Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the Institute of Economic Affairs' report <i>Alcohol and the public purse: Do drinkers pay their way? </i>and the Institute of Alcohol Studies' response to this report.

We estimate the total cost of alcohol to society to be approximately £21 billion a year, including alcohol-related crime and health harms and the cost to the economy of lost productivity. The IEA report takes a very narrow view of the cost of alcohol harms, basing this only on the actual costs to government set against the revenue it receives in taxation. This fails to take account the wider costs to society, including the cost of treating alcohol abuse and supporting the victims of alcohol-related violent crime.