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Finance Bill

I regret giving way to a Member who, first, was not interested enough in the subject to turn up at the beginning of the debate—it is not as though we are early in the working day—and, secondly, was so discourteous. However, I shall answer the hon. Gentleman's point. I think that drinking in pubs is quite price sensitive—more so than other environments in which people consume alcohol. Pubs are more price sensitive than bars that sell in large volume. I am not convinced that the Government's policy will have a profound impact on binge drinking: people who go and drink 12 pints of very strong lager are unlikely to modify their behaviour, and if they do, it will take the form of drinking 11 and a half pints of very strong lager, the effect of which will be little different. On the other hand, people of more modest means who drink in a pub, in a village or an urban area, can be more price sensitive: they may choose not to visit the pub, or to have only one pint, rather than one and a half. There is a price factor. As I said, a pub has a range of social dimensions, and the impact on them of sales taking a different form may not be so keenly felt. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), who defers to no one in his knowledge of Somerset as a whole, mentioned skittles. Readers of Somerset County Gazette will see among all the reports of how well Somerset's cricketers are doing the publication of the skittles leagues. Those leagues, like the darts leagues, are based around pubs: most pubs have skittles alleys which are about the length of this Chamber and as wide as the area between the red lines, and many people visit pubs to play skittles as part of teams against another pub team. When they are there—