Your article on minimum unit pricing (“Minimum alcohol price Scotland: job fears over new increase”, The Herald, November 29) features opinion from GMB Scotland – comprised of members of Scotland’s alcohol industry. The final evaluation of minimum unit pricing (MUP) clearly demonstrates that MUP has been successful in reducing harms, averting over 150 alcohol-specific deaths and 400 hospitalisations every year.

GMB question the efficacy of MUP on the basis that it is “effectively a tax on the poorest Scots”. This is not true: individuals on low incomes who drink moderate amounts buy very little of the alcohol which MUP targets and are therefore relatively unaffected by MUP. Conversely, individuals of low incomes who are heavier drinkers are affected by MUP; however these are the individuals who are suffering the most harm, and are therefore exactly the individuals whose drinking we want to target to reduce harm and inequalities.

Most of the lives saved by MUP are in the poorest communities (specifically the most deprived 40% of the population) confirming that, as expected, MUP is a progressive policy which is reducing health inequalities. GMB also make claims that an uprating of MUP would financially impact the alcohol industry and put jobs at risk. Similar alarmist claims were made by the alcohol industry as a tactic to prevent the implementation of MUP.

Despite the fact that MUP does reduce the total volume of alcohol sold, this is offset by an increase in the average price of sale. The final evaluation found that MUP resulted in no negative financial impact on the alcohol industry. Additionally, reductions in the cost associated with alcohol harms and related gains in economic productivity will financially benefit all sectors of the Scottish economy.

The article states that there is “no evidence to suggest it (MUP) is helping protect problem drinkers”. This is false: the proportion of people drinking at hazardous levels decreased by 3.5% upon MUP implementation. The reduction in the number of people dying from alcoholic liver disease also clearly demonstrates harmful drinkers cutting down.

The GMB Scotland organiser states that: “There is simply no case for continuing to impose a minimum unit price on alcohol never mind increasing it.” I would argue that saving more than 150 lives each year is an extremely compelling case which we cannot afford to turn our backs on.

Dr Alastair MacGilchrist, chair, Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems

Petty lecture from Lord Cameron

It is a bit rich for the unelected Lord Cameron to lecture Scotland on democracy and beyond petty to threaten to remove government support for Scottish ministers abroad. The UK and Scottish governments should be working together to secure economic prosperity for us all. Instead we witness public tantrums because the FCDO official, who “chaperones” Scottish ministers abroad, wasn’t present at a (hastily rearranged) meeting with President Erdogan.

The Scottish Government is 25-years-old, yet Westminster still can’t find a way to work constructively with it without flexing its muscles and embarrassing us all.

Caroline Duguid, Stonehaven

Matheson motion was a disgrace

I watched the live stream of the full council meeting in Falkirk in complete astonishment last week. A motion calling for Michael Matheson to resign was put forward by Labour Councillor Jack Redmond.

Firstly, it was a disgrace that Labour even considered this and secondly, they let a young inexperienced councillor propose it as the senior members of the Labour Party clearly did not have the guts to do it themselves. Councillor Redmond would not have the experience to know that this was a line that should never have been crossed and took politicking within the council to a new low.

Falkirk Council has no jurisdiction over Members of the Scottish Parliament and so this was a complete waste of time and tax-payers money.

This matter is still being investigated by the Scottish Parliament Corporate Body. The council lawyer warned about the careful use of language and Councillor Meiklejohn advised that MSPs do not have to “claim expenses” for mobile phone use. Despite this, Councillor Redmond used that very phrase in his speech and again in his summing up to deliberately mislead the public.

Labour should be careful about throwing stones at glass houses. I wonder how many votes of no confidence there might have been in Eric Joyce MP?

Lorraine Alexander, Falkirk

Read more: Letters: Pupils in the state sector are being let down

Do not blame the SNP for Mrs Thatcher

Not this again! Here’s Alexander Mackay with the ancient ploy of trying to blame the SNP for Margaret Thatcher’s victory in the 1979 election and the subsequent damage caused by her years in office.

Please recall a few salient facts, Mr Mackay. First, the Callaghan government had forfeited its claim to the support of the SNP by reneging on its commitment to establish a devolved Scottish assembly.

Second, even if it had survived the motion of no confidence, Labour had at the most a few more months in office before a general election which it would probably have lost anyway.

Third and most importantly, during the Thatcher years the Labour opposition at Westminster provided a spectacle of utter helplessness; and in Scotland, though by far the strongest party both at local council level and in respect of its number of MPs, was as effective in protecting Scotland from the damaging effects of Thatcher’s policies as a flock of seagulls would have been: they at least would have made more noise. The SNP is hardly to blame for the fact that the party which should have provided a counter to Mrs Thatcher was too feeble to land a punch on her during her 11 years in office; and even had to leave the task of bringing her down to her fellow Tories!

The moral of this, of course, is that Scotland has nothing to hope for in supporting Labour in next year’s general election. Not that we need to look back to last century for proof of that: the present Labour party’s proceedings make it more obvious by the day.

Derrick McClure, Aberdeen

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The answer is to abolish political parties

The easiest and simplest way to improve our democracy is to abolish political parties, not by outlawing them but by denying them any official role in elections and parliament. A political party is a coalition of like-minded people seeking to advance their agenda. We neither vote for nor elect a political party. We do vote for a candidate chosen from a list, and the winner is elected as our MP to represent our interests. Parties control their members by blackmail. Any member seeking political advancement must toe the party line; MPs are thereby reduced to puppets. Power is concentrated in a few leaders of the ruling party. This is not democracy.

Elections, parliament and government itself can all work perfectly well without political parties. At election time, every candidate would be an independent and free to speak their own mind. On each issue an MP is free from the political and moral influence of a party. On each issue, an MP would be free to vote as they think their constituents want them to vote, or, to vote according to their conscience. Voters choose the independent candidate they feel best represents them and do not choose political parties.

There is one final advantage in voting for independent individuals. At the start of each new parliament, MPs begin by electing the government ministers from among themselves. Those ministers then serve parliament. An important advantage of defenestrating political parties is that if ministers lose the confidence of parliament, then parliament can replace them, without triggering a general election.

Doug Clark, Currie

Read more: Letters: SNP should not support an instrument of union

Secret Teacher is right about reading

I can identify with The Secret Teacher’s unorthodox route into reading (The Herald, December 11). When I attended secondary school, our English teacher asked us to make a book list. I asked my friend what was a book list and was told it was a list of books that I had read.

Horrors! I hadn’t read any books except Oor Wullie and the Broons annuals. This wasn’t exactly the kind of genre the English teacher had in mind. So I took myself off to Inglis, a bookseller in Perth, and bought myself Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers books, about unlikely happenings at boarding school.

This was certainly more palatable than Great Expectations , which I’ve been given to read in primary school and couldn’t cope with. The secret teacher is right; it’s finding something that the child might be interested in, then to encourage them and they realize it is actually possible to enjoy reading and widen their horizons.

Irene Munro, Conon Bridge