Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
1220-1239)
MR PAUL
KELLY, MR
NICK GRANT
AND MR
GILES FISHER
15 OCTOBER 2009
Q1220 Dr Taylor: That would put you
up to?
Mr Fisher: One hundred thousand
pounds based on our turnover. I caveat that by saying that we
have not seen the Drink Aware Trust plan for how that money is
going to be spent. The understanding from the Drink Aware Trust
is that they have got some key measures on how they are going
to reduce harmful drinking and to get to deliver what they need
to deliver in that regard they need five million pounds worth
of funding for the industry. Our share of that, on that formula,
is £100,000, which we will do if we are happy with what they
are going to present to us in the coming weeks.
Q1221 Dr Taylor: Does that mean Asda
and Sainsbury's contributions will go up as well?
Mr Kelly: Yes, it does.
Q1222 Dr Taylor: So they will have
a very useful amount of money to tackle the problem with. Do you
know anything about Project Ten, now called the Campaign for Sensible
Drinking?
Mr Fisher: Project Ten is to be
rolled into the Drink Aware Trust going forward.
Q1223 Dr Taylor: That is part of
it.
Mr Fisher: Yes. So, effectively,
the funding covers both Project Ten and the Drink Aware Trust
from next year.
Q1224 Dr Taylor: So you will be contributing
to that as well.
Mr Fisher: Yes.
Q1225 Mr Scott: How much do you spend
on advertising alcohol, and what proportion of this advertising
focuses on price discounts, value for money, et cetera?
Mr Grant: I do not have a figure.
I could supply one.
Mr Kelly: I do not have the exact
figure, but from memory it is slightly less than a 0.5% our annual
alcohol sales.
Q1226 Mr Scott: 0.5%?
Mr Kelly: 0.5%.
Mr Fisher: Again, I do not have
a figure that I can provide, but I will do.
Q1227 Mr Scott: Is your commitment
to social responsibility more about improving your corporate image
than encouraging people to drink responsibly? What would you say
to that?
Mr Grant: I would say absolutely
not. Much of my professional life in the last three years, or
a significant proportion of it, has been dedicated to working
with industry to try and create change and progress in the area
of alcohol abuse both to the Drinkaware Trust and to the Retail
of Alcohol Standards Group that I have chaired. So corporately,
personally, in personal terms, absolutely it is a matter of utmost
importance to me that I work on that agenda and get change going
in the industry. That is a really important part of what I do
for a living, so I would reject absolutely any sense this is about
a corporate veneer. It does not work like that. It does not work
like that for me and I know it does not work like that for a lot
of people in Sainsbury.
Q1228 Mr Scott: Thank you, Mr Grant.
Mr Kelly?
Mr Kelly: Absolutely not. We announced
last year a social responsibility fund of a million pounds to
tackle particularly alcohol-related issues amongst young people,
and one of the particular projects that that supports in Burnley
is already having a huge impact on reducing crime and anti-social
behaviour and giving the police back many hours of time to pursue
more serious crimes, and that is a commitment, with the project
we have announced with the Department for Children Schools and
Families, to take mobile these provisions nationwide.
Mr Fisher: Absolutely not. As
I said earlier, we have got a written constitution as a co-owned
business, and part of that is that we look after the communities
that we trade in.
Q1229 Dr Naysmith: All three of you,
I think, have argued today that you agree that alcohol can be
a hazardous product, but you have said that it is probably only
a small proportion of the population and, therefore, measures
that affect the whole population would be unfair on those who
are not going to be hazardous drinkers. Is that a fair summary
of what you are saying, because I am going to go on, if we can
get agreement about that, to ask another question?
Mr Kelly: I think that is a fair
summary.
Q1230 Dr Naysmith: What should you
be doing, then, to sell what you have all agreed is a potentially
dangerous product? Should you not be doing a lot more to make
the potential health hazards aware to consumers when they come
across bottles of alcohol in your shop? There is also a slight
difference in the way they look at what it means: because if we
are concentrating on things like anti-social behaviour, and so
on, that we have just been talking about, actually the thing that
worries us probably a little bit more than the anti-social behaviour
and binge drinking, and that sort of thing, is the increase in
liver disease and other diseases associated with alcohol amongst
the general population, and that is increasing in quite a frightening
way, particularly in Scotland. So that is why we as a Health Committee
are thinking about this. It is not the only reason, but certainly
one of the reasons. Should you not be doing a lot more to point
out the potential hazards to customers in your shops when they
purchase this potentially dangerous product?
