Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent steps he has taken to reduce the consumption of alcohol.

We have set out the Government’s approach to reducing alcohol- related harm in the Government’s Alcohol Strategy.

Over 30 producers have committed to the Public Health Responsibility Deal Pledge to remove one billion units of alcohol from the United Kingdom market (around 2%) by the end of 2015. The second interim monitoring report on delivery of this pledge was published on 19 December and found that between 2011 and 2013, the number of units of alcohol in the market has reduced by 1.9 billion. Of this it is estimated that 1.3 billion is due to reductions in the alcohol by volume (ABV) of alcohol products, 0.3bn more than the target 1 billion reduction by the end of 2015. The report has been attached.