Here. Good morning and welcome to the 25th meeting in 2015 of the Finance, Committee of the Scottish Parliament. Please remain everyone present to turn off any mobile phones or relatively neutral devices because the first item of business is a day where to take items 3, phone 4 and 5 in private, are members agreed? Members have indicated their agreement or second item of business to take evidence on the alcohol, licensing Public health and and Colonel Justice Scotland Bill's financial memorandum from Dr Richard Simpson MSP. Dr Simpson is joined today by Andrew Mill of the Non-Government Bill's unit. I would like to welcome our witnesses to the meeting and invite Dr Simpson to make a short opening statement. Thank you, convener. I want to begin by saying that the critical thing about this bill is the fact that it is designed to contribute, alongside the Government's comprehensive strategy on alcohol, a number of measures that will improve Scotland's relationship with alcohol, which, as you know, is worse than the rest of the United Kingdom and needs to continually be addressed. That is why there are 10 measures, separate measures in this bill, because each one on its own is relatively modest, but collectively, hopefully, makes us a contribution towards improving that relationship. The most important thing in terms of this committee and the financial memorandum is the fact that any reduction in consumption will produce savings in the medium and long term. I can just give you one example in relation to the situation in the courts, where the courts, in their evidence to you, have said that there are 105,000 cases that come in front of them with alcohol problems. If we can achieve some reduction in that, then for each summary case that does not come in front of them, there will be a saving of £2,500. Perhaps more importantly, if we can reduce the number that is going to prison, and that is estimated to be about just under half of the 45,000 admissions to prisons every year, the annual savings from one prison place will be £34,000. There are significant savings to be made, and that does not—I have not mentioned the health service, I have not mentioned police time, community safety and all the rest. Those are all major savings. It is interesting that, in all the evidence that is given to you, apart from the NHS, no one has talked about the savings that would occur. They have all talked about the costs. I accept that some of the things that are novel will have a wider range of cost estimates than perhaps you have been faced with in some of your other bills. Nevertheless, that is partly going to be accounted for, I hope, by the fact that we have proposed that there should be pilots in some of the areas, so that we can estimate the cost benefits before the Government proceeds. If I can just do a little bit of history on that, when I was the justice minister, we had already piloted DTTOs, drug treatment and testing orders, which had failed in England in their initial test. We tested them up here, making some alterations, and we made some further alterations before, as justice minister, I authorised the quite expensive funding of rolling out the DTTOs. So, piloting is one method by which we can make a decision, or the Government can make a decision as to whether that should proceed. The other thing that I want to say is that, in the event of a shortfall, for example, in costs to licensing boards, the licensing fees have not been raised since 2007. Even to keep them the same in real terms would be a 23 per cent increase today, because they have not been adjusted since 2007. That is fair enough with the economy being in the situation that it was, but now the economy is expanding again. To increase those fees is something that would be reasonable to consider, and I know that Kenny MacAskill has been publicly suggesting that that should be the case with other measures. The other possible source of funding is the social responsibility levy. That was in the 2010 Alcohol, etc. Scotland Act 2020. It has never been implemented, but, of course, the Government chose entirely appropriately to introduce a public health levy, but it has now dropped that. There is no charge in this particular field. If there is a successful court hearing on minimum-unit pricing, and, as you know, that is going back to the Scottish courts for decision, if that is decided, the off licences will achieve a profit with 50p minimum pricing, according to the Sheffield report, of over £100 million annually additional profit. There is a substantial profit there that could be used, for example, to adjust alcohol prices above the minimum price down, which would, in fact, reduce the effects of minimum-unit pricing quite substantially. There is an opportunity to meet the costs of my bill with the social responsibility levy. That could be introduced because it is on the statute books now. It could well be introduced even if we do not achieve minimum-unit pricing, because it would be a way of pushing the industry to the retailers, particularly to increase prices. Thank you very much for that helpful introduction, Richard. The way the finance committee works, I am sure that many other committees, is that I will touch on some of the subject matters on the financial memorandum, and then the colleagues will no doubt explore in greater depth. Obviously, we are not here to talk about the policy objectives of the bill, but the finances are in particular in relation to the evidence that has been given to us by those who have submitted that evidence. I am going to jump a bit away, but, as you said, it is quite a detailed bill, and there are a lot of sections in it. I am going to focus on some of the areas of the concerns that have been brought to our attention. For example, in the financial memorandum in paragraph 34, which is in terms of the issue of container marking in terms of off-sales, the bill does not prescribe how the scheme should operate. Equipment costs will depend on the type of equipment that it uses and the scale of any scheme, so it is difficult to estimate, and you want to say that it is not being possible to obtain information about the costs from previous or existing container marking schemes. I want to know who you asked about that. We have received two submissions, one from the Association of Convenience Stores Licensed Grocer Federation and the Wine and Spirit Trading Association, which you will undoubtedly have seen, who provide some considerable details. Obviously, they have raised concerns about the overall cost of that, particularly to their members. I think that the first thing to say about the evidence that you have been given is that there is a presumption—there are two fallacies in the presumption. The first is that this is some sort of a permanent situation, and the second thing is that it is going to be extensive. Neither of those is actually correct. It will be up to the police to determine in terms of their information gathering and their intelligence as to which off-licenses they wish to have this focused on and for how long. I do not expect that it would be something that would go on for very long at all. It is in a situation in which, convener, we have a problem that we do not know where proxy purchasing occurs at the moment. It is really very difficult. We also cannot be certain about underage selling, although that has become less of a problem since the testing for that has gone on. If you look at the evidence from Alcohol Watch, for example, in Newcastle, you will see that the scheme has worked very well and it has not been expensive. Indeed, the licences have welcomed it. In one case in Newcastle, the licency who was thought to be the source of both underage and proxy purchasing was discovered by the container marking not-to-be. I would hope that that would be a situation in which the police, in agreement with the licensing board and with their approval—because that is required in the bill—would work with the licences to introduce that. The cost, because it is temporary, would not be as significant as the evidence that you refer to suggested. Did you contact the organisations specifically for information? The Wine and Spirit training association is saying that this is going to cost someone in the region £3.8 million for their members? Yes. Frankly, that is absolute nonsense, because it is assuming that every store in Scotland would have that applied on a permanent basis. That is simply not the case. The costs of doing it in one licence area for a very brief period of time would not be anything like that at all. It would be a very small amount compared to what they are suggesting. If you take £189 for a retailer, that is still doing it for a year. If you say that you are going to do it for—I cannot remember how many licences there are in Scotland, but I think that it is about 1,400 or something licences. The number of licences to which that would apply and the length of time to which it would apply would be very small, so the costs would not be very great. One of the things that you said in your opening statement was that you talked about the long-term benefits, reduced costs to NHS and so on. In section 3 of your bill, and in paragraph 26 of the financial memorandum, you talked about the purpose of section 3, to prevent either the Scottish ministers or the licensing board from imposing any age-related licence conditions on a premises licence. The implication being—this has been picked up by a number of submissions—that would mean that more people are likely to drink who are younger, and therefore there would be higher costs, because more younger people are likely to be able to obtain alcohol and therefore more likely to be involved in the criminal activities and involved in health issues and be hospitalised, et cetera, as a result of the misuse of alcohol as a result. What would you say to that, Richard? First of all, the current law, the 2010 act, prohibits age discrimination, but subsequently to that it was noted that the licence boards could impose the condition, and that was the intention of Parliament in that act, was to not have age discrimination. However, it was noted later that the licensing boards could do that on single licences, because the way that the act was written was that it was to stop an age discrimination being applied across a group of licences. All that bit of the bill does is to say that you cannot do it in individual licences. Having said that, the licencees could still impose a voluntary condition if they wished to do so, but the licensing boards would not be allowed to do so. It is not going to change the situation as Parliament had intended. It is simply clarifying the law on that respect. In terms of teenage binge drinking, in fact, that has been going down, I am glad to say, and the Salsis report has indicated that the drinking among 13 and 15-year-olds has also been going down. The situation is improving as it is, so the trend is actually in the right direction already. This is not seeking to do anything that is going to suddenly open the doors, it is simply going to clarify the law that was there already, so suggesting that this is going to suddenly lead to an explosion of underage drinking is, to say the least, extremely unlikely. No, I do not think that that suggestion has been made, but I think that it