Price matters. We have known for years that how much alcohol costs the customer makes a big difference to how much of it is bought and consumed. In 2010, a major review of evidence by Bangor and Wrexham Universities found that “the price and affordability of alcohol is the key determinant of the overall level of consumption amongst all groups in the general population”. Welsh academics weren’t the only ones saying this: in 2012 the Scottish Parliament voted to introduce a minimum price for alcohol of 50p per unit. Following a lengthy court battle with the alcohol industry, MUP finally came into force in Scotland in 2018. Two years later, equivalent legislation took effect in Wales.
Work has been ongoing since then to assess how well the policy is working in both territories. In 2023, Public Health Scotland concluded that MUP north of the border “had a positive impact on health outcomes” with “no clear evidence of social harms at the population level”. Today – 15 January 2025 – sees the publication of the final evaluation of MUP in Wales, and the message from west of the other border is also positive.
The most obvious impact of MUP in Wales has been on the availability of the cheapest strongest drinks – such as the “white ciders” often favoured by chronically alcohol-dependent drinkers. To give just one example, a 3-litre bottle of a well-known 7.5% cider was on sale in Wales before MUP for £3.99. With MUP at 50p a unit, that bottle – which contained 22.5 units of alcohol – could not be sold for less than £11.25. At that price, it became unsaleable. As a result, 3-litre and 2-litre bottles of strong cider have been replaced on the shelves by 500ml cans. This may seem like a small change but it’s a significant harm reduction measure, slowing consumption for the most vulnerable drinkers by increasing the number of “drinking increments”.
MUP has also removed many of the cheapest spirits from the market, while making it more difficult for supermarkets to offer multiple purchase discounts, such as three bottles of wine for the price of two. The minimum price doesn’t ban these discounts, but it does mean that they can’t take the price of any item below the MUP threshold.
Encouragingly, there is also little evidence of some of the things that some people feared MUP would bring – such as switching from alcohol to illegal drugs; a rise in cross-border alcohol shopping; or renewed enthusiasm for home brewing!
Of course, no policy is perfect. The evaluators found that MUP in Wales had “a negative impact of increasing financial strain” on low-income people who were drinking heavily, and that this sometimes led to “going without food or [not] paying other bills”. The researchers were clear, however, that this was not a new problem, caused by MUP; rather it is an “extension of existing coping mechanisms”. It is also clear that the answer to this problem is not cheaper alcohol; it’s better support for people with alcohol problems.
That’s one reason Alcohol Change UK has been working since 2019 to better understand the relationship between heavy alcohol use and undereating; and it’s why we’ll be publishing our Feeding Recovery Handbook in March 2025 – jointly with Barod and the Nelson Trust – on how to support people with alcohol issues to eat more and better food.
One important feature of the Welsh MUP legislation is that it includes a “sunset provision”, meaning that, if it is not renewed before March 2026, it will disappear from the statute book. The overall conclusion of evaluation is that MUP has been a positive development in Wales, and that it should stay in place, alongside bolstering the support for low-income alcohol-dependent drinkers. It’s also worth noting the risk the evaluators have identified that, if MUP is allowed to lapse in Wales, the Wales Act 2017 – which specifically made “the sale and supply of alcohol” a matter for Westminster – means it would likely be impossible to reinstate it without the permission of the UK Government. In that respect, the loss of MUP in Wales could be seen as a rolling back of devolution.
Another question that will need to be addressed before March 2026 is whether 50p is still the right level for MUP in Wales. Our own research, and that of the evaluators, highlights that the effectiveness of the 50p MUP has been eroded over time by inflation, meaning that to have the same effect in 2025, MUP would need to be closer to 65p – mirroring peers in the Scottish Parliament who voted to increase their MUP to 65p in 2024. Inflation generally only goes in one direction, and without uprating from 50p at some point, MUP in Wales will inevitably decline in impact and eventually become meaningless.
There is a question here too for policymakers in England. With MUP in place in Wales and Scotland, and on the cards in Northern Ireland, we must ask why England has not yet embraced this simple alcohol harm reduction measure, now that it was been well tested and proven to work in much of the rest of the United Kingdom.