Mr Fisher: I think there is more
that we can do. We are always looking to improve what we do. As
I said earlier, we were the first supermarket to put pointers
out, material out about health messages, we train all our wine
specialists in that area, we talk to all our staff about their
own level of consumption. We are the only supermarket with a 24-hour
helpline for our staff if they are worried about that. So we have
done a lot, but there is a lot more that we can do. One of the
things that we have been talking about recently, we have had some
meetings with the British Liver Trust to talk about a campaign
that they are looking to launch around taking two days off a week
for people who are consuming alcohol every day. That is something
that is in the very early stages—we have only had a couple
of meetings—but it is part of our programme of continually
improving our messaging and education.
Q1231 Dr Naysmith: What about putting
big notices beside the alcohol aisle that point out the hazards.
You said earlier, Mr Grant, that you do not think people appreciate
enough how many units makes it a hazard. I will stick with Mr
Fisher for the moment and then I will come to you. Why can we
not have big notices pointing out the potential hazards?
Mr Fisher: We do. That is the
Drink Aware Trust's point of sale which we worked with them to
develop.
Sandra Gidley: I have never seen one.
Dr Naysmith: Neither have I.
Mr Scott: I have.
Q1232 Sandra Gidley: I have never
noticed them, and I have been looking out for them.
Mr Fisher: We do have them. That
is what we had originally. Off our own bat we went and did that.
We thought that was a little bit busy and messy, so we worked
with the Drink Aware Trust to develop a more simple message, and
the idea of this is that it can be standardised across other retailers.
So you will see in some other stores Tesco will have their name
there. It will be a slightly different colour but the same message.
So we do put those out in store. We have also developed booklets
around people's relationship with alcohol. We have got various
information on our website, we have got links to drinking and
a few links to the Drink Aware Trust. We do unit labelling on
all of our own label wines, beers and spirits, so we are doing
a lot. I think the problem is that what we found from research
is we really need to engage with people and talk about potentially
harmful drinking in a compelling way that is going to make a difference
to their behaviour, and that is one of the reasons why we have
been talking to the British Liver Trust about perhaps a slightly
different campaign.
Q1233 Dr Naysmith: That is all very
worthwhile, and I think we would all be grateful for you taking
it seriously like that, but how about a nice big warning that
says, "Alcohol can kill you if you are not careful",
so they will then go and look at that report that you are providing
for them? What Mr Grant was saying was that people do not really
understand how many units they can drink.
Mr Fisher: We cannot get away
from the fact that people can make a personal choice.
Q1234 Dr Naysmith: I did not say,
"Alcohol will kill you", "Alcohol can kill you".
Mr Fisher: No, I know. We have
spoken to customers in focus groups about this particular issue
and asked them what they want and what they do not want. Frankly,
I think if we come across as preaching like that it is just going
to switch people off. What we are trying to do is a more subtle
approach around education, thinking about units, getting people
to understand how many units they can consume, what the hazardous
levels are and where they are in relation to that and, hopefully,
addressing their behaviour. I genuinely believe that if we put
a sign up like that in store, it would not make a lot of difference
and I do not think it would engage—
Q1235 Dr Naysmith: What you are competing
against is the huge sale on advertising telling people that drinking
alcohol all the time is good for you or does not do you any harm.
A notice like this might at least begin to address the balance.
Mr Fisher: As I said, we put what
we put out to try and make people think about it and to engage
with people, and not necessarily to be ignored, but not to be
preaching. It is a fine balance, and if we go out there on some
kind of preaching message, it is just going to switch people off.
That is the research we have had. Our customers do not want that
from us. They do not want that from their supermarket. It is not
our role. Our role is to inform, to educate, to put the information
there, but to preach at them with stark messages like that, our
research shows we would switch them off.