is seen as a move in the wrong direction in that regard. Well, as a policy matter, that is something that the committee will want to consider. The Royal College of General Practitioners, in their submission, have obviously raised concerns regarding the notification of offenders' GPs, which is what they have basically said, and I quote, RCGP Scotland believes that the costs and further pressure on current resources cannot be accommodated within GP practices, normal working hours, which is what you are suggesting in the FM, and they are basically saying that they need significant financial support from the Scottish Government as a result. Yes, it is a very interesting reaction from the general practitioners. Having been a GP myself convener for 30 years, the reason for introducing this clause was because, in 30 years, I had never been informed of any minor offence in the court involving alcohol, and, as you saw from my introduction, that is 105,000 cases every year. At the moment, GPs are required under quaff to undertake brief interventions. A highly evidenced measure, which has been very successful in Scotland, has been the first country to introduce this, and that is extremely welcome. The GPs have not issued any protest about the fact that, for each full-time general practitioner, they currently undertake 400 brief interventions a year. All that this measure does is try to focus those 400 brief interventions more on to those who are getting into difficulty, and it is demonstrated in the courts that they do. At the moment, the GP may be aware of somebody having a drink problem. They may spot something in their blood tests, for example, that indicate that they might have a problem. They may hear from a family member that they are having a problem, but, at the moment, the one area that they do not get information from is in the minor offences in courts. That is what the measure is designed to do. It will not add to the workload, but it will focus the workload. The only area in which the GP evidence of some merit is in the fact that it suggests that it will have to be recorded in the notes. Hopefully, we are moving to a situation of electronic transfer. We certainly are in the health service, and I see no reason why that could not be introduced at a point where electronic transfer becomes possible. That will make it very easy, and it will get transferred straight into the GP record, so that it will not become a matter of recording. Let us touch on another couple of points before we open up to the rest of the committee. Submission of NHS Grit and Glasgow and Clyde says—I will give you some quotes here—that there is very little detail and financial impact on the NHS. The removal of age discrimination for off-sales could potentially result in the cost of the NHS if it resulted in more teenagers requiring medical treatment, which we have already touched on. There is insufficient information on the alcohol education policy. There is a lack of clarity in the form or delivery of alcohol awareness training. All of the costs would require to be met first before any potential savings could be realised. It should be clear that there is a lack of clarity as far as funding is concerned. The financial impact cannot be properly assessed without further information, and it appears that the costs and timescales on which they would be expected have not been properly thought through. Yes, I think that the comments are quite detailed and in some respects quite harsh. I did say in the introduction that some of the things are quite difficult to cost, and that is why I have recommended piloting in some of the areas. For example, we know that from the Fife alcohol and drug partnership, which already run an education programme, the cost per patient—even including the co-ordination costs—is £35 per patient. If you take out the co-ordination costs, the costs are only £17 per patient. Convener, I have to say to you, as a doctor, if somebody offered me a treatment that was only £17 and had a 34 per cent response rate in the field of addictions, because I was also a consultant psychiatrist in addictions. If someone offered me that, I would bite their hand off for it. I suggest that the costs are not there in terms of the education side, which I think is not valid. It has been costed in there. However, I have suggested that that is in a relatively rural setting in the Kingdom of Fife, and I have suggested that an urban pilot should be undertaken in order to see precisely what Glasgow is calling for, which is a more detailed costing before this is spread out across the country. I think that that deals with that. As far as the rest is concerned, I hope that we will deal with them in the detailed questioning. However, some of the areas that have been suggested as costing a lot of money are not going to cost nearly as much as is being suggested. There are definitely costs involved, but if you place that against the fact that the Scottish society across the whole area is £4.5 billion, spending some money on that is not an unreasonable thing to do. I understand a lot of what you are saying about the policy. I am certainly very much in favour of what the policy direction is, but we are obviously here to interrogate the financial memorandum, and I think that it is the accuracy of that, which is a matter of concerns that has been raised by those who are giving evidence. Aberdeenshire Council has said that there is not enough detail that has been provided in relation to actual costings. Aberdeenshire Council has said that the costings have not been taken into proper consideration and that the impact cannot be quantified. It imposes further demands on the licensing board through implications of the bill that should be further burdened on the council. When asked what future costs would be, it says that it is not possible to quantify these at present. Any financial impact is dependent upon volumes of cases arriving which cannot be accurately predicted. The issue there is not what you are trying to achieve with the bill in terms of policy. It is obviously the financial implications here and now. We are talking about relatively small costs. If you take a 23 per cent increase in the licensing fee, for example, which would be, as I indicated in my introduction, the increase just to bring it back to the real-terms level of fees, there is not a 23 per cent increase in the cost to the licensing boards within the bill, even if it is higher at the end of the range of the costings that we have provided that would not be the case. We have made a very serious attempt in our methodology of providing as much costing as we have been able to do, but because some of those things are innovative, it is inevitable that we cannot give a full costing on it. However, we are not talking about millions and millions of pounds here. We are talking about a fraction of the additional profits that the off licences are going to get from minimum unit pricing. We are talking about a minimal cost, and even without the social responsibility levy, the licensing board increase of 23 per cent to bring it back to real terms would more than pay for everything in this bill. I let my first colleague in on the submission from the Advertising Association. They have obviously talked about the loss of revenue in terms of the £2.73 million spent on alcohol advertising outdoors, which they say could lead to the loss of up to 300 jobs—say, 308 currently working in that sector. What would you say to that? I think that it is very interesting that they have not given any quantifiable amount from the voluntary ban. Members may be aware of the fact that there is currently a voluntary 100-metre ban. It is being broken. Indeed, there has now been a court case in Wales because that has been broken. It is being broken at the moment. It is not being properly enforced because it is obviously a voluntary ban. What can you do about it? If the statutory fines are as I am proposing, you can impose it, but you cannot impose it as a voluntary ban. However, they do not say how many jobs were lost as a result of the imposition of the voluntary ban. The other thing is that the advertising that I am proposing to control is relatively limited because of the powers that we have. If we were imposing the full loire avar, which they did in France, there would be considerable costs temporarily to the industry. However, I have to tell you, convener, that the advertising industry in France is alive and well and does not have any problems, yet they have a complete ban on alcohol advertising, including sports, sponsorship and everything. You cannot advertise alcohol in France at all, yet the advertising industry is actually in good health. Billboard and fixed place advertising within 200 metres only adds 100 metres to the current voluntary ban. Billboard and public advertising are a very small part of the advertising that is going on now. The main thing that I have not been able to tackle, and this Parliament will have to come back to, is social media. That is where the biggest expansion is occurring. If the advertising industry is telling me that they are still totally fixed on fixed place advertising, I would say that that is astonishing, because that is the area that is declining most rapidly in terms of the advertising. You are saying that the 300 jobs that you believe are spurious, because you have also commented that you believe that something else will simply be found to replace the hoardings in terms of products if the alcohol is removed. Is there any evidence for that? Sorry, could you repeat that? Yes. You have suggested that, if alcohol advertising is removed from billboards, it will simply find something else to advertise. Have you any evidence that that is a case? Are you saying that the job losses that may occur, which I have to say in the advertising association, would be spurious? I think that they are largely spurious. The advertising industry, like all industries, goes through its ups and downs depending on the economy. You do not see a lot of empty billboard spaces within 100 metres of schools. You just do not see it, so they fill it with other advertising. That is anecdotal, I take it that you know it. It is anecdotal because this voluntary ban has only been in for a short time, so things have only been removed relatively recently. However, when I look around, with schools in my constituency, there are not hundreds of empty billboard spaces in those areas. Let us open out the session then. The first quality to ask questions will be marked before by Jeane. Thank you. I just wanted to look at the table on page 42 of the financial memorandum, the summary table of costs. I guess it to use the kind of Rumsfeld language. There appear to be known unknowns and unknown unknowns contained within it. One of the things that I found striking is that you have totaled quantified costs only, but within the unquantified costs, a particular one that leaps out is caffeinated alcohol and significant unquantified savings, which would have an impact on some of the other costs that are being associated. Have you been saying significant but unquantified? How do you justify saying significant if you cannot quantify those? The situation is that we do not know from the research that was done in Strathclyde, and that is mainly a Strathclyde problem. What we do not know is the number of cases that led to conviction. For example, there were 144 incidents during the period of the research in which the bottles involved with the particular product, caffeine mixed drinks, were used in assaults. How many of those would not be and how many would be switched to other bottles is uncertain, but there would be some saving in that the number of offences involving that particular product were estimated at 5,000 during the period of the research. If there were 5,000 cases associated with that, it would be reduced. The unquantified bit is that we do not know how much switching there would be to other products. That is a really interesting area, because it is a culture that is confined to the west of Scotland. You do not find that the cases of people being convicted and sent to the young offenders unit having drunk that particular caffeine and alcohol mix. You do not find them coming from the east or from the north. They tend to drink whisky and vodka, and cheap cider are the main drinks that young people use. The levels of violence in those areas in young people associated with alcohol are less, it is less, according to Strathclyde Police. There is something going on with the caffeine-related drinks, which, hopefully, would be less if you did not have caffeine in your drink.  