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Alcohol Labelling Bill [HL]

My Lords, I apologise for not putting my name down on the speakers’ list, but I had a longstanding hospital appointment this morning which I feared might overrun. Luckily, I have been able to make it just in time. Courtesy dictates that this Bill should receive an unopposed Second Reading, but I hope it will not go much further, certainly not in its present form. As my noble friend Lord Walton of Detchant said only a couple of days ago when speaking in a health debate: "““My Lords, we are in serious danger of living in a grossly over-regulated society””.—[Official Report, 18/4/07; col. 289.]" There is no empirical evidence that for the great majority, taking alcohol in moderation—one must stress the word—during pregnancy harms the unborn child. If it did, neither I nor my siblings would be here today to tell the tale, and nor would most of my contemporaries. The same goes, I think, for my sons’ generation. The noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, said that a survey had revealed that 61 per cent of pregnant women admitted to drinking. I would have thought that 40, 50, 60 or 70 years ago it was probably more like 90 per cent, the difference being that pregnant women would restrict their drinking to a glass of sherry or half a pint of mild at one end of the social scale up to a dry martini or a glass of scotch at the other. Binge drinking simply did not happen, except perhaps at university after finals or something like that. It is a modern phenomenon which was then unknown, and I agree that it is a serious one. I shall come back to that issue in a moment. Not so long ago, doctors and district nurses would urge nursing mothers to drink a pint of Guinness a day for the sake of their health and that of their baby. Medical fashions change from year to year, and indeed from month to month. We were told not long ago that butter was a deadly poison and we must all switch to margarine. The position has totally reversed and now margarine with its hydrogenated fats is the villain of the piece while butter in moderation is perfectly all right. A decade before that, antibiotics were prescribed for everything under the Sun—for anything from a scratched finger to a boil on the bum. That has resulted in people becoming desensitised to antibiotics so they no longer work. A decade earlier, anyone feeling slightly down in the dumps was prescribed tranquillisers, and hundreds of thousands were prescribed to ill effect. A couple of decades before then, asbestos was considered God’s gift to mankind. You were doing a public service by lining your house or place of business with as much asbestos as possible. Now we know better. Medical and health fashions do change. In two or three years’ time it may well be decided that on balance it is beneficial once again for pregnant women to have a single glass of red wine a day, but that would be a bit too late if this Bill goes through. Moreover, the Bill would target the wrong people. Young, university-educated women are having babies later and later, mainly for economic reasons, and are finding it harder to conceive. Once pregnant they are more prone than younger women to complications. So they will usually religiously avoid drink, and often tea and coffee as well. The Bill is not necessary for them. Women from a more feckless background—the binge drinkers to whom the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, referred—are likely to do most of their drinking in pubs and clubs. When they buy bottles, they are unlikely to peruse the labels carefully. That brings me, lastly, to an aesthetic objection. The noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, talked about Château Lafite 1982. Imagine how terrible it would have been if those marvellous Château Mouton Rothschilds—I have only tasted it once—with their magnificent labels designed by Dufy, Matisse, Picasso and so on, had been ruined by ugly warnings plastered all over them, especially when such warnings are not really necessary, and certainly not on the front of the bottle.