CancerWatch has today written to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting MP to urge the Government to take action to improve consumer understanding of the cancer risk associated with alcohol.
The link between alcohol and cancer is the theme of this year’s Cancer Prevention Action Week 2025 (#CPAW25). Alcohol accounts for nearly 12,000 cases of cancer each year in the UK and is an important factor in at least seven types of cancer.
Because of this, CancerWatch is joining other health charities in calling for a stronger priority to be placed on tackling the public health challenges posed by alcohol, including cancer risk.
Specifically, CancerWatch has urged the Secretary of State to include alcohol as a key policy priority within the forthcoming National Cancer Plan and to:
- Introduce mandatory health warnings on all alcohol products to improve consumer awareness of the health risks of drinking alcohol.
- Ensure that mandatory health labelling includes a specific warning about the link between alcohol consumption and cancer
- Transfer enforcement of standards for alcohol labelling to an independent regulatory body, such as the Foods Standards Agency.
You can read the full letter below:
Reg Charity No. 1206140
Rt Hon. Wes Streeting MP.,
Secretary of State for Health and Social Care,
DHSC, 39 Victoria Street,
London SW1H 0EH
23rd June 2025
Dear Secretary of State,
Cancer Prevention Action Week – 23-29 June 2025
Cancer and Alcohol – Mandatory Health Warnings
We are writing to you in Cancer Prevention Action Week 2025 to ask you to take steps to address the risk of cancer to the British population caused by the consumption of alcohol.
Every day in the UK, there are 1,000 new cancer cases and yet, an estimated 400 of these could have been prevented. One of the major risk factors for cancer is alcohol consumption, which the World Health Organisation classifies as a Group 1 carcinogen. Alcohol is an important causal factor in at least seven types of cancer, specifically those of the breast, bowel, oesophagus, liver, mouth, throat, and voice box. That is why this year’s Cancer Prevention Action Week is focusing on the cancer risks of alcohol.
We very much welcome that one of the three “shifts” detailed in the 10 Year NHS Health Plan is to move from sickness to prevention, and that prevention featured prominently in the recent consultation on the National Cancer Plan. However, effective action to prevent cancer requires us to recognise and address the cancer risks associated with alcohol.
This must begin by raising people’s awareness and understanding of those risks. Therefore, we strongly urge you to include alcohol as a key policy priority within the forthcoming National Cancer Plan and to take the following actions:
1. Introduce mandatory health warnings on all alcohol products to improve consumer awareness of the health implications of drinking alcohol.
2. The mandatory health labelling should include a specific warning about the link between alcohol consumption and cancer. This would reflect the recommendations of the WHO Europe[1], and would also mirror the legislation being implemented by the Republic of Ireland from 2026.[2] British labelling should aspire to at least match these standards.
3. Regulation around new mandatory standards for alcohol labelling should be transferred to an independent regulatory body, such as the Food Standards Agency, to ensure that the regulation of alcohol labelling in the UK is at least as rigorous as it is for foodstuffs
Evidence suggests that:
- Alcohol causes around 11,900 cases of cancer per year in the UK.[3]
- Around 1 in 10 breast cancer cases are caused by drinking alcohol, equating to about 4,400 cases per year.[4]
- Worldwide, alcohol accounts for around 400,000 deaths from cancer each year.[5]
All these cases and deaths are potentially preventable. Prevention begins with awareness and there is good evidence that health warning labels on alcohol can be effective in raising awareness of health risks and helping to moderate consumption. As such, we believe mandatory health labelling on alcohol is an important and necessary step in the National Cancer Plan’s aim to reduce lives lost to cancer.
Unlike food labelling, which must meet mandatory standards, alcohol labelling in the UK currently follows industry-run best practice guidelines, and this voluntary system of labelling is failing to support people to make more informed choices. By taking action to ensure mandatory health labelling on alcoholic drinks, the government will be empowering consumers to make informed choices about the health risks and implications of alcohol, at the same as supporting its preventative approach to health.
We would be pleased to meet with you and your officials to discuss in more detail how we might work together to bring forward these policies and to help improve awareness of the links between alcohol and cancer. Please contact Andrew Dixon at to arrange this.
We look forward to hearing from you and working together to improve health outcomes and cancer rates across the country.
Yours sincerely,
Jill Clark
Jill Clark, Chair
CancerWatch
[1] Brown, K. et al., The fraction of cancer attributable to modifiable risk factors in England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom in 2015. British Journal of Cancer, 2018.
[2] Cancer Research UK, How does alcohol cause cancer?
[3] Nuffield Department of Population Health, New genetic study confirms that alcohol is a direct cause of cancer
[4] WHO, Alcohol health warning labels: a public health perspective for Europe.
[5] WHO, What’s in the bottle: Ireland leads the way as the first country in the EU to introduce comprehensive health labelling of alcohol products.