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Alcohol

The hon. Gentleman is right, and I will come to that point soon. This week, the Herald Scotland reported on research conducted by Dr. Jonathan Sher, director of research, policy and programmes for the Children in Scotland study. According to the Herald Scotland, the""study warns that Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) and the less obvious Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD)"—" what I was hinting at before—""are entirely avoidable and completely incurable."" If it is a self-regarding action—for instance, if a middle-aged man decides to drink himself to death—it is very sad, but he does it to himself. If, in doing so, however, a child is damaged for life, the action is against someone else as well. It is, no doubt, deeply worrying for many mothers. Is it not sensible that we warn people from now on that, if they drink during pregnancy, they could and, if they drink excessively, definitely will, damage their children for life? There is much detail in the report, into which I do not need to go now, but the sheer numbers in Scotland suggest that about 10,000 children in Britain have visible FAS problems. On foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, we are talking about hundreds of thousands and, who knows, possibly even more. This a very serious problem, so we need to persuade young women not to drink when they are pregnant, but unfortunately the two are associated, because lots of young women do drink to excess, and perhaps getting pregnant when young and drinking are related—they get pregnant because they have been drunk and taken advantage of by men. Teenage pregnancy in Britain is six times higher than in Holland. In many ways, Holland and Britain are similar countries—in terms of culture and the ethnic mix—but we have six times more teenage pregnancies than Holland. Is that associated, possibly, with teenage drinking? I suspect that a lot of it is. However, not only does that cause a problem in terms of getting pregnant in the first place, but those young women continue drinking and then damage their babies before they are born. That is deeply worrying and something that I have been concerned about for a long time. It is time to take serious action, and I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to take my suggestions back to her colleagues in Government and to start to think seriously about action. My minimum suggestion is for a seven-point plan—it could be eight, nine, 10 or 12 points. The first is for warning labels on all alcoholic drinks stating that if a pregnant woman drinks, she might damage or, if she drinks to excess, will damage her baby for life. That should be on walls in pubs and on all alcoholic drinks. We should have public information on television, radio and other media about that. Public information should be displayed wherever appropriate to ensure that all women know that, if they drink when pregnant, they are likely to damage their baby.