09/12/2013 Newsnight Scotland

Tonight on Newsnight Scotland, we have the accident report into the

helicopter that crashed in to the Clutha Bar. But does it raise more

questions than it answers? And alcohol kills 20 people a week

in Scotland. With the minimum pricing laws still mired in legal

action, what can be done to moderate our enthusiasm for drink?

Good evening. The supermarket shelves are stacked with bottles and

pubs and clubs are busy as the Christmas party season gets under

way. For many in Scotland, though, a sociable drink at Christmas, or any

time of year, is not enough. NHS Health Scotland told us today that

booze still kills 20 people a week on average and called for more

action to cut alcohol-related deaths and the illness it causes,

particularly in women. The Scottish government agree, but their plans

for minimum unit pricing are still mired in legal argument. Here's

Andrew Kerr. Alcohol, booze, or even bevvy,

whatever your name, we certainly enjoy it in Scotland. There's

nothing wrong with a drink of the Scottish government tell us, we're

not anti-alcohol just anti alcohol misuse. Karen's nine litres of side

a day caused major health problems. I went to buy one bottle of cider, I

would get three bottles, which is three litres. So it is nine litres

of cider three times -- a day. As soon as they ran out, somebody else

would come through the door, it would be another two or possibly

three, then I'd go to sleep, wake up, and if there was none left, I'd

go to the shop and get another three. Karen's liver was badly

damaged. That is one of the myriad of health problems booze can bring.

There is a clear alcohol strategy in place to tackle that. To change our

destructive relationship with drink. NHS health Scotland have reported on

progress today and they welcome the fall in alcohol-related deaths but

warned that the equivalent of 20 people a week dying of drink is too

many. The health of younger women is of particular concern. Women aged 25

to 44, we have seen alcohol-related discharges go up a lot. That is on

ongoing cause of concern. With alcohol sales almost 20% higher here

than in England and Wales, there is clear evidence of a different

drinking cult church, a more harmful one. We drink more and we have a

hype percentage of people drinking the most harmful drink 's, which is

the cheap gyms and so we need to change drinking habits. We need to

drink less. Also, will need to stop drinking the harmful drinks and

drink in moderation. We need to drink in moderation. As medics and

government tried to nudge us towards a more responsible drinking, one

solution is swirling around. We think affordability is an important

element of the explanation of why harm's has been high and why it has

been falling in recent years. The recession has reduced affordability

and part of it is price. We think action is required to keep tackling

affordability of alcohol. Action is required, cue the Scottish

government ministers nodding in agreement. 60% of booze sold out of

pubs was below 50p per unit. Remember that? The initial level

proposed by the government for minimum unit pricing. That policy is

languishing in the courts. They call for other measures to be looked at

but the Health Secretary says that policy would tackle affordability.

Minimum unit pricing is so important because of it has the kind of impact

we anticipate, many more people will substantially reduce alcohol abuse.

A major plank in the strategy to change our behaviour and educate the

young, not much to think about if you are having a glass, but

something to mull over over Christmas. I'm joined now by Jim

McCartney, head of the Public health Observatory.

And by Doctor Deborah Shipton. First of all, Jim, what reasons have you

identified for the fall in deaths? The most ticks -- the most important

explanation is that incomes have been falling or staying still as

prices have been rising over the last ten years. As a result, alcohol

is less affordable which has restricted the amount of alcohol

people are able to buy, therefore people have been resulting in less

alcohol-related deaths. There are a couple of other explanations, too.

We spent a lot of money improving services, introducing things like

interventions, which has had some impact. And the ban on multi-byte

discounting, which has lowered alcohol sales by 3%. With the

economic downturn going back five years, we saw a spike in the number

of deaths further back than that, perhaps when people were better off.

