Government's view when the Parliament took a decision to examine it, we would have saved this committee a heck of a lot of time and evidence if we had that view at the point and said, do not bring this bill. We are not going to support the scrutiny of this bill. We could have been saying, let us examine this, let us take this on board, we are working on a framework, let us involve that in the framework. We have saved this committee a heck of a lot of time and taken evidence to get to this stage. We are not going to vote the general principles on the basis that we might take a lot of these things on, but we believe it is better to take them forward in the new alcohol framework, which is a decent argument. But when they saved us a bit of time, if they had known that earlier, then we have spent weeks in a very busy committee examining this on the basis that we might be taking it forward. We cannot stop a member taking forward a private member's bill and the cabinet secretary made that very clear in the debate that we would be taking forward different strategies in the refresh of the alcohol framework. The bill is to do with the community involvement in licensing decisions. I notice that the Government is committed to review regulations that contain license notification requirements. Does the Government have concerns about the impact of inactive community councils in the licensing consultation process, which are mainly in deprived areas? Are there any plans to address that? In terms of community councils, the Scottish Government assists community councils that are around 1,200 active community councils from a potential of 1,369. Under the local government Scotland Act 1973, local authorities have statutory oversight over community councils. We help them in a number of ways to be active in their areas through community council websites, community council knowledge hub and the Scottish Government hosts a biannual networking events for community councils. There is a lot of support for community councils. During the debate that we had in June on the next stage of the alcohol framework, the cabinet secretary announced that alcohol focus would have a dedicated worker to help community councils in relation to licensing applications. In Glasgow, there is a lady who is very active in supporting communities in relation to licensing applications, so that work has been taken forward. You are getting through to some of the more deprived areas, for instance, in Glasgow. The other thing was extending the views on extending the time periods involved in displaying notices of licensing applications and variations, and extending the distances in which neighbours of apprentices are notified of licensing applications. Are you looking at reviewing that as well? In terms of extending the time periods, we intend to engage with the relevant stakeholders and consults prior to updating the licensing procedure Scotland regulations 2007. It should be noted that few objections are put in within the time period, but, of course, objections to licence premises, as you know, can go on at any time if neighbours have concern about licence premises. They can object at any time that they want. We can help communities, and people are going to be put in place to help communities to frame a case against particular premises or overprovision of premises. We are committed to making sure that that happens and that it works effectively and encouraging effective community involvement in licensing decisions. What about extending the distance for neighbour notification? We have witnesses say that in a particularly built-up area that could cause significant amount of work, notifying people who know and say that the tenmetred property is very close together. Have you any views on that? The bill proposes extending that distance. That is the sort of issue that we would test out prior to laying an update on secondary legislation. Our intention is that people can engage effectively and make representations. That is what we will try to capture when we consult and engage and see how we can update the secondary legislation to make sure that that works effectively. We are open-minded on the issue. We want to see something that will work and is proportionate. Bob Doris, thank you very much. I just wanted to look at the right section again on the bill that we are looking at. In section 9, I will call away on this training as an alternative to fix penalty fines. I am just wondering if we are actually quite close as a committee, as the member in charge of the bill in the Scottish Government. We are actually all very close to the same thing. My note says that there has been a pilot in Fife. I do not think that that required legislation. It can be done without legislation. I am sure that the Scottish Government would want to look in detail in relation to how that pilot worked. If it was successful, it would want to look at the availability of such provisions across Scotland. Whether it requires legislation or not, I am not so sure, given the fact that a pilot has been run. I am just wondering if it is one of those things that we are actually very close to agreeing with each other, whether it needs legislation or not. It is another matter, of course. I would appreciate the minister's thoughts on that. Is that something that you would give specific consideration to in any refreshed framework in relation to alcohol? I think that one of the key things that we will be looking for in terms of the refreshed framework is around how we get alcohol awareness education in its broadest sense out to people. People who come through the criminal justice system are obviously one area. We are open minded. We would want to be clear whether something wants legislation or not. We would want things to be properly costed so that we could understand exactly how much things were going to cost, what training should be provided and how effective it was. As I said, we are at the early stages of that with the framework. On a personal level, I am not convinced that this needs legislation. The fact that the pilot went forward without legislation is encouraging. It means that, should ministers choose and resources are available and local partners are willing, it could potentially be something that could be taken forward. However, to tie it at the moment in legislation when it is not costed and it is not clear who would be provided the training seems just a little premature in terms of the roll-out of the next phase of the framework. That becomes a compelling narrative from what I can see. The fact that if there was a pilot, it did not require legislation. It would make sense for the Government to take consideration of that pilot in any refreshed framework. In other matters, unrelated to the bill, all members from all parties have said that there is no point in giving a right or giving a direction of travel if you cannot resource the framework behind that. You can, in theory, have an alternative to a fine in one part of the country in theory, but if the educational support in classes is not there, it becomes meaningless that you cannot dispose of that. I get that narrative but the key thing was that it was quite helpful to put on the record that there is an open mindedness in relation to that but, more important, for me, it does not necessarily require legislation given the fact that we are scrutinising legislation here this morning. Can I turn to point 1 of the bill now in relation to minimum price for packages containing more than one alcoholic product? Remember the legislation that we passed here a few years ago in relation to minimum pricing. I am reminded that it was not just minimum pricing, it was discount sales and the restrictions in relation to those. It would appear as if it might be just slightly incomplete in relation to those discount bans and that would appear to complete that. I am just wondering whether the Scottish Government has any data in relation to whether or not it believes that addressing this seeming loophole would have an impact in relation to further reducing alcohol over consumption. It would be quite interesting to know if there is evidence that this particular loophole would do that because I know that when the substantive discount ban came into place, there was quite a dramatic fall in relation to the purchase of three for twos and that kind of thing in relation to alcohol and consumption in relation to that went down. I am just wondering whether or not the Government thinks that this would be a substantive addition to that or whether it is a minor amendment. I know that there is a written reply but it is quite good to get some of that on the record. The legislation that was drafted initially was done so because the drafting was used in order to legislate within our devolved competence and that is why the legislation is currently drafted. Does it remain outwith our competence? That becomes a do we have the power or not argument to feel like in a linear yes or no. I am more interested in whether or not acting on it would make a substantive difference or not, I suppose, is the question that I am asking. You have got some evidence. Sheffield University conducted an assessment of which predicted savings from a whole range of price promotions and the banning three for twos that you already put through was part of that. A year right was associated with a 2.6 reduction, which is significant. It is not possible from that report to analyse what Dr Simpson's measure would precisely do in order to realise the full savings that Sheffield University predicted. You would need to ban all price promotions more clear that that would not be legal. What we are saying is that we do not, at the moment, have the evidence to know exactly what this amendment would do. It does not feel to us that it would be a proportionate one. We would rather focus on minimum unit pricing in terms of our efforts but that is the position at the moment. The Government position is the data that is unclear in relation to what impact this would have. A couple of areas for the record minister that we have not covered in this. The alcohol education policy statements and Dr Simpson seems to be of the view that the proposal will encourage more parliamentary scrutiny of the Scottish Government's alcohol strategy more broadly. The Government is arguing that that would be disproportionate. How do we get to the stage where the Scottish Government welcomes more scrutiny of the alcohol strategy more generally? We have exposed a couple of things here this morning in terms of what we are able to cite, such as the initiative of Lanarkshire and Newcastle. It is a bit patchy. How do we get the widest understanding of what is going on in the strategy that is being effective and can be rolled out? Does the Scottish Government, or would the Scottish Government, not welcome more scrutiny around the alcohol strategy more generally? Yes, convener. We are committed, as you know, to evaluating and monitoring the impact of our policies. That is why we have established the monitoring and evaluating Scotland's alcohol strategy, the MISAS programme, which is carried out by NHS Scotland. That evaluates the strategy as a whole and the work that is publicly available. We believe that the proposal on alcohol policy statements would increase bureaucracy and it would not really make a meaningful contribution towards reducing alcohol-related harm. We are always, as you know, at your disposal to come and give evidence to committee on our strategies. We will continue to work with all the stakeholders and yourselves. There is a plethora of information. There are campaigns that are carried out on an annual and biannual basis. Those are evaluated. We have had the debates on the strategy in Parliament and, as I said, we are always open to your scrutiny. If time would allow, it would be great to do all of these and provide that scrutiny that we would like to carry