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Policing and Crime Bill

We support the amendment. It seems unreasonable that there is no such provision in the Bill. You can imagine a situation where a young person is carrying a sealed bottle of alcohol as part of the weekly shop, which perhaps they deliver to their grandmother—in that case, it might be a bottle of Guinness, which I think is often associated with grandmothers. In a less frivolous way, let us suppose that one of the child’s parents was an alcoholic and the alcohol was sent by their sister, say, or their brother or whoever to the person and the child was carrying it. That is not a desirable situation but surely it should not be caught by the Bill, particularly if the young person had no intention of drinking the alcohol. In replying to a Question for Written Answer from my noble friend Lord Avebury on 30 June, the Government mentioned that they were revising the drug and alcohol guidance for schools. Apparently they intend to make drug and alcohol education statutory as part of personal, social and health education. That sort of provision in the Bill, if it needs legislative time to be made statutory, would be a far better use of time in tackling some of these issues than the clause that we are debating at the moment.