Alcohol policies: responsibilities and relationships in British Government

The paper is first of all an up-to-date of the Central Policy Review Staff report on Alcohol Policies which reviewed the components of an integrated alcohol policy strategy (CPRS, 1979). That report identified sixteen Government departments with some interest in the production, distribution or sale of alcohol or the many problems resulting from its consumption. Each of these departments is examined separately in this paper. The CPRS Report listed each of the sixteen departments’ alcohol responsibilities but did not provide any detail on policy-making structures and processes. This paper attempts to take the CPRS analysis a stage further. Each account of a department opens with the list of alcohol responsibilities identified by the CPRS and goes on to describe where policy is being made, who is making it and with whom. The paper does not pretend to be a comprehensive and exhaustive account of the alcohol policy-making processes in British Government. These processes are so complex that it is impossible to capture every nuance and detail. Moreover, not all the information supplied by respondents is consistent and comparable. In some cases, information on departmental structures down to and including staffing levels and grades was readily supplied. In others, officials were reluctant to give any more than outline information but were much more willing to talk about, for example, relationships with other agencies and the content of policy statements. It is also important to note that the departmental structures and relationships described in this paper are constantly changing. Throughout the mapping exercise, information on organisational changes and restructuring was constantly being received and this paper is, therefore, very much a ‘snapshot’ of the main structures and relationships in late 1987. It is deficient in one final respect in that one department did not provide any information whatsoever on its policy-making responsibilities, structures and relationships. An approach was made to the Northern Ireland Office early in 1987 in order to obtain basic information as a foundation for further enquiries. Although many enquiries elicited repeated assurances that the information was being collected none was ever received. This is unfortunate, since the Northern Ireland Office has an extensive range of national alcohol policy responsibilities, a number of which have a distinctive slant. It would have been instructive to compare the coordination arrangements applying in the Northern Ireland Office with those in some other departments such as the Scottish Office and the Home Office. The paper restricts itself to describing alcohol policy-making structures and relationships with government departments as the focus. No attempt is made to comment on the content of policy or to suggest ways in which coordination strategies might be developed although material from the maps has been used elsewhere in a discussion on the coordination of alcohol and tobacco policy (Harrison and Tether, 1987). Rather, it is hoped that the detail provided in this paper will help to promote a more informed debate on both these topics. As this paper demonstrates, some departments are clearly more important than others, so can they be ranked in terms of their alcohol interest? Ranking the sixteen departments according to the size of departmental budgets only identifies those responsible for dispersing large sums of money but gives no insight into their alcohol-related expenditure which, in virtually every case, proved impossible to assess. In any case, ranking by budget does not fit with the departments’ reported influence within Cabinet which in turn might have implications for the development and direction of alcohol policy. Nor is it possible to compare administrative units since Government departments do not follow a uniform pattern and units are variously called directorates, groups, divisions, branches and sections. These units have a different status in different parts of Government. Nor is it possible to compare staff levels within each department since, in some cases, alcohol policy occupies large numbers of staff for short periods of time. In other departments one person might be engaged in alcohol policy full-time. If employed in an important policy area, such as the training or licensing justices, such a person may have more impact on an area of alcohol policy than an entire division in another department (Harrison and Tether, 1988).