out. You mentioned earlier—Connor has not come in this morning, but there has been a lot of interest in a lot of discussion about the restrictions on alcohol advertising. You mentioned earlier that the Scottish Government is looking at this as part of the new framework. I suppose that a number of questions arise from that. Is whether the Scottish Government believes that self-regulatory regimes for alcohol advertisements are adequate at this point? The short answer to that is no. We know that self-regulatory regimes are not—we know the limitations, if we like, on the limitations of self-regulation. We think that we should be more ambitious. Most of that is not devolved. I have written to the UK Government on a number of occasions to push them to take action on this issue. We cannot tackle advertising on our own, but, as I said earlier on, advertising is one area in which we would like to do more. It was a key theme of the GapaSea conference, and we are engaging with a number of people from throughout the world to see what other countries have done in this area. That is definitely part of the alcohol strategy that we will be trying to take forward. That is good to hear, minister. Can you say more about the discussions that you have had with the Scottish Government about strengthening UK controls and alcohol advertising in sponsorship? Apart from writing letters, I am afraid that there has not, as far as I am aware, been many much deep discussions about this, not particularly interesting. Does any officials know about any previous—the minister has recently imposed—the officials know about—can you say anything about the discussions between the UK Government and the Scottish Government on advertising strength? We have frequent conversations with our counterparts in other Governments. It is fair to say that the interest in taking forward some change in this area of areas across different Governments, but it is something that we continue to push for ourselves very strongly. Does that mean that you have not had any meetings with UK Governments specifically about strengthening the proposals on advertising? Is that what that means? In the context of the early stages of the framework, I confirm that I have not had a specific meeting to talk about this specific proposal, but we are at the early stages of the framework. We would intend to do that. As the minister said, she has written on a number of occasions, and we seek to engage those who are the power arrests. I think that I can take the answer from—it was not a tick question. I am just trying to cover the beef of the committee here. What particular enforcement concerns do the Scottish Government have about the proposals of the bill in relation to the restrictions on alcohol advertising? We are concerned that this new offence would not add to the existing restrictions on promotions that are applied as licence conditions. A breach of current restrictions would be picked up by the licencing standards officer and could lead to the premises licence being revoked. In terms of the way alcohol sponsorship in sport and the relationship that it has with sport, there is obviously a long-standing link in terms of the money that goes through, for instance, golf club bars, football, rugby, the whole strategic approach, the competition sponsorship and all the rest of it. If we were to restrict this on a far higher level in terms of this and also trying to get people into sport—obviously, youngsters and the likes—how do you reckon that could be done without seriously inflicting problems in finance of sport in this country? It seems to me that alcohol licencing, particularly the strategic stuff, such as the Rugby World Cup, the Rider Cup, all these sorts of things, but also in local aspects in terms of supporting your club. Has there been an assessment of the hit that sports clubs might financially make or have if licencing was so restrictive or sponsorship was so restrictive in that matter? I think that we are at the early stages of looking at the impact, but through the Scottish Government alcohol industry partnership, alcohol sponsorship guidelines for Scotland were published in February 2009. A review of the guidelines was conducted by Ipsos Moray in 2012 and concluded that they were viewed very positively by the research participants. The Portman group led the development of UK-wide sponsorship guidelines, which incorporated content from the Scottish guidelines, and the UK guidelines were launched in January 2014. However, in general terms, how sport would be affected if there were no alcohol industry backing them? Work still needs to be done on that, but I think that in Scotland people like Dr Peter Rice think that there are a lot of other industries that could be involved in sponsoring sport that might not affect sport too much, but we are still at the initial stages of that work. I am sorry just to clarify that last point, but I am not aware of the work done by the person that you just referred to, but is that on an anecdotal basis? Richard Lyle? Fx penalty offences have been suggested that Police Scotland is very supportive of the bill, but in regards to the Fx penalty, it has made comments that there is significant revision of ASBO fixed penalty tickets given the reference to discount periods. The bill makes reference to paragraph 2 and 3. Departure from current ASBO tickets would have to be paid to the Scottish Court and Tribunal Service. Police Scotland also has concerns about transferring ticket information to local authorities. It also pointed out that the bill would require the withdrawal of all standard anti-social behaviour ticket books from police officers, and the police officer would need to be issued with new ticket information. Is that another concern that you have about this bill? I think that we would like to explore the costs involved in this area a bit further. I do not know if you want to say a bit more about that. I think that that picks up on what I was saying earlier, that in order for us to adopt a proposal, we would want to understand what the costs to all parties would be and its efficacy a little bit better. It is of concern that Police Scotland has raised some costs. It points to us that a number of ideas require further exploration before we could undertake to support them. So, cost to police, cost to grocers, cost that are unquantified—that is all the concerns that you have—and that is one of the main reasons why you do not support this bill. I think that the costs involved can be substantial. I think that the financial memorandum was scrutinised by the finance committee, and it was concerned about the costs involved. However, at the end of the day, we want to make sure that any legislation is reducing alcohol-related harm, whether it be to the individual and communities. I think that that is the bottom line of any legislation. Will that work in terms of reducing alcohol-related harm and Scotland's unhealthy relationship with alcohol? I think that, Malcolm Chisholm, I was shocked to see the rejection of all 10 proposals. I just say to the minister that you will have, of course, seen the notes on the discussion that I had with your predecessor about the bill that originally had 14 items in it, and we dropped four that were going to be taken up by the Government under matters that were not legislation. However, I am really interested today in the principles. You have rejected the proposal on what is effectively beer and cider multi-packs. You are giving a very clear message to the industry that anything that they do to try and get round the wishes of Parliament in respect of volume discounting. That is the principle here. It is not about promotions. It is not about that side of things, which, as Carol Bacon and Rose indicated very clearly, would be illegal. You cannot do that under the rules. However, in terms of the volume discounting, it has been very successful in relation to wine, but it has not been successful in relation to beer or cider. What you are doing today by rejecting this and suggesting to the committee that they reject the bill, on that item, you are saying that you are quite happy for the industry to get round volume discounting. Even if it does not produce a major change, it would give a clear message to the industry that, just like the tobacco industry, you should not get round the wishes of Parliament, but you are quite comfortable with that. No, I did not say that, and I am not comfortable with that. We want to do all that we can in terms of volume discounting, but what we are saying is that we are limited in what we can do in this area because it is cross-border. We do believe that what is proposed here is not going to have the intended outcome. Saying to the industry that you are no longer selling single cans or single bottles in order that you can discount at 4, 8, 12 and 20, you are saying that that is perfectly acceptable and that you are not prepared to do anything about it, because it is clearly within your powers, because the Presiding Officer would not have said that it was legislatively competent if it did not. He would not have allowed it to go forward otherwise. I do not understand your remark about cross-border minister. It has got nothing to do with cross-border any more than the wine discounting has got to do it. We have got rid of three for two wine, and we have had a very great success in that. There has been a very significant reduction in wine consumption in Scotland, but there has been a zero reduction in beer consumption, and part of the reason for that is because the industry has got round it. Retailers have got round it. They no longer sell. It was in my co-op yesterday, and they were selling single bottles, but they were labelling it slightly differently. They were getting round this intent of Parliament, and you are supporting it by objecting to this. It is within legislative competence, and that is not an argument. Dr Simpson, what I can say to you is that if we can legislate on that in terms of refreshing and the next stage of the alcohol framework, we will certainly look at it, but we believe that it should be incorporated in the alcohol framework rather than in a bill by itself. The argument is not about whether it is good or whether it is bad, whether it is a good principle or a bad principle. It is just that you would like it to go into a different setup. Can we move on then? The next one is age discrimination. This is another principle. There is quite clear evidence that actually doing things to people under the age of 21 and discriminating against responsible adults is regarded as being inappropriate by many of the respondents to my bill. Yet you are now saying that you are perfectly happy that, although the Parliament passed legislation in the 2010 act saying that there should not be this age discrimination, the fact that it is still allowed for individual licensees to be required to do this is appropriate, that age discrimination. The bill does not stop an individual licensee saying that it is not going to sell to any group. It does not have to sell to anyone that it does not want to sell to, but you are saying that it is perfectly appropriate to allow powers to be in place on the principle that you can discriminate on the basis of age. We believe that it is the right power that exists to ensure that local restrictions can be applied limiting off-sales outlets with particular problems or who have been found guilty of an infraction of the law. I understand that, in response to the committee's call for evidence, some licensing boards commented that they would prefer to retain the flexibility to introduce a minimum age limits themselves where appropriate. That is why we are not supporting this at this time. The third thing is that the whole principle of the bill is to tackle not alcohol dependency, which I spent much of my life treating. We have done a lot on that. I think that the community payback orders