Limiting the pub

Scarcely a week goes by without the present government announcing a policy to antagonise yet another group in society. They have now put forward a set of proposals to improve road safety that include the reduction of the drink-driving limit from 35 μg to 22 μg, the equivalent of 80 mg to 50 mg in “old money”. This had originally been proposed by the Blair government elected in 1997, but for whatever reason was never proceeded with.

The reason put forward for this is obviously to improve safety. And, as Christopher Snowdon writes, we have an example from a neighbouring jurisdiction of exactly what difference it is likely to make.

Fortunately, this is a question that can be answered with empirical evidence. In 2014, Scotland lowered the limit to 50mg of alcohol. What happened next has been evaluated in three peer-reviewed studies, one written by public health academics and two written by economists. They all found that lowering the limit had no impact on the number of road accidents, casualties or fatalities in Scotland. The most rigorous of these studies, published in the Journal of Health Economics, concluded that the lower limit “had no effect on road traffic accidents, even in circumstances that are more likely to be associated with greater alcohol consumption (such as weekends, multiple vehicle crashes, urban areas, and local authorities with a large concentration of premises) or among individuals who may experience heavier drinking (such as young adults and men).”

Whatever the safety implications, such a policy would inevitably have a significant effect on the pub trade. While those who inhabit an urban bubble may be reluctant to acknowledge it, nationwide there are a very large number of pubs to which a majority of customers travel by car. There will be several thousand where that accounts for over 90% of their trade.

Every week, hundreds of thousands of people drive to pubs and consume alcohol within the legal limit. Yes. a few customers do break the law, as people still will with a lower limit. But, given the severe potential consequences, the vast majority of drivers abide by it, and indeed generally leave a wide margin below it. So, with a lower limit, the overwhelming majority will modify their behaviour, by drinking less or nothing, or simply not visiting at all. Even those who continue to visit may do so less often. So the overall effect on trade will only point in one direction.

Many pub visits, especially to those in out-of-down locations, are combined with another objective, such as a shopping trip, visiting a tourist attraction, attending a sports fixture or seeing a film or play. If people find it convenient to travel by car for these purposes, then it is likely to be the call into the pub that gets the chop.

Urban areas would not be immune either. Within any urban area outside of large town and city centres, the range of pubs that can be conveniently reached by public transport is much less than those that can be accessed by car. People will be making multi-purpose journeys for the same reasons listed above. It is a matter of observable fact that many people visit pubs by car in urban areas.

Outside London, over 70% of workers commute by car. Lowering the limit will also reduce the amount someone can drink in the evening without running the risk of falling foul of the law the following morning, and so may well act as a dampener on drinking “on a school night” even in pubs nobody actually drives to.

Descriptions in the Good Beer Guide often refer piously to pubs being “popular with walkers and cyclists”. But there will be relatively few pubs where that trade is more than the icing on the cake, or extends beyond a few sunny summer weekends. To imagine that walkers and cyclists can sustain rural pubs is wishful thinking. Plus many of those walkers and cyclists will actually have travelled by car to reach rural areas. There is one rural pub listed in the current Guide in a remote location in rural Staffordshire miles away from any public transport. Yet it does not open before 7 pm on any day of the week. Somehow I can’t see it attracting many walkers and cyclists on a rainy Tuesday night in November.

No doubt the same useful idiots who claimed that the smoking ban would leave pubs largely unscathed will say the same about the cutting the drink-drive limit. And they will be equally wrong. But there is a parallel with the smoking ban in that the effect is likely to be insidious and drawn-out rather than immediate.

Both policies acted to accelerate an existing trend. Smoking rates were already in steep decline, and it is noticeable that younger age groups are markedly less willing to drive to pubs and drink within the legal limit than over-50s. This doesn’t mean they find another way of getting there, it means that they just don’t go, and this has been a largely unheralded contributor to the decline of pubs over the past couple of decades,

The situation of every pub will vary depending on its combination of the proportion of car-borne trade and wet sales. Without naming names, there are some pubs that it is very hard to imagine will still be viable after a limit cut. But most will think “well, it’s not good, but it doesn’t put us out of business overnight.” They will try various initiatives such as upping their food offer, putting on special events and appealing more to locals. But, with the overall level of trade being down, inevitably the weaker and less attractive pubs will start going to the wall more quickly than they would have done otherwise. However, it will be a process drawn out over several years rather than happening within a matter of months.

Going into food isn’t going to be a panacea either. There’s plenty of evidence that the pub food market is pretty saturated, so attempts by previously wet-dominated pubs to expand into food may not meet with success. In recent years, several high-profile dining pubs have closed, one of the latest being the prominent Waggon & Horses at Handforth just south of the Stockport boundary, which is reportedly due to close in the coming months. Existing destination dining pubs, while they may be protected to some extent from the impact, may still experience some reduction in trade as people feel less inclined to drive out to them for a meal.

This policy is put forward as a means of improving safety. But the case for that must be made, rather than being accepted as a given. And it is delusional to imagine that it would not have a significant negative effect on the pub trade. Indeed, while it may not be the explicit intention, rather like the smoking ban it is hard to avoid the conclusion that its impact in practice would be much more to undermine pubs than improve health and safety.