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Finance Bill

As ever, my hon. Friend makes a telling point, dwelling on the history of many of these issues. I look forward to hearing the Minister's response about that Bill and its impact. The amendment is wide-ranging and talks about reaching""an assessment of the impact of the increases in alcohol liquor duty on… the competitiveness of licenses premises, and… the level of employment in alcohol-related industry"." I intend to speak around most of those issues this evening. One of the main reasons for my speaking tonight is that I am going to outline why we voted against this year's rises in alcohol duties. We see them as blanket rises that hit all consumers, without making any attempt to curb problem drinkers. There are also significant holes in other aspects of Government policy. For example, while Labour's alcohol duty escalator appears still to exist, it does not seem to apply when the retail prices index is negative. We were told that the escalator was there to provide stability, but that stability went within a few months with the new duty rises in the pre-Budget report, and stability and certainty have been eroded further in the Budget. We must ask whether the RPI measure looks forward or backward. We must also ask what will happen to alcohol duty when VAT goes up next new year's eve as "Auld Lang Syne" rings out. Earlier, I think that we heard a concession from the Financial Secretary, who suggested that the change might be made in the early hours of new year's day rather than on new year's eve. A further question is whether the Government's huge duty rises are a result of health concerns or of a desperate effort to plug the gaping hole in the public finances, or perhaps a little bit of both. However, I thought that first we should conduct an examination of exactly what has happened over the last 14 months in relation to alcohol duties. When the Government introduced their duty escalator at the last Budget, they raised duty by some 6 per cent. across the board. It rose again by 8 per cent. when VAT was reduced in the PBR, and we have a further increase of 2 per cent. across the board in this year's Budget. Over two Budgets and the intervening PBR, duty on a typical pint of beer has risen by 8p in a year. A bottle of wine now carries duty of £1.61, compared with £1.34 previously. That is an increase of 27p. Spirits are up. A bottle of gin carries 82p more duty, and a bottle of whisky carries an additional 86p—although without the Government's embarrassing U-turn in the PBR, the amount would have been even greater. Cider and perry are also up, as is champagne—which does have some impact on the Treasury, judging by last year's photographs of large-volume deliveries to it and to other Government premises on and just off Whitehall. Let me first outline some of the current health concerns about alcohol and their relevance to duty and then to the problems facing the sector, before examining the Government's recent record and setting out some of the Conservative solutions. Health issues have been and will be a key part of the debate. There are 37 million responsible drinkers in the United Kingdom, but there are also about 3 million adults who have some form of alcohol dependency and another 8 million who have some kind of alcohol-use disorder. That is the picture among adults, but under-age drinking is a problem that is often highlighted as well. A tenth of final-year primary school children at least say that they drink regularly, and the number rises to 45 per cent. of 14 to 15-year-olds. I understand that, in this context, "regularly" is taken to mean at least weekly. A fifth of 10 to 15-year-olds say that they get drunk regularly. In 2005-06, more than 1,400 children under 14 were admitted to hospital in the United Kingdom as a result of conditions caused by alcohol abuse. We all know that alcohol is a major contributor to crime and antisocial behaviour. Half of all violent crime is drink-related. It probably happens in every one of our constituencies, and it is probably happening now, at this late hour. One of the interesting aspects of being an inner-London Member of Parliament without a second home to return to in the evening is leaving this place after a 10 pm vote and arriving at Fulham Broadway tube station between 10.30 and 11 pm. The scene is not yet in full swing, but the thumping music makes the whole street vibrate. Drunken youths are already marauding, and on some occasions fighting has started. That is one of the many reasons why Hammersmith and Fulham council is clamping down on late licences, as far as it can under Labour's disastrous Licensing Act 2003. It was the first council in Britain to pay for 24-hour beat policing teams in both Fulham Broadway and Shepherd's Bush town centres.