Now, some young people will get aroused and aggressive with alcohol before they become depressed and sedated. However, if you have caffeine as well, that trajectory is continued for much longer, and that is why caffeine is a problem. It produces what is called wired awake drinks, which continue to drink because they think that they are not drunk and that they can become quite aggressive. It is difficult. The costings, which is what we are here to talk about today, we said that they were unquantified because I did not want to say that they would reduce it by 10 per cent or whatever, because I think that that would be unreasonable to do so. We do not know what cultural change they would be if we managed to reduce the amount of caffeine in the drinks. I appreciate that. One of the arguments that has been put is that there would be nothing to prevent, for example, the mixing of high-energy drinks into spirits such as vodka, which would create a similar effect as the one that you have described. On a number of those boxes, you have put unquantified. On others, you have put some but unquantified. Specifically, you have put significant but unquantified. I am just wondering why you have drawn those distinctions rather than simply putting unquantified, because it gives a leading impression of where those things might go. I just wonder why you chose to make those distinctions rather than to simply say that the costs or savings were unquantified across all of the boxes. If we take the restrictions on advertising, for example, there will be some costs associated with policing, but we have no idea how much, because we do not know how much that will be followed. If you take the ban on smoking as an example, the costs on that were difficult to determine at the time, because we did not know how many people would continue to smoke in public places. It has turned out, as many of us expected, that Scots are pretty law-abiding. Therefore, the costs associated with it were very small, but there were some but unquantified at the time. Saying some means yes. There has to be policing of it, but whether there will be additional costs of taking it to court, imposing fixed penalty fines and so on, how much that will be is really quite uncertain. It strikes me that you have used three definitions of unquantified, if you will. You have just unquantified, which does not have any commentary attached, some but unquantified and then significant but unquantified. Where have you put unquantified without either some or significant, we are talking essentially minimal but unquantified in those areas? I expect that, for example, the alcohol education policy statement is obviously going to involve some civil service time once in a Parliament, if it is passed, because it requires the Government to produce a statement for Parliament, it will require ministers to appear in front of a committee or in the Parliament to explain their policy and be questioned on it. There is some time involved in that, but it is really part of the general process of this Parliament's scrutiny of education policy. It is merely saying what probably should be going on anyway, and the costs involved are not significant at all. However, we put some in where we realised that there would definitely be some costs involved. Obviously, the convener has touched on a number of the submissions and I will touch on a couple of them as well, where there has been some suggestion that the financial implications or where it says minimal or otherwise perhaps they do not see that as being the case. Aberdeenshire Council suggests that the impact of informing and updating all licence holders would be unfair to suggest that as a minor administration cost, because each local authority will have differing numbers of licence holders creating differential impact on budgets in different areas. Is it fair enough to make that broad brush assessment? Presumably, it will cost less in Clackmannanshire than it will in Glasgow, for example. Do you feel that that is a fair assessment to have made? Of course, it will have different levels of income as well, because it has a different number of licences. However, West Lothian has made the same point that all licences would require to be updated with changes. I have to say to you that the Government has changed the mandatory conditions on a number of occasions, and there has been no publicity, there has been no comment by the licensing boards that have said that this is a major problem. I think that the fact that they are putting this in as evidence on a private member's bill is really interesting. They did not do that. They did not protest when the regulations were changed to the Government. There was no protest to the relevant subordinate legislation committee. I checked that out because I was concerned genuinely that they would have to reissue all the licences with the changes that I proposed. I have a comment that I have been permitted to quote from the chairman of the largest licensing board in Scotland, which says as follows. I do not believe that providing all licences and holders with a copy of any amended or updated mandatory licence condition is an unduly honourous task, as it is in effect a mail shot. I do not think that it is necessary for the entire licence to be reprinted. In my view, an addendum with new or amended conditions would be sufficient. There are already other requirements within the act to carry out mail shots to all licences holders. For example, the annual fee reminder letters in relation to any general extension of licences that I was granted for events of national significance. In my view, West Lothian's argument, if it were to succeed, licencing law would become entirely static and there would never be any changes to the mandatory conditions. As the 2005 act removed the requirement for licences to be renewed, I think that it is always intended that the mandatory condition set out in legislation would continue to be reviewed and updated to deal with emerging licencing issues and concerns. If the biggest licensing authority is saying that, I think that Aberdeen and West Lothian, perhaps, are protesting overly in terms of the requirements that would be placed on them, they are not as onerous as is being suggested and the evidence has been given to you. I know also in the West Lothian submission that you have alluded to, you have spoken about the container marking scheme and you are feeling that there would be minimal cost to that. You have highlighted the potential that, for example, if it were to involve major supermarket chains, that would obviously have a differential cost compared to the corner shop, given the number of products that would be being stocked within store. The council does not recognise that such costs are likely to be minimal or accommodated with an existing licence fees. Do you recognise that concern? I think that the majority of the costs will fall on the licencing board. The licencing board is merely giving permission for the scheme to be implemented on the requests of the police. The costs of the licencing board of agreeing to that is not really highly significant. They are not going to go in and mark every bottle in the supermarket. That will be a matter for the licencee to do it. In terms of the supermarkets, they are actually pretty good about making sure that there is not underage selling. In respect of the underage selling element, they are unlikely to be ones that are being asked to do this. In terms of the proxy selling, I think that that is a different matter. There could be some costs to the supermarkets of this, but remember that it is temporary. Again, the evidence that has been given to you makes the assumption that this is some sort of long-term permanent situation. To mark it for a week or two weeks is not going to be very significant. Can I just say one more thing before you come back in? That is unlike the small stores where they maybe have to do it with a specific marker pin. It would be possible for the supermarkets, who already know exactly what you purchase as an individual, and they know that it is their store. It would be possible for them to amend their barcoding system to do this. I do not think that it would be that difficult to know that these things come from the store. I suspect that they already do so, but I have not had a response from them on that basis. Presumably, though, if it is made a temporary condition of licence for there to be container marking, there is also an inspection element to that that could arise where, if a complaint were raised that a store that had had container marking placed on it as a condition was not following through on that, that would need to be checked, presumably, by trading standards? Yes, if there was a complaint. I am hoping that the police would be discussing with the licensees and the way that alcohol watch does in Newcastle, having a general agreement to that, and that would make it relatively simple and straightforward. I do not think that it would be a major problem. The Police Scotland submission goes into some depth around the fixed penalty offences and the potential for changes to existing systems to be made because of the need to communicate those with local authorities. When it comes to the estimated costs and savings, as detailed above, there may be significant additional costs not incorporated in the financial memorandum, and it cannot be gauged at this stage what the financial implications will be for Police Scotland or how those costs should be met. Obviously, you will contend that those costs will be minimal. However, if it were to transpire that there were to be substantial costs, that would obviously need to be funding found from somewhere to pay for that, wouldn't there? There would indeed, but the fixed penalties do change. The paperwork associated with all fixed penalties has to be upgraded from time to time. I would expect the Government to do that and consultation with the Scottish Police Chief to determine