Yes, they've been declining since 2003, but most alcohol-related

deaths are in the poorest 10th of the nation and if you look at their

income, their incomes haven't been rising for a long time before the

current recession took place. As a result, the incomes of the poorest

group, the ones buying most frequently, they have been

stagnating whilst alcohol prices have risen, thus alcohol is less

affordable. Yet we see the number of women admitted to hospital with

alcohol-related problems on the rise. What is the underlying

problem? There is many reasons why women might be drinking more. It is

far more acceptable now for women to drink and for them to drink to the

excessive levels we see in men, which is related to the trends we

see in women nowadays. We heard from Karen, drinking 33 litre bottles at

a time, at least she was. Are the drinks that women consume cheaper?

It is difficult to know what people are drinking because the data is

unreliable. That said, there is general data suggesting that women

are drinking higher strength so they are more likely to be drinking the

spirit and the higher strength designer drinks, I guess, than men.

That is contributing to it. We have had this fall in the death rate even

though the minimum unit pricing that has been trumpeted by the government

has not been enacted. How big a difference will we see if that is

actually enforced? We have got data from North America, in particular

Canada which introduced the minimum unit pricing. That resulted in

dramatic falls in alcohol-related deaths. If we restrict price, the

prices of the cheapest alcohol, it can have a difference. One of the

main reasons why alcohol-related deaths might be coming down in

Scotland is because incomes have stagnated. If you call me is to turn

round and incomes increase, it's possible alcohol-related deaths

could go back up again. How real is that fear? The data suggest that the

downturn, the large proportion of it, will be related to alcohol

becoming less affordable. As it becomes more affordable, as

household incomes in proof, it is quite likely that alcohol

consumption will go up and harm will go up. If harm is linked to price,

does that tell is that many of the health messages we have had over

recent years haven't permeated through to the public? A lot of

interventions are educating the publisher and around health risks,

around the units and recommended levels. They don't really work very

much in terms of the adult population or in terms of schools

and children. And we also know that when people are drinking alcohol,

the decisions they make on the night of how many drinks to have, how to

continue are not related to units and not related to how units are

related to the recommended levels. It's much more to do with who they

are with, the intention they have of the evening. Is littered

contradiction with these figures in that at Westminster the government

is not in favour of this minimum unit pricing. -- isn't it a

contradiction. But the death rates in England are much lower in England

than Scotland where we have these measures already? Alcohol-related

problems, just like suicide and of islands, all of these factors are

determined by other factors in society, whether it is

unemployment, poor housing, the deindustrialisation of our cities

and regions. All of these factors taken together have to be taken into

the context where drugs and alcohol and violence have become normal. It

is quite right the Scottish government looks at the health

problems of the country and takes appropriate legislation. It's worth

remembering that alcohol-related deaths are 70% higher than in

England, so it has to be a priority here. It used to be the case in

Scotland that we used to have lower alcohol-related deaths than the rest

of Europe so this is something new. The statistics give varying picture

we have the ban on these multi-buy promotions. We have had some

statistics that say that it hasn't reduced consumption that to much.

The data is clear. We use sales data, the best proxy to see how much

alcohol has been taken by the population. Some other reports are

based on how much people have told researchers, and that data is less

robust. We are fairly confident there has been a 2.6% reduction in

sales since that ban came in, particularly in wine, where we think

on -- where we think wine has been sold as a multi-buying discount. We

think that has had had a good impact. Small numbers nonetheless.

If the minimum unit pricing is implemented, if the legal battle is

sorted out, I presume it's still going to take a long time before the

ship is turned around? Well, we will see fairly immediate effect in terms

of the reduction of consumption and reductions in harm also come quite

soon after reductions in consumption, so we will see some

immediate effects. And I think we will need to say that we would like

to keep attention on price, presumably indefinitely in terms

that it is quite appropriate to have attention on control of availability

of alcohol. As soon as you take it away, as we've seen in other

countries when that is relaxed, consumption goes up. That is

something that will have to be continued. As I say, minimum unit

pricing is in the courts at the moment, would you like to see other

measures from politicians at the moment? It could take months or

years to sort out. We are looking at evidence from other countries to see

what else might be affected, harms to drinkers themselves, harms to

society itself, or the treatment of children. There is evidence that

liquidation -- regulation of the best forms of approach to tackling

alcohol misuse. And we've seen examples in North America where

regulating the sale of alcohol can reduce alcohol intake even without

it affecting the price. Thank you very much.

