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Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, it is worth bearing in mind the following set of statistics. Last week the Agricultural Wages Board said that the wage for a skilled man was £333 a week, or something like that; half a pint of beer costs now £1.50. From the time of my birth in 1938 up until the first Budget of the war in 1940, if someone placed sixpence on the counter they could get five Woodbines, half-a-pint of beer and a farthing change. That half-a-pint of beer was bought for proper, old-fashioned pennies. The wage of a skilled agricultural labourer then was 27 shillings and sixpence a week, so the proportion of an agricultural labourer’s wage to buy half-a-pint of beer was infinitely larger then than it is now. This illustrates that alcohol has become very, very much cheaper. To make vodka costs about tuppence a litre or something; it is extremely cheap to do. The European Commission says that it may not be less than 37.5 per cent alcohol, and that makes it impossible for people to sell lower strength vodkas. I am producing these pieces of information to inform the Committee. I am not totally sure that the public would stand the price being put up as a proportion of an agricultural labourer’s wage in 2009 to what it was in 1938 or 1939, but it is worth while bearing this in mind while we discuss the whole problem.