at what point that would be the most appropriate point to do it, and that would be when other changes are being made to the fixed penalties. I think that the timing of that would ameliorate any costs that would be involved. Obviously, there are a number of fixed penalty requirements that existed for police in some parts of Scotland, but they have been taken into local authorities across Scotland in a number of areas. Is there a concern that having the police administering it in all areas might create additional burdens for the police? I do not think so, because they are already issuing fixed penalty notices involving alcohol. They are already doing that. The change that we are proposing is to allow for that to be not paid if you go into an alcohol awareness training. They are already doing it in Fife, and Fife police have not made any comment on the problems that they were faced with. I do not think that that is a major issue. The final question is on the Fife pilot. I note the evidence from the Angus alcohol and drugs partnership. It has highlighted the evidence in the financial memorandum paragraph 103, where it talks about the 34 per cent cost completions, and it asks whether that is reasonable in relation to an investment of around £39,000, but also how that compares to other court disposals. Do you have any evidence in relation to that that would suggest that that is the most appropriate mechanism compared to other court disposals? As I have indicated to you already, the cost per individual is either £35 or £17 each. That is a very, very cheap programme. I will just give you the figures. There were 2,947 referrals with 1,004 people attending. That is in a period from April 2012 to June 2014 in Fife. 2,947 referrals, 1,004 attending, so that is a 34 per cent attendance rate, which is quite a significant number of 1,004. If some of those then cease drinking and the indications are that it was successful in reducing the re-offending rate for that group, then, in fact, the savings to that alcohol and drug partnership are significant. Otherwise, if they go on re-offending, they then progress. The whole thing is about tackling a lot of the less significant group before they get into the point of being alcohol dependent, where they require full addiction management of the sort that I was undertaking as a doctor. It is actually tacking people at an early stage and saying, look, you may have an alcohol problem. Do you really understand what alcohol can do? That is a substance that you must take seriously. We will offer you the opportunity instead of paying a fine to go and have an alcohol awareness, because we know that, for some people, that actually will change their attitude to alcohol, and that is what we are trying to achieve. The costs involved are actually very small. Within an ADP budget, it really is very small. We are talking about, again, a £40 million budget in alcohol, a really very substantial amount of money being spent on that area. Big sums in terms of expenditure are £39,000 for Fife, and that is the maximum cost. Of that, £20,000 was for the co-ordinators, so if you remove the co-ordinators, which are probably not needed in every case, then you are talking about a cost of £19,000 for Fife. The total cost across Scotland within an ADP budget is really very small. Anything that makes the system more effective is what I am really about in trying to achieve. A couple of questions. Following on from that last statement, there are already a number of other programmes. It is not only the five pilot that is about rehabilitation and warning people at programmes to try and reduce alcohol intake or stop it altogether. That is not a new thing. There are a lot of programmes. One that I introduced in West Lothian when I was the lead consultant there was a rest referral, which is a very important measure. Actually, we only have that in five of the sheriffdoms. It was originally going to be in my bill. I withdrew it because the Government undertook to ensure that that was spread to the other sheriffdoms. We are fantastic in Scotland about initiatives. We are really good about developing new things, but we do not always ensure that every area is undertaking them. What I am trying to do here is use a scheme that is a small pilot in one area that suggests that we have another pilot in an urban area in order to determine the cost benefits. If the cost benefits match what has occurred in Fife—I cannot say that I am entirely confident, but I am reasonably confident that, if it was piloted in Dundee, Aberdeen or Glasgow, that the savings would be even greater, because the problems are even greater. It is about spreading out those schemes. This is one particular scheme that I accept. It is just one scheme out of many, but all schemes that work should be spread out in my view. I agree with that. I suppose that, in terms of your bill, we are being quite specific about that, but some of those costs, as it were, are already there and there may be more successful programmes. I am just not quite sure of its relevance in a sense, but it is not relevant—of course, they are. Many of them are very good, but I am using them in particular in the financial memorandum. The thing is that we have an enormous number of different routes into treatment from the High Court right through to the police making a suggestion that the person that they had picked up at night should have taken home or put into a taxi scheme or sent to the street pastors that they will all make the suggestions that they should go into treatment. They will all signpost. That is simply another signposting. We need to have as many effective services as we have. That is an effective service that, in my view, needs to be rolled out. My question was—you mentioned earlier on in evidence that licensees fees could be increased by 23 per cent. You were quite specific about that. If that is inflation— £1 in 2007 is worth £1. The real terms is £1.23 today. You just need to go to an inflation indicator. We got that information from an online inflation calculator. I am right in saying that the last change in licensees and issuing licensees came with obligations on all the licensees to introduce training programmes for staff and a lot of other costs. Do you consider that in terms of looking at the real cost of getting a license for any business? It is not only the cost of paying for a licence. I do not think that there is anything in my bill that is going to change that from the licensees point of view. For example, if you take volume discounting. Dr Simpson, it is no longer—there was a day when you applied for a licence and were proved to be of good character and you got a licence to sell alcohol. That is no longer the case. We do not do that anymore. There is a licence issued. The introduction of a training programme and evidence that you can hold a licence are not without cost. In fact, they are much more costly on an annual basis to businesses. I wonder if you have taken that into consideration when you apply inflation. Oh, I see. I wonder when you apply inflation. However, the actual licence fees came in. The new licence fees came in in 2007 with the new bill and new obligations in 2007. You would also have to increase the cost of the business. At that time— No, no. If you are going to increase the cost of inflation— Oh, you have lost me completely, my circuit. If the licensing bill—I have to say that I was originally responsible for setting up the commission that led to it—we knew that it was going to involve considerable costs. However, the licensing bill was in 2005. The new licensing fees came in in 2007. They have not altered since 2007. Although there have been some additional mandatory conditions, they have not significantly altered the original licensing act. Therefore, the conditions that you refer to about training, etc. have not changed since 2005 or since 2007. There have been no additional costs since 2007. Indeed, because the requirement to renew licences was dropped, that was a considerable offsetting. If you have to apply for a renewal of licences every so often, as they do in many countries, you have to apply for a renewal every three years, that would really be a significant cost. However, there have been no additional significant costs since 2007. The 23 per cent increase is merely a reflection of the fact that the industry has made some savings in this particular case. We are talking about £189 to £900 per licence, by the way. Again, we are not talking about thousands of pounds here. We are talking about relatively small costs, but the overall increase in the total licence fee would be 23 per cent. I will repeat my point finally. The fact that the cost of the licence and not applying for it was indeed a saving. You are absolutely right, but the additional burden in order to hold that licence is becoming increasingly expensive in terms of training and so on that businesses are obliged to do in order to have a licence. You have to keep that up. You cannot stop training staff. That is not a one-off cost. It is a continual cost to any licence holder. I cannot give you the cost of training in terms of the licence fee application. It might be a bit simplistic to say that only applying inflation is the only cost that is going to be applicable. It will not be. I understand now the point that you are trying to make. I agree that, of course, the training costs will have risen, but the cost of the licence is not actually risen. Therefore, for a new licence, you are getting it at the same price as 2007. The cost of training may have gone up slightly, but I suspect that that is something that should have been done by licences anyway. I refer you to the last page of the financial memorandum, which is also described as the summary table of costs. Mr Macdonald asked a few questions on the table already, but I want to ask a few more. I am trying to work out roughly what you think the cost will be in local authorities. When you get to the bottom of that table, you have £87,000 start-up costs up to £810,000 per annum, but that appears to spread across local authorities and what is described as costs on others. That reflects the fact that there are a couple of other points on the table that you have given a cost across the two, as opposed to individually. Is there any way of working out what the costs are on local authorities separately from what the costs are on others, or can you only do it by mixing the two together? If you take the alcohol awareness training, which is the big cost, that is £570,000, and that involves health boards at local authorities and police. It is the alcohol drug partnerships that would be in charge of dealing with that. Of course, those things are now local authority-based, but they are more of a line in the health board expenditure, although it is devolved from the centre under the health budget. If you take the £570,000 out, then you are left with roughly £300,000 total cost to the local authorities in a budget of £12 billion. I was not complaining about the cost, but I was just trying to get it for the sake of accuracy. Your view is that, in terms of the financial memo, the cost to local authorities would be about £300,000. That is an absolute maxim, because saving some of those under the drink banning orders would be the police that would