are there. I have tabled questions as to how often the alcohol treatment requirement is in place and also the question of the CPO and how that works. What the bill is about is actually trying to address those who are just beginning to get into trouble, just beginning to get into trouble, because that provides an opportunity. When someone is beginning to get into trouble, that provides an opportunity to say to them, look, this is something that you maybe should think about. It offers a chance with fine diversion to say, if you wish voluntarily, you can reduce your fine or eliminate it by going for alcohol education. You are saying that you do not think that the Fife pilot, which they found bureaucratically difficult, it was a work-around, not something in law. You do not think that that is actually worthwhile doing. Even though Newcastle is telling us that it is a no-brainer, you think that it is not worthwhile doing. At the moment, there is no challenge to these individuals that are given a fine in almost every area except Fife in Scotland. They are given a fine and that is the end of the matter. Nobody says to them at that point, look, you really should do something about this. I do not think that that is the case. I think that there are lots of diversionary activities on the go where people who are on the cusp of having a problem with alcohol and anti-social behaviour can be diverted away from that. As Carol said previously, we intend to look at the initiative that happened in Fife and see whether that is a good prospect for inclusion in the next stage of the alcohol framework. I think that my last item, because I realise that time is moving on to it, is the question of the bottle-marking scheme. You seem to have accepted completely the Morrison's deposition that is £3.7 million, but, as the convener said, it is quite clear that this measure is intended to be short-term, not permanent. It is not intended to be a national scheme, it is intended to be focused where the police want to gather intelligence. It is designed to be focused on the individual—I was going to say medicines—alcohol that is being abused. If white lightning cider, for example, or one of these other products is being sold and abused, or indeed others, then the police can ask for that to be done. It also means that the licensee may be exonerated from it so that they can focus elsewhere on it. I really fail to understand why a proportionate, focused short-term measure that has been costed—we have now got the costings from Newcastle—just over £200, convener, and we will submit that evidence to the committee. £200 for a three-month spell of doing this. At a cost of £200, you would not want the police to be able to gather this intelligence. I would like to see how that £200 is broken down, whether that is a cost to the public purse or whether that includes the cost to the retailers in terms of putting the markings on the bottles. However, as the committee has had in evidence, we know that proxy purchase does happen and that it is not always the youngsters themselves that are trying to buy the alcohol that alcohol is bought by family and friends and taken from home mostly and perhaps drunk in public. Those are the kinds of things that we do not believe that bottle marking on its own would present. Proxy purchasing is an extremely difficult area and I fully accept that. However, there is absolutely no evidence that what we have tried up till now is working. There is definitely evidence that it is working. I have produced my original consultation in 2012 and we are sitting here three years later talking about an alcohol framework. Minister and your colleagues, thank you very much for your attendance here this morning and the evidence that you provided. We will suspend at this point until we change the panel. We now move to our second evidence session today's meeting and it is our final evidence session with the member in charge of the bill on alcohol licensing, public health and criminal justice Scotland. I welcome to the committee, not for the first time, Dr Richard Simpson, MSP, Mary Dinsdale, senior assistant clerk, non-government bills unit and Louise Miller, senior solicitor, officer of the solicit to the Scottish Parliament. I understand that Dr Simpson would like to make a brief statement before we move to questions. I do not want to take up any more of your time than is necessary. My original consultation, as I was indicating earlier, was in 2012 and I did have a meeting with the cabinet secretary to discuss how many of those issues might be resolved without legislation. In fact, four of the 14 items in my original bill I was given an indication that those would be pursued by the Government either in their own legislation in the weapons and licensing bill or would be taken up by them without legislative requirement. Regrettably, I have not seen much evidence of that occurring in the 18 months or two years since we had original discussions. The most important thing that I want to say to the committee is that I think that, as a Parliament, we have done a very good job with the addition of minimum unit pricing, which I have always said will actually benefit harmful drinkers. Harmful drinkers will undoubtedly be affected by it. I am not so sure about the others, but harmful drinkers will be affected by it. However, the measures that we have introduced or attempted to introduce have dealt with and deal with the most severe people in our community, people with alcohol dependency, and the legislation really covers that. However, the intention of my legislation is, in fact, to tackle a number of areas where it needs tightening in terms of our experience of the legislation that we have already passed. The second thing is to try and begin to address those who are at the beginning of getting into difficulties with alcohol, because if you can catch people early, they can be brought up short and realise that they have a problem. At that point, intervening and intervening quickly can have a very beneficial effect. Many of the elements in my proposals are designed to tackle that. They are not designed to tackle those with serious violent offending or alcohol dependency. Those are already covered by existing legislation. I hope that the committee, when it gets to doing its report, will look at it in that light and examine it, as I am sure that it will, on the basis of that element. Thank you, Dr Simpson. We moved the first question, which is from Dennis Roberts. Can I start off by thanking you for your opening statement? It helps to clarify some of the elements around the proposed bill that you are taking forward. We are looking to identify whether it is the legislation that is required or whether it is some other means or methods about tackling our relationship with alcohol. With regard to the container marking in off-sales, there is mixed evidence. There is mixed views with regard to that in terms of its effectiveness with regard to the cost. We have heard that new evidence came from Newcastle. I am just wondering at the end of the day, when we look at the Newcastle situation as a way forward, perhaps. The costing that was suggested for Newcastle—I think that it was at 240 for a short term—was at three months. Was that for a single off-sales premises or was it for the whole Newcastle area? Thank you for your question, Mr Robertson. It was for a single licensed premises. Stickers are £0.9, posters are £90 each, and there are only a couple of laminated posters as well, but it is also the time for the beat manager, because they have a system down there where they have a beat manager who deals with the collective licences, and at some time in building relationships with the premises. The cost of applying the stickers was estimated at about an hour a week. So, the total cost was about £200 to £240 for one licensed premises. Okay, that is excellent. Thank you very much for that. I would like that letter of correspondence from Newcastle in evidence, by the way. Thank you very much, Dr Simpson. Did that cost fall to the licensing board or to the licensing board? No. It is not very clear who makes up the stickers, but I think that they must be done by the Newcastle alcohol organisation. Whether they charge the licence or not, the main cost to the licence is the time to apply the stickers, and that is estimated at an hour a week, so 12 hours over the 12 weeks. That becomes a high visibility in terms of the awareness, in terms of the container marking. I suggest that it is very evident as to where the alcohol is being sold from, and it can be traced back. It can be traced back, but the other thing that we should remember is that it provides support to the staff in those premises. The notices are up saying that they are running the scheme, and it strengthens their resolve to not sell when they know that people are outside waiting to take from the proxy purchaser. It helps the staff as well as others. It has a preventive measure, but it also has an identifying effect. I can see where the intelligence comes from. Perhaps you can help me out here, Dr Simpson. Is a voluntary scheme and not a legislative programme? At the moment, it is a voluntary scheme in Newcastle. The scheme that was run in Dundee was voluntary, and I asked them why they ended it. They said, in part, because it was too bureaucratic to manage without legislative support, which is why it went into my bill. That confuses me to some extent, because I always thought that legislation would create more bureaucracy than not. I am just wondering. This is where I am coming from, Dr Simpson. Is it legislation that is necessary, or is it just the trade, industry, licensing boards and Police Scotland working together to identify where there are specific areas that are having an unhealthy relationship with alcohol to embark on having a voluntary scheme? Is it something that we could perhaps look at within the issuing of licensing to say that, if a certain licenced area or premises starts to have particular problems, there could be something written in within the licence to say that, unless you enter into this voluntary scheme, we can revoke your licence or whatever. Does that require the legislation? That power has been available to ministers since 2005, and it has not been used, as the first point to make about that. I would expect this to be voluntary on the whole. I would expect and hope that it would be voluntary on the whole, because the co-operation of the licency is in the licency's interests very often. However, what the legislation provides is the backup. It means that, if the police are concerned about a particular area, they are able to impose that with the consent of the licensing board, unless the licensing board feels that it is not appropriate in which case they have to give their reasons for it not happening. If you take test purchasing, which I was the minister responsible for asking Mr Hardy, who was the Lord Advocate at the time, to bring this in test purchasing, what I have heard about test purchasing is that, in some areas, it is very difficult to undertake test purchasing, because the licency knows the youngsters who are coming in and can spot strangers coming into the area, so that it becomes very difficult. The bottle marking scheme is to amplify the police intelligence in respect of those elements. The bottle marking gives us the intelligence to take it back to particular licenced premises. It is not saying that a young person who may be found with a bottle, say by police or whatever, that that young person was sold at the bottle, because it could well have been sold to that person's parent or whatever. The bottle removed from the home, as has quite often happened in the majority of cases, Dr Simpson. It allows the police to do two things. One is to focus test purchasing to test what you are talking about there, Mr Robertson. The second thing that it does is to allow them to place that licenced