ALCOHOL: Cheapest booze goes up 30% in Wales from today, and the deaths it was meant to stop are at a record

The floor price of alcohol in Wales goes up by nearly a third from Thursday, and the strongest cheap drinks on the shelf will feel it most.

From 1 October nothing can be sold for less than 65p a unit, up from the 50p that has applied since March 2020. A three-litre bottle of white cider, around 22 units, cannot now be sold for less than about £14.30. A bottle of wine starts at £5.85, a litre of vodka at £24.38, a four-pack of strong lager at £5.20.

It is not a tax. The extra money stays with the shop and the producer, not the Welsh Government.

“Someone’s parent, partner or child”

Ministers say the change could prevent more than 900 alcohol-related deaths and help nearly 5,000 people cut down on harmful drinking over the next 20 years.

“Every one of the hundreds of lives this change could save is someone’s parent, partner or child,” said Nerys Evans, the deputy minister for public and preventative health. “That’s why this matters.”

The 50p rate, she said, “has been made less effective by inflation”, worth 39p in 2020 money, “so raising it to 65p is not about punishing people who drink responsibly, it’s about closing that gap”.

Andrew Misell of Alcohol Change UK said the new price “will keep big bottles of super-strength cider off the shelves” and make bulk discounts harder, “and all this without pushing up the price of a pint in pubs”.

Deaths at a record while the 50p price was in force

Alcohol-specific deaths in Wales reached a record 562 in 2023, or 17.7 per 100,000 people. That is higher than before minimum pricing came in.

When the rise was put out to consultation last summer, the Welsh Conservatives called the policy a failure, pointing to a 50% rise in alcohol-related deaths between 2019 and 2023, and Darren Millar said it should be scrapped in favour of “the inadequate investment in addiction services”.

The government’s answer is that the pandemic and the cost of living crisis got in the way, and that the policy has still been “broadly positive”.

Skipped meals and a switch to spirits

Five years at 50p cleared the cheap high-strength drinks from the shelves and consumption appears to have fallen. Some dependent drinkers skipped meals or bills to keep drinking, and others switched from cider to spirits.

Iola Ynyr, a writer from Gwynedd who has spoken about her own alcoholism, told the BBC last year that price does not change a dependent drinker. “If someone’s addicted, they’ll find a way to get alcohol. It’s the families who suffer.”

The academics who reviewed the policy wanted it kept, the price raised, and treatment funded properly. The Welsh Government says it spends more than £68m a year on people affected by alcohol and drugs, £41m of it on local services.

Wales now charges the same as Scotland, which went to 65p in 2024. England has no minimum price, so the drive over the bridge for a boot full of cider is the one effect everyone expected and, so far, nobody has found.

Author

Kit Peters

Kit Peters is a journalist and the editor of Swansea Bay News, covering Swansea, Neath Port Talbot and Carmarthenshire since 2020.