have a cost on that, and their share of that would be a bit there as well. On the community involvement side, that is the main one that would cost. I think that there have been some concerns expressed about that, involving the communities who do not have a community council, which I am keen on, because they are mostly in the deprived areas that do not have it. That is the areas of greatest density of pubs, particularly those of off licences. It is an area that I am keen on. However, that £180,000 is of some significance. Again, if you focus on that £180,000, is that a cost on local authorities, or is that a cost on local authorities and others? The way that is set out on the table seems to cover both columns. I am trying to get clarity on how much of that is local authorities. One of the licences is obviously involved as well. That is about informing the community. At the moment, they inform the community councils and they are required to inform people within four metres of the proposed licence. It seems to me that, where there is no community council, four metres is inadequate. What I am proposing is 50 metres. Now, having seen the evidence come in, the finance committee might wish to look at that closely. It might propose a slightly reduced area, and I would not object to that happening. I think that maybe 50 metres, if you take it as I remember, my mass is 2 pi r for the square metres. It becomes a pretty significant area for 50 metres, so it may be that it should be 40 or 30. However, the principle of the proposal is that community councils should be consulted properly, and local authorities have a duty to do that. It would be less than £180,000 if it is a reduced area, but I think that there are some costs that I admit in that area, which I think are worthwhile. However, with the current situation with local authorities, it may be that that area should be curtailed and that it should be reduced slightly. Last question. Just for the sake of clarity, there are probably eight or nine boxes in that table where you use the word minimal. Have you used any specific definition that is under 1,000, is under 10,000, or is it impossible to say? I think that the thing to emphasise in relation to this table is that it is a summary of the information that was set out in all the earlier paragraphs of the memorandum. When we were preparing the table, it was done at the end of the process, and it was meant to capture in at a glance form the information that was already set out earlier. You really need to refer back to the individual descriptions to see what is behind what is in the boxes. Obviously, in order to produce a table that was going to fit on one page, we had to use pretty concise terms. For example, where you were asking earlier about boxes that spread across more than one column, that is simply where in the text you will see that there is some expressed uncertainty about exactly where costs would fall depending on how what arrangements are arrived at in practice. It reflects the text. The same is true in relation to the use of terms such as minimal or unquantified. It simply reflects what is in the text, where we have tried to indicate a recognition that there will be some cost, but we expect it to be small, for example. Different forms of words are used in the different paragraphs. We have tried to use more consistent terminology in the table just for the sake of brevity. Okay, that is helpful. Thank you. Thank you very much, convener. I recognise and very much welcome section 2 of the bill that deals with caffeinated alcohol. You have gone for the proportionate approach of varying the amount rather than an outright ban, which is easily achieved. I wonder whether you could talk us through some more of the costings, because, whilst I recognise that there will be savings in terms of the prison service and police, I recollect a survey suggesting that more than half of the broken glass in Strath Clyde was as a result of one particular brand of caffeinated alcohol. There would be additional savings to local authorities there as well. One would have thought. There are indeed. As the member will know, we did endeavour to persuade the producer to move to plastic bottles, which would not only reduce the waste somewhat, but it would also more importantly reduce the number of occasions on which those particular bottles are used as a weapon successfully. They could use a plastic bottle, but it would be a good deal less damaging. Yes, there are additional savings to be made. I suspect from doing this. It is a real problem that this is a cultural issue. To try and legislate for what is a cultural issue is very difficult. The reason why I chose, for example, to make it a not an outright ban or a specific limitation, as they have done in Denmark, is that there is not an outright ban in America. I have been attacked for suggesting that. I have never suggested that there is an outright ban. What happened in America was that the Food and Drug Administration said to the producers that they would have to prove that their product is safe. The producers took one look at that and said that they really could not do that, and they stopped producing it. That is a really interesting way of moving. It may be that the food standard in Scotland will be the route that might, if that does not pass, that might be the route to achieve it. Obviously, there are costs to the producer, but we know for example that they produce a different level of caffeine in Ireland to Scotland. Again, it is perfectly possible for the producer of this particular product to vary the quantity of caffeine in their drug as well. Because the evidence in Scotland is not as clear as it is in America, and the American evidence is related more to college students than it is to those in the west of Scotland who indulge in violent drunken behaviour, the evidence here is slightly different. It is related to the criminality. We do not have as much evidence about the direct effects on the brain, for example, of the caffeine alcohol mix in a Scottish context. That is why I have changed the proposal from one of a specific man at 150, which is the Danish level, to saying that the minister will be able to introduce it at the level that they want. That makes the costs a little less easy to quantify. You rightly made the point in earlier discussion on the financial memorandum that there are potentially savings to be generated, not just in this area, but across the board as a cumulative effect of the bill. I am curious to know when they would start, because cultural change perhaps takes a generation. Are we looking at 10 years, 20 years, when do you think we will start to see savings, and at what kind of level? I think that Miesas, which is the monitoring body, which I know the Government in answer to a question that I have tabled recently, has said that they are looking at whether they are going to continue that monitoring and how. One of their difficulties is to determine what is the cause and effect of different measures. What the bill is designed to do is to support the Government's measures in moving forward on a whole range of issues in a salami cuts tactic that will continue the process that began with the licensing act in 2005. Colleagues will remember that, up until 2005, the consumption of alcohol in Scotland was rising. From 2005 on, even the licensing act, before it was fully implemented, began to be associated, if not the cause, of a reduction in the consumption of Scotland. Consumption has gone on reducing until this last 18 months, which means that there has been a change. The levels of hazardous drinking have come down by 6 per cent, from just under 30 per cent to just over 20 per cent. There is a change occurring. My bill, with its relatively modest costs, will in fact continue the process of making the cultural shift that we are seeing already. We need to keep that impetus up. I have to say regrettably that the Alistair Darling escalator on duty was abandoned by the coalition Government and the current Government, and that that has seen already a reversal in the consumption of alcohol in Scotland, which I regard as highly dangerous. Price is obviously a very important factor. We have difficulty in associating cause and effect, but all those measures will contribute, and that particular one of caffeine that you are talking about will undoubtedly contribute to a shift in culture. Where that culture will shift to is a matter of speculation. Thank you, convener. Probably just to follow up on one or two points that have already been made. On the alcoholic drinks containing caffeine section 2 and page 25 of the financial memorandum, I just wondered if you could clarify a little bit, because at one point it says in paragraph 21 sales of this type of drink account for a very small percentage of all alcohol sales, and yet in the following paragraph 22 it says that 43.4 per cent of those questioned in prison who had admitted drinking had been drinking that particular type, which sounds quite a lot to me. Can you just clarify around that? We should remember the numbers going to the young offenders prison, and this is the most of it, has actually quite low, and it has also gone down. We are talking about a relatively small number of which 43 per cent is the percentage. The total alcohol consumption in Scotland, the amount that the premixed caffeine alcohol drinks account for is really quite small, so as a total it is not great. That is why I do not know if you have read any of the other evidence, but the SHAP, which is the organisation on alcohol problems, is represented by Dr Peter Rice, who is one of our foremost addiction specialists, a colleague of mine. I said that this was not a priority for them, this area. With due respect to Dr Rice, he comes from the Dundee area, and if I was in the Dundee area it would not just not be a priority for me, it would not be of any interest to me. This is a west of Scotland problem, so when you focus it down into the west of Scotland, and you talk about 43 per cent of our young offenders having consumed this drink, it becomes very much a minority pursuit, but a very significant one for the communities in the west of Scotland, whose safety needs to be protected from that particular problem. On that, in paragraph 18 of the FM, it says that it might therefore be anticipated that financial savings to the police, just as prisons and health budgets, will be realised as a result of moving such drinks from sale. Are you arguing that although a relatively small percentage of alcohol sold has the caffeine in it, potentially it is causing quite a lot of disruption and a lot of work for the police, just as prisons and so on, and therefore that is where the savings would come in? I could not have put it better myself. Okay, that is great. With something like the police, if they had a little bit less of that problem to deal with, they would just deal with something else, wouldn't they? You would not actually make police officers redundant or anything, would you? Well, Mr Mason, I am sure that this committee does not have the time to go into a debate about a 40 per cent reduction in crime and the highest number of police that we have ever had, but it is an interesting debate to be had. I think that you are absolutely right that the use of police time would