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Alcohol

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. As he says, there are adequate powers to deal with some of the abuses of selling alcohol and they are not currently used. That also applies to selling alcohol to minors. The existing system is there, and we do not need more laws and regulations: we just need to use the ones that we have. I agree with him from that perspective. There is still an insufficient focus on education about alcohol. If we are to have a culture in which people are brought up to think that alcohol is to be respected, we will need more education, including in schools. Some very positive campaigns have been run over the past 18 months, and that has been a good use of Department of Health money to get the message across about binge drinking. However, there is a problem in simply talking about alcohol as a drug and about the dangers of alcohol. Other societies and nations have a different attitude towards alcohol. They do not just say, "This is a dangerous thing and you must make sure that you don't abuse it"; they bring up their children to understand and respect it.