It's not much more than a week since the Police Scotland helicopter

crashed into the Clutha Bar in Glasgow. The wreckage was taken to

the Air Accidents Investigation Branch in Farnborough for analysis,

and today they issued their first report into the crash. They have

found no evidence of engine or gearbox failure in the helicopter.

Catriona Renton has the details of the report.

It is ten days now since witnesses said they saw the police helicopter

drop like a stone from the sky. The crew had started work at 8:45pm,

flying from Glasgow. At 10:18pm, the pilot requested clearance from air

traffic controllers to return to the heliport. This was the last

communication with him. Four minutes later, radar contact with the

helicopter was lost. Today's report said the helicopter struck the flat

roof of the pub with a high rate of descent and low or negligible

forward speed. A preliminary examination showed all the main

rotor blades were attached at the time of impact but that neither the

main nor the tail rotor were rotating. After the initial

examination, the helicopter was lifted clear of the building by a

crane. 95 litres of fuel were removed from its tanks. In

Farmborough, they found no evidence of major mechanical disruption of

either engine and that the main rotor gearbox was capable of

providing drive. So far, extensive damage has prevented similar checks

on the other gearbox. Experts say what has been rolled out leaves more

questions than answers. Given what we know from this report, what

theory do you think the investigators will be working on? I

think it's too early to even guess what theory they may be working

towards. This is an interim report. We can't really draw any conclusion

from the report at this moment. Does this report rule anything out? I

don't think it does. One of the tiny footnotes within this document says

that it is a tentative report pointing to where they are at the

moment, what they have been looking at, but they say they found no

problems with the engines all the gearbox, but it's very much early

days because there is still some investigation to go. There's an

investigation to go into an awful lot of other things as well. For

example, the electronics on board particular helicopter, fitted with

the full authority digital electronic control system for the

engines. That leaves no ability for the pilots to take manual control if

something went wrong, for example. If the system failed, it follows

that the rotors would stop turning on the aircraft would come down.

They could be looking at many other avenues as well. On the subject of

the data that the helicopter itself may provide, I presume there is the

danger that some of that data may be lost. That's right. Many of the

systems on board modern aircraft of any type have data capture devices

built-in, which gives some indication as to Fort conditions and

so forth. Now, the investigations will look at those and tried to

retrieve whatever they can retrieve and download whatever data happens

to be there, provided that those parts are not so badly damaged that

the chips themselves are damaged. So there is about. There is also the

possibility that many of the police systems on board this helicopter,

such as CCTV cameras, voice recordings of conversations between

the helicopter and police control of the helicopter and air traffic

control, might provide some answers as well. It's interesting they

talked of no evidence of major mechanical disruption. Is it

possible a very small Fort could cause such a failure? It is

possible. At the end of the day, we are talking about a very complex

aircraft and one that is reliant on all sorts of systems, not just the

engines and the rotor blades. Any particular part of that airframe

might well be ultimately found is the cause of this accident. But it's

only ten days since the helicopter came down and the investigators are

looking at everything, every not in bold. People will want answers

relatively quickly. What time frame could you put on this? I don't think

we can. There's an awful lot of extra work to do. It may be

something crops up tomorrow or the day after, which would give us a

relatively clear indication as to what happened. But equally, that

elusive bit of the puzzle may only be discovered six or 12 months from

now. In the meantime, do questions still need to be asked about the

fleet? Yes. There are an awful lot of these particular helicopters.

Many police forces will want to know that their helicopters, the ones

they are depending on for mission-critical operations every

day, are safe to fly, so there is pressure on the investigators to

come up with answers as quickly as possible.

Now a quick look at tomorrow's front pages.

That's all from me. I'll be back with Good Morning Scotland on Radio

Scotland tomorrow at 6am. Gordon will be here tomorrow. Good night.

We have entered a relatively settled spell of weather. But not completely