premises under surveillance, so that, in fact, if they see young people coming out from the premises who are underage and are carrying alcohol, it would allow them to immediately intervene. It provides intelligence at two levels that are not there otherwise. My question is therefore, Dr Simpson, does it require legislation or does it require licenced premises, along with licenced boards, working with Police Scotland on a voluntary scheme that seems to work reasonably well in certain areas? I would suggest that, at the moment, in targeting certain areas, we just maybe need to have a look again at when we are issuing licences as to whether or not we need to have something written in to a licence to maybe take people to sort of enter into an obviously revolventry, we can't make it mandatory, but unless there are specific problems arising. My question is, do we actually require the legislation to do that? You have said that we have already got legislation, but we just don't use it. Is it not a question that we should be using the existing powers that we have and raising that awareness to encourage more voluntary schemes? Once you introduce legislation and then regulations, you will have a scheme that then can be implemented very rapidly, instead of having to be rediscussed in every area on every occasion in which it is raised. The purpose of legislation is to make this whole process much more smooth. As I said previously, the Dundee scheme that did work, it stopped because it found that it was too difficult on a voluntary basis. If a licencee refuses at the moment, then it can refuse, and that is the end of it. Grafina, with my last question on this, with regard to the cost, the Finance Committee raised concerns in the financial memorandum that you are unable to sort of cost it. It has some sort of cost from Newcastle, but the estimated cost coming from the trade was £3.7 million across the board. You have said that we are looking at things only happening on a shock-term basis. I think that you have suggested maybe three months to target specific areas. What do you think that the £3.7 million is a wildly exaggerated cost? If there was a national scheme—much of the evidence was based on the supposition, false, I have to say supposition—that this was going to be a national scheme in which all alcohol in Scotland would have to be bottle-marked all the time, and that just simply is not the case. By making it focused, temporary, making it on particular drinks for a specific length of time, focusing on licensed premises where the police already have some concerns within an area, the costs would be at the lower end and nothing, I mean just absolutely nothing like £3.73 million. Of course, if there is a morrisance—it was morrisance who gave this evidence—if there is a morrisance which is actually not following through on things in the way that we want them to, then they might have to bear a significant cost, but I think that that is extremely unlikely. I think that those stores are very reputable and I do not think that there is a major difficulty in that regard. Forgive me, convener, but I did say that it was my last but I just have to follow on from that. Do you not think that young people are intelligent enough then to move on somewhere else where there is not a marked scheme? If you have a marked scheme that can be traced back and they have the intelligence, do you not think that they would move on to somewhere else that this could not be if it is not a national scheme, if it were not marking all bottles and all premises, that it would just go to places where this scheme is not? There is always that possibility, Mr Robertson, but unless you actually have something that tries to address the problem, then you are just throwing your hands in the air and saying, well, that is it, we are not going to try to address it. I am not saying that we are not trying to address the problem. I am just giving an example that I would have thought that young people have thought that somewhere is has a marked scheme that they would probably move on somewhere else. I do not want to be too kind to your tenancy in terms of your question in case anybody casts it up. Mike, you have not asked the question today, it is a pleasure to take you in. Thank you, convener. It is just a bit of clarification on this that I am seeking from Dr Simpson that you say that this is designed to be a targeted measure where the police already have suspicions. You mentioned that it would allow them to, for instance, undertake surveillance on premises that they suspect where selling is taking place to people underage and therefore perhaps view underage youngsters emerging from the premises, clutching their bottles or cans or whatever it is that they are buying now. I am not quite sure what that adds. I am hoping that you can explain it to me. If the police already have some suspicions, what is it currently to prevent them undertaking surveillance and apprehending youngsters if they are emerging with alcohol that they are not old enough to buy? Normally, as I understand it, what happens is that youngsters are found in a park or a public place consuming alcohol. At that point, the police do not know where the alcohol has been purchased. They may have suspicions, in which case they will probably be doing test purchasing in that area. If they do not need additional intelligence, they will not seek additional intelligence. That is why I am saying that it should be police led. I am just a bit confused. I am going back to your answer to one of Mr Robertson's questions. He said specifically that it would allow police to undertake surveillance and so on. I am struggling if it is targeted, then presumably the police already have suspicions about a particular premises. If it is not targeted, then they are just casting a wide net. It seems to me that this is the difficulty that I have got here. When I add that to the difficulty of securing a conviction that proof of merely holding a bottle or can that has been marked is not proof of purchase, but direct proof, I am really struggling to see what this adds. I am hoping that you can maybe explain it to me. I would not have continued to move it if I had not had police support on this. Indeed, but the police, as well, can be wrong about things. Fine, if you think that the police are wrong on this matter, then you will come to the conclusion that you seem to be coming to. In my view, if the police are saying to me that they feel that this measure is a worthwhile addition in terms of their obtaining intelligence, then I have to say that my view would be to support the police in this respect. I can only comment that I had hoped that you would have been able to articulate the police position so that we can have the benefit of understanding it merely by asking us to accept that the police are inevitably always correct in their opinions. Are you able to articulate— I am not saying that the police are inevitably correct in their opinions on everything. I am saying in this respect that the information that I obtained from the police when I consulted them before tabling my bill was very positive. If it had not been positive, I would not have tabled this section of the bill. That is all that I am saying. The committee has participated, Mike. On the ground, we have voted, and we have got a report there. So the committee has satisfied itself in terms of whether we support this or not, that this can work. We saw it in operation and we have got notes over and whatever. We did take some evidence from the police as a committee. I have got Bob and then Mark. I think that it is useful to say that I did not go to Newcastle, Dr Simpson, but those who went there saw the benefit of a voluntary scheme. That is as far as the evidence goes. I think that that is reasonable to say. Where this hangs for me is whether it should be voluntary or whether it should be compulsory. If there is compulsion, who should decide on the compulsion and whether that is desirable. Those are the things that I am working through in my head, Dr Simpson. I will not rehearse my concern about the police having that leverage in terms of the licensing process. That is a concern that I have. When I ask my substantive question, if you want to respond to that, feel free, Dr Simpson. I will not focus on that, but that is a concern that I do have. You will have heard that in the last evidence session. I suppose that I was just slightly confused in relation to whether that would be led by police suspicions and then you could have a targeted approach and then that could lead to intelligence to provide for a test purchase scheme. You said in your evidence that there is limitations to a test purchase scheme, but you also said that the labelling scheme would drive us towards test purchasing. I did see a contradiction there in relation to that and you might want to respond to that. However, I suppose that, where that has worked and perhaps it has worked and done, you have not looked at that in any detail, what we have to look at is sharing best practice for, in my view, so far voluntary schemes, wherever they are in Scotland, so we can have a degree of consistency and we can have a degree of certainty. Maybe parts of Scotland would like to roll out voluntary schemes in partnership, but they lack the confidence to do that. I am just wondering, Dr Simpson, if that was not to be successful in this bill, whether you would be keen to work with the refreshed alcohol framework to drive in what best practice would look like in this area to achieve that consistency across Scotland? In answer to your last point, I have not spent a considerable proportion of my professional life working with people with alcohol problems to say no, that obviously I will do all in my power to assist in developing the framework. I think in respect of the initial point, Mr Doris, I would certainly hope that this would be voluntary in most areas and the police would not need to exercise this power, but if a licencee refused, they have no power to coerce them at the present time, the police have no power to coerce them. This legislation would allow them to require this, provided that licensing board had not good reason to say otherwise, which they might. I do not know what those reasons might be, but they might choose to say no, in which case they would have to give their reasons for it. We have tried to get a balance here of allowing the police to develop that. The police will receive complaints from the public about public drinking by underage people. Through act on that, they then need to gather intelligence, and this process is designed to do that. I take on board what you are saying, and we just have that genuine slight disagreement in relation to the role of the police in relation to the licencee board. I take that. That is just where we are. I am just wondering whether or not you think that it would be a reasonable consideration of any licencee board when they are looking to renew a liquor licence if they deemed that to be an unreasonable lack of partnership working from an off licence should they decide not to partake of a labelling scheme in a local community. I mean, I am being slightly flippant, but if off sales are proud of the good responsible job that they do, then why wouldn't you want your bottle away with a little label on it? Promoting the store that it was bought from if you are ethically sounding your selling of liquor? I suppose that the substantive question would be, do you think that that would be a reasonable consideration for a licensing board to take into account when they look to renew or extend any liquor licences? How much, if you like, on a voluntary basis that kind of partnership work did or didn't happen in local communities? You are making quite an interesting point, Mr Doris. The trouble is that, since 2005, under the Licensing Act, licences are not renewed. There isn't a periodic review system of this