become more efficient. It would not actually change the police, so I entirely concur with you on that. If I could also follow up the convener who asked you about this whole thing about the 18 no discrimination on age for adults between 18 and 21 and so on, I think that he made the point that it did seem to be going in slightly a different direction, because I have to say that I am very sympathetic on the whole to where all this is going. If it did go in the other direction, it made it a bit easier for 18, 19 and 20-year-olds to get alcohol or even people who are younger, that would add on some of those costs to the police and the health and everything else that you are trying to save elsewhere, would it not? It would, if it were to occur. It was really very interesting that the evidence given by Tim Ross from South Ayrshire or East Ayrshire ADP the other day, who was himself a police. He said that he did not think that that would occur at all. He thought that the fact that there would continue to be voluntary licences who would want to restrict it on occasion was fine, but to say that some 18, 19 and 20-year-olds are caused drink problems, ones of 21, 22, 23 and 24 also cause those problems. Having an age discrimination when alcohol is a legal drink at 18 is not appropriate. That is a principle element within the bill, and you are quite right. It is totally different to the other sectors. It does stand out as being quite different. If I had any evidence that 18 to 21-year-olds were largely responsible for the mayhem in some of our city centres, I would agree with you, but, with the levels of youth unemployment and the reduced wages that they receive as apprentices and reduced minimum wage for this group, that is not the group. It is the 21 to 25-year-olds who are in employment, who have high levels of employment, who tend to be causing drunken mayhem in the centre of our cities. You mentioned your answers, and it is also in one of the responses from Aberdeenshire Council on whether a community council is active or not. I have to say that I was puzzled by Aberdeenshire Council's comment, because, as I understand it in Glasgow, it has a clear list of which community councils are active and which are inactive, so there is really not any work there and there is not any cost for the council. The council could tell us that this afternoon if we asked them. Are you aware of a problem around this, or what does Aberdeenshire mean? I was not quite surprised by that evidence, and I would have thought that it would be a duty on a council to know which community councils were active and which were inactive, because, in the areas that are inactive, they would need to carry out consultation, for example, on health and social care integration, where they are presumably talking to their community councils as part of the consultation process. Any major change by the NHS requires to be consulted, so they need to consult their communities and they need to have a different mechanism for that. They should know which are the 15 per cent of community councils that are inactive in their area. Approximately 225 across Scotland are inactive, so it is not an insignificant number, but because they are in deprived areas, I think that— I suggest a number of them around my constituency, not all of them, but quite a few. I think that there is a question between what is technically an active community council, which may be pretty sleepy and not do a lot, and one that is highly active, both of which I see, but I do not think that that is the distinction that we are trying to draw here. No, it is not. I did look at that and say that they respond to new licence applications by even one line. I thought of looking at that, but it was too complicated. There are, I think, about 1,300, 1,400 community councils, and to start doing that was really a mammoth task. If the community council chooses to be inactive, hopefully their members will be replaced in due course by more active members, but that is a matter for that community. At least there is a community council. Right, thank you. My final point, and maybe I did not quite understand this properly, because Mr MacDonald already did a question about some of the police comments, but one of the points that the police seemed to make was that if payments were going to be made to the local authority, that was different from the current ASB tickets that would be paid to the Scottish Court and Tribunal service. Could you just clarify it for me if you think that there is a problem in there? I am not sure of that. That is under the penalty notices, under the… Yes, it was in our briefing. I have not quite got the Police Scotland paper. I also note that Bill makes reference in paragraphs 2C and 3 of the schedule that payments are made to the local authority. Then it says that this is a departure from the current ASB tickets. Sorry, this is caused confusion. It is an alphabetical order, but it still causes confusion. Oh, yes, you are well. I mean, at the moment that our fixed penalty notice is issued, the alcohol awareness training is merely a diversion of that, so I am not quite sure. Yes, it was in the first page of the Police Scotland, which is page 24 of the committee briefings. I do not know if you have got that. But their problem is who you are paying, who is actually being paid, is that kind of technical side of it? There is quite a complicated system in penalties, which I have to say that I am not fully up on. I will need to take it away, I think, and respond to you in writing on that, Mr Mason, if that is okay, convener. I mean, the situation is, at the moment, court penalties are interesting, because court penalties, some money is retained by the courts, but some go back to the UK Treasury. If it is a local authority fee, of course, the penalty, then the local authority keeps that money. So there are differences there, which our colleagues on the Scotland bill might want to look at, because retaining that money, if we find our people in Scotland retaining it here, to a greater extent, might be something that is worth pursuing. I will look at the official record and detail of your question and get back to you as soon as possible on that. That's great. Thanks so much. Cheers. Thank you very much. That appears to have concluded questions from committee members, but I still have one or two points that I want to raise with you, Richard. Every week, we get Government bills and the financial memoranda. One of the things that has been drawn to our attention is the issue of best estimates. As you know, the financial memoranda, when it says, right at the start of your own FM, has to satisfy rule 9.3.2 of the Parliament's standing orders. In your own financial memorandum, you have said things like, in terms of estimating financial impacts, no text has been made to investigate the methodologies or data used in the studies referred to, where conclusions reached attempt to place a figure on savings might be achieved, they should none the less be regarded as speculative. You use phrases like working assumption, the issue of degree of accuracy has been raised, witnesses have talked to it in not enough detail in actual costings, understated, not properly thought through, unquantifiable. The police, which was just referred to there, said that there might be significant additional costs, not incorporating a financial memorandum. 9.3.2 requires a financial memorandum to distinguish between the costs of local authorities as opposed to others, and yet you've lumped them in in terms of this table, which the two other members were in touch with. Are you suggesting that the standing order 9.3.2 has actually been met? I don't really believe that we have best estimates here in terms of this table. We've got an estimate that's few, and we've got assertions that there's going to be significant savings. I think that a lot of us are sympathetic to the overall policy objective and that that might be achieved, but all the evidence that we are receiving seems to suggest that there are no best estimates that have been provided. I hope that I've been able to answer some of the specific evidence that you've received, which I believe to be fallacious. I believe that they've been overestimated. For example, the advertising industry clearly has a vested interest in not reducing their advertising, and their costings, frankly, were wildly inaccurate. There have been others that have been considerably excessive. I don't want to go over them all again, but the thing about reissuing the licences, for example, which would be a significant cost instead of sending out a one-page amendment as part of a general mail shot, is that the cost involved in that is a single sheet of paper with the additional amount that suggests that there are high costs in that. There are quite a lot of things in there. There's stuff on the GP notification, for example, where the two vested interests—the court and the GPs—have both suggested high levels of costs, which I simply don't accept. However, what I do accept, and I think that the committee's questioning has correctly drawn out, is that some of the stuff is really quite innovative. It is quite innovative. When something is innovative, it is actually difficult to make a proper quantification. We have done our level best within the available methodologies to provide those costs. I think that one other point that I would make, convener, is that we have certainly not divided it into, for example, local authority, NHS, police, etc. One of the problems is that we are trying to address that on the basis of breaking down the silos within individual budgets. One of the greatest problems that we have faced as a Parliament is that it is encouraging someone to make a saving in one area when the savings carry out expenditure in one area, when the savings accrue in another area. That is one of the problems here. It is really difficult to break that down into the individual sections that the standing orders require. We have done our best, and I answered the major question from Gavin Brown about the local authority costs that are related to the ADPs in alcohol awareness training. That is a significant proportion of the annual costs that we have put against the various groups. I think that my final comment was that, in terms of the overall alcohol effect in Scotland of 4.3 billion, the total expenditure on the bill, even if you take the upper range, even if you take the fact that we have tried to be very straightforward about the upper range on those costs, all the 10 measures in the bill are a mere fraction of the cost to Scottish society of the alcohol problems. If we can save a few percentage points on those problems, it will more than pay for itself. When we have ministers and bill teams here, we press them on best estimates quite severely. You probably know that a number of times we have suggested that supplementary financial memorandum should be brought forward to try to fill in some of those gaps. I do not really think that it is appropriate to come with significant but unquantified and all the stuff in 42. We should have best estimates, and we should be able to, surely in any bill, whether it is a member's bill or a Government's bill, have some kind of detail on that. I think that everyone should be held to the same standard in