Q1236 Dr Naysmith: Thank you very
much. Mr Grant, you were talking about this earlier.
Mr Grant: I think in terms of
the relationship with the customer and tone of voice and whether
they would switch off, I think, given my analysis that they do
not know enough about basic units in alcohol, it would be somewhat
shocking to them, I think, to have suddenly the terminal message
given to them. The education, if it is going to be worth anything,
I think needs to take them from where they are on a sort of journey
by which they pick up knowledge and information about alcohol
gradually. I think that such severe health warnings would very
much change the relationship and would probably be counter-productive
in the short-term. On listening to Giles enumerate the Waitrose
social responsibility initiatives is, of course, as a competitor
of Giles, the thing that I immediately do is I say, "Sainsbury's,
of course, was the first supermarket for DOH guidelines on own
label alcohol who put that message on", and then, "Go
to step two and step three", which I could go through. It
seems to me that what that means is that actually a lot of progress
could be made by using that industry's competitiveness for good.
We try to out-do each other, we try to make an impact upon customers—that
is what we do for a living. To go in reverse, and I so do not
want to start the minimum pricing discussion again necessarily,
and to say that competition is not the right way forward, I think,
is a very radical and totally distorting message. Much better
(and this is what I do in the Drinkaware Trust terms and the Retail
of Alcohol Standards Group) is use that national competitiveness,
work with the commercial grain, because there is lots of goodwill
in the industry. There is a reasonable amount of resource to apply
to this, but if you go with the grain, encourage competitiveness,
there will be much bigger of benefits, I think.
Q1237 Dr Naysmith: We are getting
fairly short of time. Do you have anything to add?
Mr Kelly: Yes. I think we do an
okay job; I think we can do a better job in terms of communication
to customers. I think we need to look at all the tools that are
available to us, not just point of sale in store but also, in
our case, the Asda magazine, the website, but I think that having
information in store is one thing. I think there is something
about how we remind customers when they are at home, when they
open the bottle of wine, or whatever, and so what we have said
is that we are going to do a complete review of all of that information,
particularly looking at labelling, and seeing can we learn something
from front of pack labelling or nutrition in terms of making it
simple, quick for people to understand that and we are going to
involve the medical profession and people like Alcohol Concern
in those discussions to find something that works for consumers
not just at the point of purchase but also at the point of consumption.
Q1238 Sandra Gidley: I want to go
back to these shelf things again that you have. I used to, for
my sins, work in the supermarket sector and what used to happen
would be there would be some great initiative from head office;
it would be the latest thing. You would be given advice as to
how to lay out the tickets on the shelves and everything is all
very carefully thought through, and then there would be the shelf
bar, which would have bigger signs, which, if you could find enough
holders, you might put the information out but there would be
something else next month. So my question to all of you is this.
You produce this promotional material. Presumably you have sent
it out to your stores. How do you know they are putting it out.
What direction do you give to your stores as to how many of these
they put on a shelf and where they should be placed? In my experience
with two supermarkets not represented here today, that was always
very, very tightly controlled.
Mr Grant: What you are talking
about is the other part of my day job, which is the challenge
of compliance, which is how a central body setting policy can
achieve that in a different number of supermarkets for each of
us. We are actually very good at it. We have had a lot of experience
in getting 800 stores do the thing that we want them to do in
terms of point of sale, but it is a constant challenge. You will
always find one store which is not quite up to the mark on any
one particular day, but, as a generality, I think supermarkets
are pretty good and pretty practiced at trying to achieve compliance.
It is about clarity of communication, repetition of communication
and ease of process. All those things matter, and that is what
we try to do.
Q1239 Sandra Gidley: I am not sure
how that relates in practice at all, because this is an on-going
thing. Fresh initiatives, yes, all stores will do them. My experience
is—and it is something that has been around for all time—"I
am not sure we need that any more, let us declutter the place",
when you get some new store manager in.
Mr Grant: That is exactly the
challenge. It is the flush of enthusiasm and then following it
up later, but that is an audit and a checking role and that is,
again, something that we do from food safety, health and safety,
weights and measures, cleaning, hygiene. There is an established
apparatus for auditing.
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