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Alcohol

I do not think that my hon. Friend is disagreeing with me. Perhaps she does not like my suggesting that her Committee has not solved this problem; it might have thought that it had. I have made it absolutely clear that one of the problems is the price differential between the on trade and the off trade and the irresponsible supermarket selling of alcohol at unreasonably low prices, even below cost prices. Nevertheless, there will still be people who go to bars and clubs and are unaffected by that. Not to recognise that shows a lack of realism and a lack of understanding of human psychology. These things need to be looked at in a more holistic way. It is important to focus on moving towards a minimum price—setting that level to stop irresponsible off-trade pricing to ensure that people are not able to access it—but that alone will not deal with the problem entirely. We have to acknowledge the culture. Although the Select Committee's report rightly touched on the issue of pubs being an important place for sociable, controlled drinking, I am afraid that we all, as a nation, have to accept that a cultural change must also be considered. We are concerned not only about the changes that we have seen with regard to people drinking more at home, but about people buying alcohol from the off trade, including supermarkets, and then drinking it in the park or on the street. There has been a cultural change in the on trade, too. The sector of the on trade that is particularly suffering is the traditional community pub that has a particular role not only in being somewhere for people in the area to meet but in being a controlled sociable atmosphere where people of all ages will go. It is very regrettable how some sections of the on-trade industry—I use that word advisedly, because we are talking about some very large companies—have deliberately done away with community pubs and moved to vertical drinking spaces. They have deliberately pushed people away from a convivial, sociable culture where they sit down to one in which they are crammed in and there is loud music. It is not about chatting but about drinking and encouraging people to drink more. That change must be acknowledged, and it will not be dealt with by pricing alone.