terms of a piece of legislation. I am not saying anything to you, I would not be saying and have said on a number of occasions to ministers. I appreciate that, and I understand that the resources that are available to us in the Parliament for private members' bill are considerably limited compared to the Government. Having said that, we have tried to distinguish between where we can work out the costs. In the areas where we are saying, for example, that some are unquantified, we are not trying to deny that there will be some costs, but we are not talking about significant amounts here. It means that it is difficult to quantify, but if we were talking about millions of pounds or even tens of thousands of pounds, I think that the committee would be quite right to say that this is not adequate, but we are not talking about that. We are talking about relatively small expenditure here. That is not just in relation to the overall costs, that is in relation to the actual costs of the effect. Can I give you just two examples to illustrate this? Multi-pack discounting, the costs on local authorities are minimal. They are already inspecting on the question of volume discounting. This Parliament passed a law in which its clear intention was that there should not be sales on a basis of discounting for volume. The supermarkets have chosen, quite legally, and I want to stress that, totally legally, to sell multi-packs of beer at volume discounted prices. They have chosen to get round the wishes of this Parliament, and they are perfectly entitled to do so. Whether morally and ethically they are entitled to do so, frankly, it is another question. All that we are trying to do in this bill will be to ensure that, on the multi-packs, that we tighten that as far as we can within reason, because we are not asking them to look at every single container. That would be too difficult. We are asking them to be a bit more restrained in what they are doing. There will be costs involved in that, because they will be having to inspect the beer trays, as well as the wine and the spirit trays. However, the additional costs of looking at that in a supermarket will be minimal. Yes, convener. You just said there, Dr Simpson, about where you have not quantified costs, so you do not expect them to be high. However, when I asked you about the fact that you distinguished, you have got minimal, unquantified, some but unquantified, significant but unquantified, you suggested that you could put them on a sliding scale from minimal up to significant but unquantified. Presumably, where you are saying things like some but unquantified, we are not talking about trifling sums there. We are talking probably, what, six-figure sums? Paul Park? No, we are about 100,000 upwards. No, we are not talking about that. We are not talking about that. Can I just correct one thing, if I may, Mr MacDonald, that the significant but unquantified only refers to savings? Indeed, but it also is. There are no significant but unquantified costs, but there are some unquantified. But it all adds up to the bigger picture of best estimates. I understand that. Saying something is minimal and then saying something is unquantified and then saying some but unquantified, I guess, from the committee's perspective, we would want to have a rough idea of what kind of ballpark you are talking in there. That would give us some indication of where costs were likely to fall. At the moment, it is down essentially to our guesswork as to what is meant by the differentiation between those terms. I respectfully suggest that, as there is a summary, when the committee is considering its report, it will go back and look at the individual sections to which it does. As far as we have been able to do, it indicates that there are some costs, and we have indicated sometimes a range of those costs. We have not been able to quantify them exactly as we would like. I mean, to take another example, the costs on local authorities of restrictions on advertising, well, do they police the current voluntary ban? We do not know. So we have not been able to quantify whether extending that from 100 meters to 200 meters will involve costs at all. I mean, if they are walking 100 meters in every direction from a school at the moment to check that voluntary ban without any prospect of an income from a penalty notice, extending it to 200 meters by having a penalty notice might actually produce a benefit. It might actually produce a positive sum. If we look at the one area in which you have provided a range of estimates, and that is the potential savings on multi-pack discounting, you have provided that with a range of estimates that go from £0.6 million to £1.74 million, so almost a threefold potential increase. Presumably, you could have done that for some of those other ones, which you have not provided any information for. You could have given us that range of estimates from an expected minimum to an expected maximum, and that would have been more than what we have in the table. If we could have provided more detail with estimates, the particular one that you have mentioned is because we have the Sheffield report. We know that the effect of the discounting ban, as it has been implemented in Scotland, has been 2.6 per cent reduction in consumption, as against 3.1 per cent expected reduction. Therefore, we know that the amount of the additional reduction that could occur could be as much as £1.74 million. The reason why there is a lower estimate on that is because I fully expect the industry, I am afraid, to get around this in some way. It will either sell as some of the evidence that has been given to you, it will either stop selling the low multi-pack of four and it will only sell the top selling multi-pack, which it will be able to do at a volume discounted price on where it is being sold elsewhere but not within the store. That is a very good illustration of the problem of giving us an arrow range on some of those things, but the ones where it is some but unquantified, we are not talking about £100,000. We do want to stress that. We are talking about five-figure sums rather than six-figure sums in most cases, but if you look at the detail, I hope that the support staff will be able to do that in drawing up your report. You will see that we have endeavoured to talk about what we are talking about in more detail, but we did not want in the summary to mislead by giving figures that were spurious. Some of them are very difficult because it is quite innovative stuff and costing it is why we are having pilots. That is the finished question for myself and the committee. Is there any brief final point that you want to make, Richard, before we wind up the session? I think that I just want to re-emphasise that notwithstanding the entirely appropriate comments convener that you have been making about the difficulties that we have had in the costings year, the big picture is that if you take the medium to long-term situation, I am confident that those measures will contribute and complement the Government's efforts in terms of reducing our undue attachment to alcohol in an inappropriate way. We are on a good path. We have been on a good path since 2005. That path needs to be maintained. Price and availability are two of the big things, but the main purpose of the bill is to tackle those who are beginning to get into difficulty, not those who are dependent, who will undoubtedly be affected by minimum-unit pricing. I want to put that on the record. I have always accepted that those who are harmful drinkers who are dependent alcoholics will undoubtedly be helped by minimum-unit pricing, but whether it will help those who are hazardous drinkers before they move to that is another matter. The bill will help to underpin the Government's efforts and complement them, and the cost of the bill will be a mere fraction of the ultimate savings and goal that we all want to achieve. I thank you very much for that. That being the end of our public session, I would now like to close this to the public and official report. I will call a recess to 11.30.


Hi everyone, Sean with jaspyscasebreaks.com here doing a 2020 optic football one-box blaster break random team number 195 where we're giving away the final three spots in our big Cajones Random box break coming up next so 32 spots I'm gonna get to random team in NFL and no vet commons ship at the end of the break will take all 32 customers names randomize them in top three Wayne spots in the big Cajones break So here is our list of customers. Thanks to everybody for getting in Brian Frank down to Ryan Harold with last Bob Mojo and our teams from the Cardinals down to the Washington football team dice roll to randomize both lists and pair them up Five out of five ten times. Good luck guys Tenth and final time from Derek Valancek down to Ryan Harold and Ten times on the teams separate dice roll separate randomizer at the end of the break obviously for the spot 10th and final time San Francisco 49ers down to the Pittsburgh Steelers There you go. So let's make this large enough for everybody to see We're not gonna read through the full list and no trade window on this, but this is 2020 optic football So let's check it some of the highlights here Vikings Justin Jefferson James Connell Dolphins to a tug-of-a-lo a Brian Frank Bangles Joe Burrow Steve Birch You've got Packers Jordan loves Steve Birch Eagles Jalen Hertz James Connell and somewhere in there was chargers right there Robert Runkle And Justin Herbert opportunities as well. So there you go print this out and rip the box Oh So here is the blaster box behind that you can see the big bonus box That we're gonna be doing Just gotta give away the last three spots There is our final list Thank you guys and good luck T Higgins for the bangles Steve Birch Claiborne Chase on to the Jags Steve Birch And Jake from for the Bills Steve Birch You got AJ Dylan for the Packers Steve Birch camakers rams Ryan Harold Isaiah Coulter for the Texans Tom Lee a Mari Cooper Cowboys Steve Birch and Marlon Davidson Falcons James Connell So nothing crazy in there But the reason we're doing this to go away those last spots So here's that list of customers again from Brian down to Ryan Harold last spot mojo dice roll Should be a dice not a list but top three after Five and four and a one five times top three after five guys Fifth and final time Okay, so from spots four down to 32. Thank you guys very much for getting on the break Hopefully I can do better for you on a future filler, but special. Thank you and congratulations to the top three Leo Sorry first one out But special thank you congratulations Mark Rao Brian Frank Scott Quinlan There you go There is your top three five times on the randomizer top three names and five times on the dice That was 2020 optic football one box blaster break random team number 195 from jaspercasebricks.com. I'm Sean jaspercasebricks.com. Thanks for hanging out. We'll see you next time