country now. We used to have that, but we don't have it now. It was part of lightning the load because we were imposing a lot of other conditions. I mean, I was the minister that started that whole process off with the Nicholson review. We knew that that would place a greater burden on licences, so we decided to remove the periodic review. There isn't a renewal of licences system, which would allow the licensing board to step in and say that your renewal is being denied because you have refused to participate in this partnership. That's another reason for having that in legislation. I don't see that legislation having to be used, but once the legislation is in place, the licensees will agree. However, having it there as a backstop very often, having legislation in place as a backstop is valuable. I have a final comment and I'll let my colleagues in. I'm not sure that that's a reason to back this section of the bill, but that's certainly a reason for both our respective parties to consider whether we got that 2005 measure accurate or otherwise, and I suspect neither of us really know what either of our parties are going in relation to that, but I think that it's an interesting point that I was unaware of, Dr Simpson, and I'll certainly reflect on it, so thank you. To be fair to the Government, they've partially realised that with the Air Weapons and Licensing Bill that the collection of information from licensing boards has been really very poor. We have really little idea about what the individual licensing boards are doing. They're not reporting, for example, as you heard this morning, on whether Asmose has been used at all in relation to the minor offences that we're talking about in this bill. We just don't know. That was one of my questions that I was going to come to you later, but other colleagues want it, and they may come to that ahead of myself, Dr Simpson, but I'll return to that hopefully at some point. Welcome to you, sir. I mean, I see this as a coherent set of measures that's trying to address the abuse of alcohol in general, but also some measures, obviously, focusing particularly on young people and alcohol. I'll not concentrate on areas where I'm very much in support of what you're saying. I'll just ask about two areas where I have a bit of uncertainty. Given the focus, as I've described in my first sentence, on abuse of alcohol and particularly in certain places on age, it just feels that the age discrimination in off-sales does not somehow fit within that coherent framework. You'll explain your reasons for introducing it, but I suppose that it could be argued that that is another targeted measure that's trying to deal with abuses of alcohol in certain premises. We've been talking about bottle marking, which would be focused on certain premises, so it's certainly in some of the evidence that some licensing boards are saying that it's a useful tool for dealing with premises that persistently sell to under 18. I understand the contrary arguments, but, in the kind of way that it seems to be not with the general thrust of the bill, let's put it that way. I don't know if you remember, Mr Chisholm, but when we discussed this in the original bill in 2010, one of our most eminent statisticians said that the evidence on that was extremely poor. There was not good evidence to have a blanket, as it was proposed then, discrimination on an area where licences within an area and none of them would be allowed to sell to under 21. The evidence from the pilots that were done was extremely poor. The other thing is, in my view, that the people who are more likely to be in difficulties with alcohol or having problems with alcohol are actually those slightly older, 21 to 25, because they've got more money. They're the ones under 21 or not, so discriminating against those under 21 doesn't seem to me to have any significant rational basis, so this removes the discriminatory thing completely. There is no evidence that I have that, in fact, doing this would be an appropriate thing, and it can have a negative effect. Just as the fact of stop and search has a negative effect about youngsters' attitude towards police, if you start introducing measures that are not evidence-based to block sales of people from 18 to 21 when they are adults and, in terms of law, are entitled to purchase, I think that you create a feeling that is negative, particularly if there was a significant advantage to it, I would see the purpose, but there is no proof that this is something that is of benefit at all. I'm quite open-minded about it myself, but it was very noticeable that the one measure that I had most opposition was the notification of an offender's GP. Although, as I say, I'm open-minded, it would seem difficult to implement a measure that had such widespread opposition, particularly from the medical profession, so I wonder what your thoughts on that are. Yes. It was perhaps a decision that I need to look at again in the light of the evidence. In the consultation, we got a negative response from the BMA and a negative response from the courts on the grounds of administrative costs. My concern again is that the fact that the courts own estimates are that there are 50,000 people coming in front of them every year and are receiving a minor disposal about which nothing is then done. In 30 years as a general practitioner, the information that I got from the courts were on serious offences. That was something that came through. It was often in the press, in fact, so one picked it up and one would then try to address it, but there was a treatment requirement, which we've got powers to do for the more serious offence, but for the minor offences, as a GP, I was never informed. The APBIs are a scattergun approach. GPs will try and focus it as best they can, but if they had this additional information, in my view, they would then focus the brief interventions more specifically on some of those 50,000 who may be at the beginning of their alcohol career. That was the purpose of it. In the light of the fairly outright opposition from all sides, that's something that I would want to reconsider perhaps before stage 1, but I look forward to seeing the committee's report in respect of that particular item in the bill. Richard Lyle Dr Simpson, can I move on to alcoholic drinks containing caffeine? Your bill would introduce a ban on alcoholic drinks with caffeine content above a level to be set by Scottish ministers, but it then goes on to say that sales of this type of drink is only very small percentage of alcohol sales in Scotland, but it then goes on to suggest that research has shown that 5,000 crimes are committed and strike light, committed by people drinking a certain level, certain type of caffeinated tonic wine, and it then goes on to suggest that if we do amend the caffeine within those drinks, there will be a substantial reduction in crime. I thought that crime was at an all-time low in the last 40 years. Why would you suggest that if we change the caffeine content of a drink, that crime will then fall? I'm not suggesting that overall crime will fall, Mr Lyle. Crime is actually falling in every developed country irrespective of whether the increase or decrease police it is reducing in every developed country. That is not something I'm suggesting. What I'm suggesting here is that there is considerable evidence from the states that caffeine in a particular strength, mixed with alcohol, creates wide awake drunks, which places people at greater risks and makes them more likely to be aggressive. The reports from the McKinley report on young offenders in polmont and the report from Strathclyde Police were the two reports that led me to propose this. I'm very disappointed at the fact that the Government hasn't seen fit to carry out any further research into this issue. It is confined to the west of Scotland, as Peter Rice made very clear to you. He practices in Tayside, and if you're in Tayside, this particular problem is not a problem. It is as much a cultural thing as anything. However, there is no doubt that there are two jurisdictions where it has been substantially changed. One is in America, where the Food and Drug Administration haven't banned it. What they said to the producers was, you will now have to prove that your product is safe. Interestingly enough, the producers then stopped producing caffeine-alcohol mixed drinks completely. It just simply stopped. The second jurisdiction is in Denmark, where they introduced a restriction that has been notified to the EU and accepted by the EU, where they have restricted the level of caffeine in the drinks, and they did so on the basis of the evidence that they saw it of problems that they were having with caffeine-alcohol mixed drinks. I'm not saying that this is a major problem in terms of the overall consumption of alcohol, but I am saying that, as a cultural thing in the west of Scotland, it could be worth addressing by carrying out further research, perhaps, and then introducing a restriction. I would hope that that is exactly what would happen. In regard to one more question, convener, if you allow me, container marking off sales, I know particularly well that we are talking about major stores. I may not name the store, I'm thinking of, but a major store that has two aisles of a substantial amount of drink, and about half a mile away there are two, within half a mile radius of that major store that I'm thinking of, there are two off-licence premises. If there was a concern by the police in an area, or residents complaining to the police, would you not think that then the three places that sell the drink would have to do that container marking, and the cost would actually be more than what you suggest of £200 nod? It's certainly true that if they had suspicions about the major stores opposed to smaller stores undertaking this, then it could be a more significant cost for them. Remember that we are talking about focused drinks, as well as focused time, as well as focused premises, so the number of drinks that would have to be tagged would not be very significant in terms of what the major supermarkets are selling. It would be particular products that they would be looking at. The evidence that's been given to your committee, convener, is on the basis that all the alcohol in the two aisles of that store would have to be marked. Sorry, who would mark it? The evidence that we got was that it would need to be the council officer who would come in and mark it. Are you saying that the store would mark it? The store would mark it. Okay, thank you. And the stick is being provided by me. Thank you, convener. You mentioned in the caffeinated drinks, Mr Dr Simpson, that further research is required. Are we ahead of yourself here in terms of, you're almost meeting the Scottish Government's view here in terms of, has the case been made? If you can see further research, then is that the implication that the case really needs to be made? Well, I feel that dialogue is really very important. I think that when I raised this issue in 2012 with the Government and indeed we raised it in the 2010 act and the 2011 act, we did raise the issues of the caffeine. In the first instance, it was felt that there wasn't sufficient evidence. In the second instance, it was ruled out on competence grounds. I've been pressing this issue or others in my party for five or six years. The only evidence that we have are the McKinley study and Strathclyde police study, although there's a report from the Glasgow City Council on the quantities of broken glass resulting from this particular product. That hasn't been completely quantified. It's more anecdotal, but it's suggested that it's very significant. There are three bits of evidence that indicate that there is a significant problem in the west of Scotland, and I think that there could be no doubt about that. The question is whether it should be introduced with further research or in the