Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to his Department's First Interim Report on the Responsibility Deal on Alcohol, published in April 2014, what evidence his Department holds that the reduction in alcohol sales of 253 million units is as a result of industry action.

Identifying a change in alcohol by volume (ABV) was the methodology agreed by the Responsibility Deal Monitoring Group as the best way to measure progress towards delivery of the Responsibility Deal pledge, made by alcohol producers and retailers, to remove 1 billion units of alcohol from the market by the end of 2015 principally through improving consumer choice of lower alcohol products.

The first interim monitoring report of progress, considered the extent to which the number of units of alcohol sold in the United Kingdom changed between 2011 and 2012 (a reduction of 1.3 billion units) and the portion of that change that can be attributed to changes in the average alcoholic strength of products (a reduction of 253 million units). When shifts between different categories of drink are controlled for, the average ABV decreased by 0.04 percentage points from 7.26% in 2011 to 7.22% in 2012. This generated the reduction of 253 million units of alcohol.

This takes into account a downward pressure from an overall reduction in the volume of product sold, a slight upward pressure from a shift in market share towards higher strength products (wine and spirits) and a downward pressure from an overall reduction in the strength of drinks within product categories.

The first interim monitoring report has been placed in the Library.