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Policing and Crime Bill

I congratulate the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) on his maiden speech as shadow Home Secretary and on his promotion to one of the most important jobs in opposition. He has not previously been involved in home affairs issues, but I have learned two things about him since his appointment: first, that he was born on 1 April 1962; and secondly, that in 1987 he co-authored a book entitled ““Just Another Star?”” We will know at the end of 18 months whether it was an autobiography, as we will be able to judge his performances over the next few months. I welcome this Bill, which is important because it puts into action many of the pledges that the Home Secretary and other Ministers have spoken about over the past few months. It rightly builds on the success of the Flanagan report, and it contains elements of the reforms that I know the Home Secretary has been keen to put into effect. I shall support the Bill on Second Reading, but I wish to raise a number of concerns that I hope the Home Secretary and other Ministers will take on board. I hope that we will be able to strengthen the Bill when it comes out of Committee and back to the House on Third Reading. My first concern relates to the clauses on alcohol. Both the shadow Home Secretary and the Home Secretary spoke passionately about their desire to ensure that the Government did more to control the amount of alcohol that is finding its way into our city centres and is directly related to crimes being committed in them; 45 per cent of crimes of violence in this country are alcohol-related. Alcohol is 69 per cent. more affordable than it was 15 years ago and it cost the criminal justice system £1.5 billion last year, so it is important that we get to grips with this country's readily available supply of alcohol. We do not want to stop people drinking. I have to declare my interest: I do not drink alcohol. However, I know that other Members of this House occasionally do. I make no attempt to stop people drinking, and neither do members of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, who produced a unanimous report on this issue. We are talking about drinking in moderation and for social reasons, rather than drinking that results in what we sadly see in many of our towns and city centres: complete disorder, which occupies so much of the time of our excellent police force. The Home Secretary has started to grapple with the problem. We do not pretend for one moment that she is going to solve it overnight, but she is right to have introduced a tougher code in this legislation. I pressed her, as I have done in the past and shall continue to do, on the issue of the floor price of alcohol in supermarkets. The evidence given to the Committee's inquiry into policing clearly showed that the readily available alcohol in supermarkets is resulting in young people, in particular, having access to alcohol. This alcohol is so cheap; the latest figures—this is not an advert for ASDA—show that ASDA's Smartprice beer is being offered at 52p a litre, whereas one can buy Evian water there for 93.3p a litre. It is wrong that alcohol should be cheaper than water.