light of further research. I certainly think in the light of the fact of the discussions that I've seen and the evidence that I've had that it might be worthwhile changing the requirement on the minister to introduce it within a year, allowing the minister to undertake some further research, but at least having it on the books as an indication that we think there's a serious problem and that the evidence that we've got so far does indicate that in this particular area of west of Scotland it's a serious problem. In relation to Peter Rice's evidence, we had a discussion there about maybe the bookie in that west of Scotland area, and it's got its reputation, and that's the drink of choice to get out your head, and if we'd done a similar study in the northeast, it would maybe be another drink, a similar reputation, maybe cider or whatever, that would be impacting along with other things on the behaviour of some of the other young men who were in a similar institution. It would be, is it not just the excess alcohol and the cultural aspects of that, not necessarily up fast? I've never denied that there may be a displacement effect, which is effectively what Peter Rice was saying, that if that cultural thing is dealt with, it won't be another drink that comes along, but there is a difference, and that is caffeine in the strength that's contained in those drinks is a stimulant, whereas alcohol itself is a depressant. If you drink sufficient alcohol, the majority of people, not absolutely everyone, but the majority of people will actually go from being wide awake to being passive and then to being comatose because it is a depressant. If you add in caffeine in significant strength, drunk in significant quantities, then you produce wide awake drunks who are likely to be more aggressive for longer, less in control of themselves, and it's the combination of caffeine and alcohol that gives me the concern in terms of the criminality based on the report in the Young Offenders Unit, which showed the high numbers who drunk this particular substance and had got themselves into serious difficulties. Enough to go to prison. The point that was made at that session as well is that it's become very popular to mix spirits with high energy drinks, caffeine drinks. If you take that principle, you would need to extend it to bars and mixers and goodness knows what, wouldn't you, if you were saying that? If it's readily available in a pre-mixed drink, then you can take it out into the community and you can drink it, and that's what happens. That's why there's all the broken glass. This is not something being consumed in bars, this is something that's being consumed largely in the community, in groups, where they then get into trouble. That's why it needs to be addressed. I think that things like Yeager bombs, which I hear from my children and grandchildren, can be popular, but other mixed drinks of that sort may get people into difficulty. I suspect that they do get them into some difficulty, particularly in a situation or circumstances more like that in America, where women, for example, indulging in this, are much more exposed to sexual risk. Yes, there are risks associated with caffeine mixed drinks, but you cannot stop somebody actually mixing the drink, but you could stop them consuming the pre-mixed drinks. Can I ask about alcohol awareness training? One of the reasons the Scottish Government was giving for not supporting this part of the bill was the cost of setting up courses all over Scotland. I'm not sure how many courses you think should be available in Scotland. It would be good to get some evidence on that, but bearing in mind that in the press today, a similar alternative to having spearing points is only available in England for those who wish to take it up. I wonder if you foresee many centres of providing this training in Scotland. In my view, every alcohol and drug partnership should be providing alcohol awareness. If you pick people up, for example, in a restaurant referral, which was in my original bill, we only had a restaurant referral in five sherftums. I've tabled a question to ask whether the undertaking that I was given by the minister at the time of the discussions that that wasn't necessary to legislate on, because it would be spread to every every sherftum and every alcohol and drug partnership. If you are on a restaurant referral, you may not have a serious alcohol problem. You may have just had that one occasion in which you have been arrested in relation to alcohol, but if you then offer the opportunity of alcohol awareness training, I think that that's an entirely appropriate thing to do. Of course, if you have a dependency, then you need to be offered something considerably more than that, but for us not to have the low-level alcohol awareness training available as an alternative to fines or as a method of reduction for the drink banning order, because it's engaged in that as well. Incentives for these individuals to ameliorate the current situation, which is that they simply get a sentence or a disposal, and that's the end of it, by giving them that alternative. I think that we will, in fact, and the evidence is there from the Fife report, and I also gather from you, Castle, that if you offer this, people will take it up and they're then less likely to re-offend. That is protecting our communities, but it's also helping those individuals. I find it astonishing that we actually don't have that level of awareness training in every alcohol and drug partnership as we speak. Are you saying that this could be a cost-saving measure and that if people are unlikely to re-offend, then the cost to the state would be less and would certainly cover the cost of the training? In my experience, people do not start off with a massive harmful drinking problem or, indeed, beyond that, with alcohol dependency. It is something that they go through, often starting too young with drinking, and I think that some of that has been improved considerably, but they start off drinking too young and they progress through a series of steps. The step that we do not address at the present time is that when they begin to get into trouble, they are not given the opportunity of addressing that. That's what my bill seeks to do with the two measures. One is that the binge drinker who gets into trouble on a couple of occasions and gets a drink banning order being able to say, right, well look, you could actually reduce this significantly by going on an alcohol awareness course and the other one is find aversion. Because the moment you just pay your fine, that's the end of it. No one actually gets you to, offers you the opportunity of addressing it. Any other committee members? Bob? Thanks, convener. I was going to ask about drinking banning orders and I will, but I was wondering if part of your answer to Rhoda Grant was talking about that sometimes when people have a interaction with the law for a negative reason where drink was involved, it might not always be necessary to refer them to some kind of support intervention, brief intervention, because it might be a kind of one-off. I heard you say that, I could be wrong in which case, I apologise if he didn't say that, I'll check the official report, but I'm just kind of using the same logic, then why would we inform a GP every single time? And if I picked you up wrong, I apologise Dr Simpson, but I thought I heard you say that in relation to part eight of the bill and if that's true in part eight of the bill, she looks true at part 10 of the bill. If people are given a drink banning order, or if people are getting into trouble and they do not accept the opportunity and the incentive to ameliorate their disposal, reduce their disposal by going voluntarily into an alcohol awareness programme, then by informing the general practitioner, it allows a second bite at the cherry because the GP often has a much better, a really good relationship with their patients and therefore saying to them, well I see that you've got into trouble with, you've got into trouble over alcohol, is this a one offer, is it something that's happened once or twice or, I think that we should actually do an alcohol brief intervention with you, and that remember is partly signposting on, so it allows the GP the opportunity of identifying the group who haven't responded to the incentive that we're offering, that we're re-offering with this bill. I won't explore that further, I think that it was a genuine disagreement in relation to whether that's the appropriate intervention by a GP, and that wasn't the reason for asking it, I'll go back and check the wire, I'm sure, maybe I just misheard that exchange in which case I apologise. I'm sorry, I don't follow the point that you're trying to make. Sorry, I think what I'll do is rather progress a point that may have led to me mishearing what you said, Dr Simpson, I'll maybe go back, go to my substantive point and I'll go back and look at the wire, so apologies for taking you down that road. And I'd be happy for the committee to write to me if it's not clear. Yeah, yeah, I won't explore that any further, but in drinking banning orders, the Government position is that we can use asbo's in relation to this, and there was a lack of data on whether that tends to happen or not happen. Can I ask you Dr Simpson, have you tried to garner any of that data? I have tried informally and not succeeded, that there's no evidence that asbo's are being used in that particular regard. They are used if they are part of a neighbourhood of a neighbour nuisance situation in which alcohol plays a part, then the asbo, there is an asbo, can be put on it, but asbo's as a specific measure to stop somebody entering licensed premises or an area with licensed premises, I haven't got no evidence of at all. Unfortunately, because there's no requirement on the reporting on this, we haven't got it, although I'll be very interested having heard the evidence this morning to see what the Government officials come back with in terms of their examination of this, if they find other evidence, I'd find that very useful. But the difference is that an asbo, as I understand it, you have an asbo and you have an asbo for a certain length of time, and that's the end of it. The drink banning orders that I'm proposing, as opposed to the community payback, as opposed to the alcohol treatment requirement, will allow somebody to actually be offered the opportunity of addressing their problem and it being identified very specifically as alcohol, which asbo's might not. I think that you make an interesting point. When you said that you tried informal to get the information, how did you do that? I didn't write to people. We didn't write to them about it. In fact, I simply discussed it with one or two people who were on licensing boards and one or two councillors as to whether they were aware of Asbo's being imposed with a specific requirement of this sort. I have absolutely no, as I said, purely anecdotal and just one or two people. It wasn't a formal written request. That's been very straightforward with the committee in relation to that and I appreciate that. I suppose that my concern would be about providing further legislation when there is that information gap, because I put it to you. Here's a supposition that may or may not be true Dr Simpson. I'd appreciate your opinion on it, because it does link specifically to drinking banning orders. Could it be possible that there's a lack of awareness on how Asbo's could be used in this regard, so that's the first part of it potentially? Or could the second part be that actually in relation to directing people towards an alcohol brief intervention is part of any community payback or Asbo? I appreciate a grey area on how that links. There has to actually be a course available in the first place and unable to do that. We don't have a full audit of what is or isn't available and that's a bit patchwork. I