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Friday trade hackers Friday June 11th here with your day trading recap nice way to end the week plus $1037 let's go over these trades and then I'll come back and recap the week for you three mighty 90s all three winners Apple 256 NVIDIA 290 Roku plus 144 did a couple pairs trades one in the Russell versus Nasdaq for 156 and small winner in silver versus gold for $33 so net net 189 on the two pairs trades and then on the runners just barely in the green did a Nasdaq trade minus 57 Apple minus 220 Netflix minus 540 Roblox plus 172 I was up over a thousand on that one gave a bunch back Roku minus 627 zoom my biggest winner 1110 and then Tesla plus 320 all right so let's go over these and I'll show you what we did starting with the mighty 90s let's go to Apple alright so an Apple come on Apple there you go so an Apple had this nice little push higher nice volume pop got short right here and just caught this little down move there for a quick 256 actually I was up more this thing bounced so quick on me I wasn't able to get out at the lower end of this candle so I gave a little bit back in that little quick push up but still book 256 on Apple NVIDIA plus 290 whoop alright so NVIDIA same thing got a nice push nice volume pop got short right there and just caught that little two bar red move for a nice 290 NVIDIA Roku Roku Roku whoops I replaced that one alright so Roku was my last mighty 90 and okay so on this one this thing pushed and had a nice volume spike it got almost as high as the first so when it just came down a little bit I just closed it out obviously in hindsight this thing really did flush down would have been a real nice winner but I just I took a little piece out and in fact I reversed I'll show you on the runners well I'll do it right now on the runner I ended up so I reversed right here and was looking for a continuation higher and just didn't happen just chopped around chopped around so it started to get weak and I just cut out so got a quick winner on the mighty 90 for 144 but then on the runner lost 627 so net net loser on Roku today Nasdaq I took a little runner and what I did here is when this thing started to push up into positive territory it was right I think it was right in this area here I got I got long and I was looking for a you know bounced it got into positive territory I was looking for a big push higher just kind of chopped around so I ended up just cutting out somewhere in here obviously late in the day it had a nice little push up but so I didn't catch on that so minus 57 on that one and then back to Apple I did a runner on Apple this one was a loser as well this one so in Apple I got in right here so I had that nice strength back up just below the highs of the day pulled back out long started to push up didn't get out of any came back down and started chopping around and I just I was kind of done for the moment I ended up taking some trades later but I just cut out of it and took a small loss not too long after this thing did rally but I didn't participate in that and then Netflix so Netflix had you know it's kind of it's kind of choppy but then it started looking like it was just consolidating right at yesterday's high and I was looking for a continuation to new highs on the day never happened when it started getting weak I just cut out of it and took a small loss on Netflix and then Roblox quite a few trades today I traded a little bit later in the day so Roblox had a really nice profit had this initial volume spike on this pullback got long it shot up had a big profit and then I got back in it shot up I was really close to taking profits here pushed up again I was really close to taking profits up here it just didn't quite hit my order and then rolled over and so I cut out of it so I ended up booking 172 I was up significantly more than that but that my friends is trading I already showed you Roku zoom all right so zoom was my biggest winner and and it could have been even bigger so zoom had this nice volume spike on this little pullback caught this up move here I had another volume spike so when it pulled back I got in here and caught that move I was trying to add to it here and I just never got filled and it took off without me but really just push number one and then push number two and got out a total of a a little over $1100 on those two trades and then my late day trade was in Tesla and this was just a quick one not very not even very big of a move but Tesla pushed up to into a positive territory and pulled back so right when it pulled back to the unchanged mark I got long right here and just caught this little bounce right here for a quick 320 I just scaled out pretty quick it kind of just paused and the market started looking like it was weak so I just got out I was kind of done for the day anyway so plus a little over $1000 profit on the day unfortunately still ended the week a little bit in the red let me bring my sheet back here so on the mighty 90s we booked a total of 280 only six trades there's Wednesday and Thursday we didn't take any mighty 90 trades but on those six booked a green profit nice winning percentage over 83% just those two pairs trades today for $189 and then on the runners minus $1000 so win rate wasn't great again this is actually third week in a row we've had a losing week in runners so for the week minus $558 not too bad you know it's down a little bit more in the week we had a horrendous Wednesday that really pulled us down Wednesday usually my best trading day still overall since the beginning of the year most profits have been booked on Wednesday but this Wednesday was not the one so slightly in the red for the week we'll be streaming every day next week look forward to seeing you in the live stream room if you guys have any questions let me know otherwise we'll see you then


I feel like the Army values have changed me a lot. Me still being young, I'm only 19, but I feel like I've changed a lot due to these values. I live up to them, not just as a soldier, but I mean out of uniform. I feel like it has made me a better person, a stronger individual and a more respectful one.


Hi, my name is Eli Chadwick, I'm speaking on behalf of my colleagues Leandra Laborier, Simone Sterniolo and Alejandro Gonzales Beltran on Muon Galaxy, which is our attempt to extend Galaxy for Muon Science. We work at the STFC Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory, which is home to the ISIS Neutrona Muon Source, one of only four Muon spectroscopy facilities in the world. My team and I work in the Scientific Computing Department, which supports the computational needs of ISIS and the other experiments on site, as well as developing computational tools for the wider academic community. On the right is a picture of the campus, in the front you have a few buildings that make up the ISIS experiment, and in the background is the small building that hosts scientific computing. So a brief overview of Muon spectroscopy. Muons are positively charged particles that behave essentially like small protons. You fire a beam of them at your material that you want to study, and the muons stop somewhere in the material. And then after a couple of microseconds, each Muon will decay, releasing a positron, and the positrons are what are detected by the detectors. Now where the muons stop within the material isn't random. It's dictated by the local environment within the material, so every material has quite a distinct set of stopping sites, as they're known. Now we can simulate Muon experiments, and simulations can make predictions about stopping sites, and therefore help us to predict material properties. And generally, simulations can enhance analysis of your experimental data, and enable you to use your beam time more efficiently, which is important because it's limited and expensive because there aren't many Muon facilities. However, most Muon scientists don't make use of simulations to complement their experimental work, and that's something that my team are trying to encourage. We work on the Muon Spectroscopy Computational Project, which is creating a sustainable, accessible and open source ecosystem of tools for Muon science. The main thing that we work on is called Pi Muon Suite, which is a collection of command line tools to use alongside DFT density functional theory simulations, and those model the physical properties of nanosystems. We're also now working on Muon Galaxy, which is a trial of Galaxy to interface with those Pi Muon Suite tools. And there's a link to our website here if you want more information on the project. So the Muon science pipeline has a few stages. You start out with your structure, you add a Muon to it in a random location, then you optimize to figure out where the Muon goes, and you do that maybe a hundred times. And then you look at those hundred runs altogether, and you see are there locations where the Muon tends to end up? And those are likely to be your stopping sites. And once you have that information, you can do all sorts of post processing and study material properties. So Pi Muon Suite contains command line tools for each of these stages. And what we want from a graphical user interface is to be able to run those tools individually, but also to chain them into workflows to make the whole process a bit more simple. And Galaxy seems like an ideal platform for that. So we started converting our command line tools into Galaxy tools. And this is a work in progress. So far, we've run into one significant issue, which is that our code outputs lots of nested folders, and that doesn't seem to be particularly compatible with Galaxy collections. If you have advice on this front, we'd be interested to hear it. More ambitiously, we are also developing a visualizer called ChrisViz.js, and this is for visualizing molecules. Here there's a visualizer which has loaded into it an organic molecule. I don't know exactly what it is. But the visualizer allows you to, there are options to change the view. So you can show the chemical symbols associated with each atom. Or you can click in the visualizer itself and select a particular atom. So here there's a carbon atom circled in yellow that's been selected. And that can be used to generate some output. So we're going to customize this so that the output can be fed directly into whatever web app we use for our interface. So we've tried to integrate this visualizer into Galaxy, and we've run into a couple of issues. Firstly, how to include controls in the visualizer display. I haven't looked through all the existing visualizations, so if there are any that do this, please point me to them. That would be really helpful. The second problem, which seems to be a bigger problem, is that we want an interaction where you can click an atom in the visualizer and then use that atom as input to another tool. So basically be able to say, I want to center this tool on this atom. But Galaxy doesn't support output from visualization plugins at present, so there's a question of how to actually accomplish this. Do we add output to visualization plugins? Do we embed the visualizer in a tool instead? Do we create something completely custom? We're a bit stuck here, so if you have ideas, advice, if you are interested in or doing something similar, please do get in touch. It would be really helpful to have some conversations. Thank you very much for listening. Please talk to us about running Galaxy at national facilities, importing collections from nested folders, integrated visualizer controls, and visualizes as tools or visualizes with output. My email is elai.chabwick at stfc.ac.uk if you want to get in touch. Thank you.