hope that you'll appreciate that. That's my concern, because if we can use Asbo's more systematically, if that's the right thing to do and more consistently, I would like to get evidence on that first rather than put in a second piece of legislation, which by and large, and I appreciate that there are some differences, by and large seems to duplicate existing powers that are there, so I'd appreciate your thoughts on that. I do think that a drink banning order, as the police described it, would be a useful additional item in the toolkit. It being very specific and very focused actually means that it's much more likely to be used and it would be in some senses simpler than the Asbo order to use. However, you're quite correct, Mr Doris, unless the Government or local authorities out there can come up with evidence saying that Asbo is really very simple and we just hadn't thought of it, then I can't really answer your question fully. I'm just trying to make sure that I've covered the most parts of the bill that I can do, Dr Simpson, to give you an opportunity to put information on the record. I think that you have an opportunity a little bit earlier, but in relation to point nine, which is alcohol awareness training as an alternative to fixed penalty fines, we mentioned that there had been a five-pilot in relation to a carcody in relation to that, and then it rolled out to five. Five alcohol support services ran a pilot. Again, it was a case of this may or may not be a pretty desirable thing to do. There is a tension there, I suppose, and it interacts with any refreshed alcohol framework. If a pilot could be undertaken, does that suggest that we don't need the powers in order to do this, that what we actually do need is a more systematic provision of alcohol awareness training across Scotland to allow for this to be rolled out? I think that the problem—I may be wrong in this and I'm sure that someone out there will correct me if I've got it wrong—at the moment, what happens, as I understand it, is that the police say that we're going to issue a fine to you, but there's this alternative. They can't impose the fine and say that you're going to ameliorate it by going on this, so it's a workaround, and I think that workarounds are not necessarily the best way to proceed. I think that it's better to have something that is more generalised and which is very clearly encouraging people to do this. It requires the police on an individual basis who won't know the person to actually say, well, I think maybe they've had them once before and they're saying, well, this is your second fine, would you like to go on this course? It's a workaround situation at the moment, because once you've imposed the fine at the moment, you don't have the authority to say, well, cancel half the fine as they do in Newcastle. I don't know how they work it, but I think they cancel half the fine in Newcastle. I think we'll maybe get, the committee will seek more information on that, perhaps before we draft our stage 1 report. I would suspect it was a final question on alcohol awareness training. Again, this was a pilot in five. I'm just wondering irrespective of whether this bill does or does not progress. Would it be your position? There has to be a more systematic, structured approach to alcohol awareness training right across Scotland and whether that is done via a pilot such as in five or elsewhere. Likewise, when I was talking about other parts of the bill, the Government maybe has to develop a best practice template as part of any refreshed alcohol strategy to make sure that we've got a consistent approach right across the country. Yes. You'll know that my proposal is that we should test this in an urban setting before we proceed. I'm wanting to proceed cautiously on this because I need to see that it actually does work and to find out what the full costs of it would be. To say that it was done in Glasgow, the numbers would be considerably greater. It would test out the costs before the Government then decided whether to roll it out or not. We have a good history of doing this. We did it with drug treatment and testing orders. I have to say in that case that the English pilot was not good. The results were very poor. We decided, however, that we liked the idea. We then ran a pilot in Scotland that we adjusted for the mistakes and the problems that there were in the English system. Our pilot in Scotland was found to be effective and good, and we then rolled it out. That process took between 2001 and 2006 before we finally had it rolled out. We do proceed cautiously. We do proceed on the basis of best value and good evidence, and that is exactly what my proposal in respect of alcohol awareness training lays out. A brief reflection, and I won't have any other questions after this convener. I suspect if we were to legislate, and I know that you're saying about a cautious approach going forward, but legislation tends to drive change quite dramatically. You've mentioned that. I hadn't given thought to the costs around this. Actually, Dr Simpson told you mentioned it, but that expectation that change will be driven without any costings of what that would mean would give me a cause for concern. However, I think that where I can reach agreement with you, Dr Simpson, is the need to be much more clear on what costs would look like and to make sure that best practice is rolled out right across the country, whether it's via legislation or via the alcohol framework. I think that those proposals certainly feed into that discussion quite helpfully. The pilot scheme would have to be evaluated. If I can just slightly contradict you, Mr Doris, that I hesitate strongly to do so, we passed the social responsibility levy in 2010, and if that had been implemented by the Government, then the price of alcohol might have continued to rise. I understand that the public health levy was a substitute for that, and I welcomed it. It was tobacco and alcohol and only on super stores. That's been abandoned and we still don't have the social responsibility levy, which would allow for a lot of those costs to be met. The way that bill is written, that money is to be applied to deal with things like alcohol awareness. If you add that to the fact that if you can divert one person from a pathway that's going to end up as a harmful drinker, then you are going to save a lot of money. I'm just reminded that we're playing debating tennis, and I apologise, convener. I promise you that this is my last comment, and I promise you. See, we've got consensus already between the convener and the deputy convener, but you've just drawn attention to another piece of legislation that's already on the statute book, but perhaps isn't rolling out at all or as well as it could be. I'm just slightly nervous about putting something else out there, but I take on what the comment she's making. I'll listen carefully to her on Dr Simpson. Nenet, I'm hoping that you'll come and just to cover the areas about your last question about community. Are you happy to do that now? I just wondered if you had any further comment, and you'll have heard the response to my question about the licence notification. My concern all along, convener, has been not the areas where there is a community council that's active. It's the 15 or 16 per cent and it's mainly in deprived communities where there is no community council and therefore they can't be consulted, and it seems to me that four metres is not really an adequate area to consult. I think that there needs to be wider consultation. I do think on the basis of the evidence that I've received that 50 metres is over-generous and it maybe shouldn't be a circle because why would somebody 50 metres, which is two and a half roads away probably, why would they need to be consulted? So the area to be consulted maybe needs to be better defined, but I think the principle, which is what we're talking about at stage 1, the principle of the bill here is that there really must be more consultation with communities who are not currently being consulted. They do feel, and I get correspondence on this, they feel that they are not being adequately consulted and I think that they should be. So I think that that's one aspect of it. The other aspect is when you do have a community council they often don't meet at certain times of the year and therefore a 21 day notice can mean that they don't have a meeting and if they don't have a meeting they can't really put a view in, so it then becomes somewhat difficult and they I think extending the time period, it maybe doesn't need to be 42 days, it maybe needs 35 or something, but again I think the extension of that period of time to ensure that our community councils do have the chance to be consulted. Availability is along with price the big driver of change in alcohol consumption and at the moment as we know now from the Cres report, which we finally got, the availability of licences in deprived areas is far more intense than it is in other areas. We need to give these communities the biggest, best possible opportunity to object. Will you satisfy the Government's response that they would actually be looking at these things as part of their review of? I would be but for the fact that I raised this issue in 2012. Can I return under the heading of minimum package price and return to this issue of proportionality and cost? That drew a lot of criticism in terms of the trade about administration, raised questions in the finance committee about specific concerns about the cost and the financial memorandum and all of that. I suppose that the question is that the minimum package price does you believe that that would have a significant income on alcohol consumption, and how do you respond to the concerns that the cost of administration and the cost associated with that proposal outweighs any benefit that may be hard from reduced alcohol consumption? To take the first point, I think that this is a very principled element of the bill. This is about the fact that the retail industry has effectively got round Parliament's wishes, which was to end volume discounting. It does not totally sort it, except fully that they could be selling only a box of 18 cans, but a lot of people cannot afford 18 cans. It becomes difficult, but the fact that they do not sell single cans in order that they can sell four, eight, ten, twelve and twenty all at different prices means that they have the market really well judged. There is no evidence that I have seen that the implementation of the wishes of Parliament in respect of wine has caused any problems. It has been implemented, volume discounting has ended and the consumption of wine has gone down quite significantly. We should have this for beer and cider as well. That is the principle of it. The second thing is that, at the point that Wes Lothian made, there would be a big cost of sending out new licences to everybody. I think that the reply to that is that there have been 39 adjustments to licensing, and there was not a single complaint from any of those boards at the time. The Government has adjusted this 39 times. It is only when a private member comes along and suggests another amendment that suddenly we get protests, but not from all. If I can just quote from the letter that I received from the chair of the licensing board in Glasgow, which is our biggest licensing board, it said that, with what Wes Lothian has said, that this will require all boards to issue revised licences with a new restriction. Does that have to happen? The answer is that this would be the same thing for any adjustments to licence. If an adjustment is made, then a single sheet can be put out. It can be put out at the time of year when the mailing normally goes out to the licensing board. The cost of it is not good if it is a single sheet into a pack that is already going out. If what Wes Lothian is suggesting, then licencing conditions will be frozen in time forever. That is not going to happen. I recorded the issue in greater detail in my evidence to the Finance Committee, which I would ask the clerks to perhaps take a look at and draw to the committee's attention, because I quoted more extensively from the letter. The costs that are involved are not going to be significant from introducing a principled measure that reinforces Parliament's original unanimous desire to end volume discounting. Colin, can I call on you to have some questions on the head of the sections and advertising? Yes, thank you for that convener. You may have heard in the last few occasions brought up the issue of advertising, particularly the impact that it has within sports, within Scotland. Obviously, there is the issue of youngsters coming into sport, and many clubs are reliant on alcohol sponsorship indirectly or directly, whether it is through the bar or at the clubhouse or whatever. However, the fact that advertising seems to have left the middle ground of sporting events and has gone to a high level or lower level with the middle bit missing out, obviously you do not see fewer football clubs with, for instance, the markings on their jerseys however, the sponsorship levels have gone international, so you have such stuff as Champions League, World Cup Rugby, Guinness Pro 12 Rugby, all of these sort of things. Has an assessment been done, do you reckon, or have you heard of anything, which may affect the amount of money that is going into sport? Obviously, we want to encourage clubs and all that sort of thing. We have heard an anecdotal note that someone has done some work, reckons that other companies can take the slack up. What should be used in what you might have heard the Government or Minister saying in terms of this anecdotal stuff, because it would appear that there possibly is quite a chunk of money that goes into sports that could put pressure on those organisations to subsist at the bottom end, but obviously there is the higher end, plus the fact that you have the advertising internationally that goes with that. Yes, it is the one area that I do accept what the Government is saying, and that is that we do not have the powers to limit advertising in the way that we might wish to or might not wish to, but we do not actually have that power. For me, that is not an argument not to use the powers that we do have, and we do have powers. In fact, it was actually the current First Minister who originally looked at this in relation to tobacco and ran up against exactly the same problems that I ran up against. Of course, subsequently, the Government in the UK banned tobacco advertising, so it did not become a problem. Maybe the UK Government will have a change of heart, though I very much doubt it, and introduce a ban. The purpose of a total ban, which is what you are alluding to, would be to denormalise alcohol as being something that is ubiquitous across society. The amount that is spent on advertising is absolutely vast. As I said, we do not have the power to do that, but we do have the power to introduce some limited measures. What is interesting for me is that, at the moment, you have a situation whereby there is no promotion allowed of alcohol within 200m of premises. However, if you go to 201m and that happens to be somewhere near a school, you are reliant on a voluntary ban. If it is 101m from the school and 201m from the premises, you can get advertising at the moment. As you heard from the minister, voluntary bans, she was not very keen on voluntary bans and I agree with her. Voluntary bans are not adequate in regard of something that is so much of a problem, particularly for Scotland. What I am proposing is a 200m ban from all schools' creches, play parks, etc. If you overlap that with the 200m ban from premises, you will end up with fairly limited billboard or fixed-place advertising within our communities. I think that that is a useful first step. It is not total. It is not an absolute thing, but it is a useful first step in saying to children that it is not there. The evidence on the tobacco side is very clear that, in fact, the recognition of brand names in tobacco has dropped off quite considerably since 2003. However, the recognition of alcohol brands is still extremely high, and the evidence from the University of Stirling, which you heard a little of, indicates that it is very high. Any step that we can take legitimately within the powers that we have got to reduce that exposure, in my view, is a step worth taking. It will not go as far as I would like, but it would at least be a first step in that regard. The final point is that, as I think that I have said before, in France they have a total ban. There can be discussions as to whether it is how effective it is and what it has had, but there is no doubt that, as part of a collective drive by France in the 1980s, which was approved in the European courts and was accepted as being a proportionate and effective measure, as one of many measures that they introduced, they went from the position that we are in today to slightly below the European average in terms of their alcohol problem. If I could come back on just a couple of things there, first of all, I think that we are agreeing that there is no actual evidence as to what no one has worked out the effect on sports clubs at a lower end, which happened to be surviving partly on alcohol sponsorship, I think of the golf club rugby club, that sort of thing around. In terms of the French example, I have always found that one slightly odd, because they do have a different culture in terms of alcohol, particularly in terms of access to wine, as the children grow up within the family unit and the way the French have generally had that as part of their culture over the years. Is there something that tells us that what they have done has had the massive effect that is sometimes claimed, or are we looking at an apples and pear situation where we have a history of binge drinking in this country, shall we say, to where the French are coming from, where it was more a social cultural start? I repeat that they had a bigger problem than we have today at one point, and they sought to tackle it and they tackled it, and one of the elements was the loyvae, but the question is how much that contributed and how much the other measures contributed is a matter for dispute, the advertising industry and the producers would obviously say that it has had no effect, but as part of a package it has had an effect. I think that the other thing to be clear about is that I am not proposing a total ban on sporting alcohol advertising in sporting places. I am proposing that there should be a ban so that, for example, if the under-18 rugby players are playing a match at Murrayfield, which they will do, then the screen advertising that goes round should not have alcohol advertising it, and if there are any at my own local rugby club, if there was alcohol advertising and the under-18s were playing, then those boards should be covered up. So this is a relatively modest measure that attempts to address the situation in a modest way within the rules that we have at the present time. It is open to the Government to ban the advertising and all sporting events in Scotland, but at the moment I am not proposing it for precisely the reason that you are suggesting, because sport is also very important and I do not want to damage it. Many of my colleagues in the alcohol treatment industry and those really very serious about alcohol would say that I have been far too modest in this regard that I should have gone for a total ban on alcohol, bull boards, a total ban on any promotion of any sort whatsoever and a total ban on sporting activities. I have chosen to go for something more modest, it will be up to the committee to decide whether that is a reasonable measure or whether it should have gone further or should not occur. I am having a little bit of difficulty with this 200m thing simply because I almost actually do agree with some of the reasons that you have similar doubts to myself. We have a situation in my local rugby club, which I will obviously, is in my register of interests, so to speak, is that there is an off licence co-op within 200m of the clubhouse and at what point do these things overlap where you could have say a situation where there is over. Not children's rugby being played, but adult rugby being played, but the advertising rules come in for the off licence, which is 120 yards away, something like that. They are not allowed at the moment to do any promoting within 200m of the premises. That is not my legislation, that is already the legislation. That is already banned from them promoting in the area. They cannot come to your rugby club and say if you do not have a licence or you are not allowed to promote things, we are going to promote it here. They would not be allowed to. If it was the rugby club that did that, part of their advertising, which they do not have to say, but if it was a case of they had it round the park, which is within 100 or 200m of the shop. If they were advertising within 200m of their premises, they would not be allowed to do so. They are selling alcohol, so they cannot promote it within 200m. It is already banned. No other members. We are not final heading on the alcohol education policy statement. The straight question is why have you chosen to focus on the information education elements of the Scottish Government's action, rather than on the alcohol strategy more generally? I think because my original bill proposal was to require the Government to issue a statement in every Parliament in relation to the licensing principles. That was the two licensing principles that we have, which are unique to Scotland, which is the question of protecting children and the other one is public health. These are two principles. No other legislation has those. Originally, I wanted them to be a statement to every Parliament. Education is recognised by the WHO as being one of the less effective measures. It does not have a strong and effective effect as elsewhere. If we are going to spend money on education, on awareness training and so on, I believe that it should be evaluated. They can be quite expensive campaigns and we need to have them properly evaluated. The Parliament should have the opportunity of looking at that. Once every Parliament, the Government should come up with what they are planning to do and what happened in the last Parliament and give an opportunity for debate. Convener, the only times that we have had debates on alcohol in this Parliament, certainly since 2007, I do not know what happened in 2003 and 2007, but the only time that we have had a debate is in relation to legislation. As far as I know, there have been no other debates. I am providing the opportunity for this area to be looked at. One of the concerns that I have is that I am not sure that our alcohol education in schools, for example, is particularly effective. I think that I would like that to be looked at more closely and I think that that should be done by the Government giving a report. For it to be said to be bureaucratic, frankly, if they are not doing it already, the question is why are they not doing it already? If they are doing it already, then for them to simply table a report to Parliament and allow Parliament the opportunity of a debate or allow this committee to have the opportunity of a debate with the Minister, I think, is something that needs to be looked at. Okay, we have no other questions for committee members. I thank Dr Simpson and the bill's unit support there. Thank you very much for your attendance and your evidence this morning. At the time that they have taken over my bill, which I realise has been significant in the heavy work programme that I do know this committee has, so thank you. Thank you very much. We now suspend at this point and we move into private session as previously agreed.