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Alcohol

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins), because nobody could ever accuse him of pussyfooting around. I strongly support his demands for urgent action. Several hon. Members, including the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron), the Chairman of the Health Committee, have invoked history. I will go a bit further back. In "A History of the Norman Kings", written just after 1066 and all that, William of Malmesbury said:""The English…were accustomed to eat until they became surfeited, and to drink till they were sick. These latter qualities they imparted to their conquerors."" We are therefore talking about an age-old problem—one that is as old as the hills. The hon. Member for Dartford (Dr. Stoate) did not do this, but my job in these debates is to terrify people. The only occasion on which I made somebody change their mind in this House was in the debate on smoking in public places. An inveterate smoker from the other side of the House came up to me afterwards and said, "You've scared me stiff. I'm giving up this moment." Whether I shall be able to change anybody's mind, and in particular the Minister's, I do not know, but I shall certainly have a good go. The hon. Member for Luton, North pointed out the problems in pregnancy, which are absolutely disastrous. If women drink heavily at the end of pregnancy, their babies can be born addicted to alcohol and will have to go through the withdrawal process. That is absolutely horrendous. Alcohol in excess is a drug of addiction. It is a poison in excess, leading to comas and things that, in the past, have led to deaths in police stations—the low blood sugar that is not recognised, so that people die of hypoglycaemia. People vomit and then aspirate their vomit. Alcohol is not a stimulant; it is a narcotic. However, it is a very poor narcotic, because it works as a diuretic, which obviously means that people cannot sleep because they have to get up to spend a large number of pennies. Alcohol disturbs the sleep pattern and worsens sleep disorders. The British National Formulary lists 36 drugs or groups of drugs with which alcohol interacts. It is therefore a dangerous substance in excess. However, I am with everybody else: not consumed in excess, alcohol can bring a great amount of pleasure, and I would never miss out on the House of Commons claret, for example, or several of the other potions that we can have here. Acute binges increase the risk of death, and of injury and criminal charges, either of which can ruin a young person's life. We heard from ambulance drivers about what can happen after bank holiday evenings, and on Halloween or similar occasions. Not only do they have to ferry drunk people to hospital, but if those drunks vomit in the ambulance or vomit over them, they have to clean out the ambulance—it is out of service for ages—and change their uniforms. The effects of binge drinking are horrendous. Chronic excessive consumption of alcohol can cause cirrhosis of the liver. Although I was never a liver specialist, in my day one had to do a little bit of everything, and the most distressing deaths were those from cirrhosis of the liver, with patients suffering from jaundice, cachexia, a grossly swollen stomach and distended veins, and vomiting blood. The original instrument of torture was still in use when I was working. The Sengstaken tube is a great big tube with two balloons on the end that the doctor would ram down the patient's throat. The doctor blew up the distal balloon and pulled it back, preventing it from going back into the stomach. There was also a big balloon in the stomach that the doctor blew up to press the varices and try to stop the bleeding. There are better ways of doing that now, but cirrhosis of the liver is still an horrendous illness. I shall not go into the costs to the NHS or the effects on families, because those have been mentioned, but what can be done? Education is certainly important, but it has been tried for a long time and it has failed. We were told about a project in St. Neots involving a community alcohol partnership, which introduced a system of stopping and searching teenage under-age drinkers. The results included a 42 per cent. decrease in antisocial behaviour in less than a year, a 94 per cent. decrease in under-age people found in possession of alcohol and a 92 per cent. decrease in alcohol-related litter at key hot spots. That was relatively simple and highly effective. Quite a lot has been said about limiting advertising. We made several important recommendations in the report that I do not think have been mentioned. First, on early detection and intervention, we suggested that any doctor or nurse who has an interaction with a patient should be alive to the possibility that they are on the way to alcohol dependency. If that can be detected early, we can do something about preventing it. We also said, in recommendation 16:""The solution is to link alcohol interventions in primary and secondary care with improved treatment services for patients developing alcohol dependency."" From that we recommended a target. I know that lots of people are not that in favour of targets, but the target that we recommended was extremely sensible:""Targets for reducing alcohol related admissions should be mandatory."" That is so obvious. Last week I had the great pleasure of judging a competition in the House in which five groups of A-level students, from five different schools and sixth-form colleges, each presented a party manifesto, with a logo and a motto. I gave the prize to students from King's high school in Warwick. One of the suggestions in the health part of their manifesto said:""We will introduce a three-strike policy for injuries caused as a result of alcohol, so that repeated attendances at A and E are paid for by the patient. Referrals to compulsory rehabilitation programmes are also made."" That is an example of young people recognising the tremendous risks to their peers and making some very sensible suggestions. I am even thinking of putting them into my manifesto for the election that is coming fairly soon. Another group has also underlined the importance of a minimum age for drinking. However, I believe that pricing is the real weapon, as many hon. Members have said. We have not yet decided whether measures should take the form of tax increases, minimum prices or both, but this is certainly important. I should like to enjoy another quote with the House. It is from "The Surgeon's Daughter" by Sir Walter Scott:""The burgesses of a Scottish borough are rendered by their limited means of luxury, inaccessible to gout, surfeits and all the comfortable chronic diseases which are attendant on wealth and indolence."" Price is crucial. If people do not have the money, they cannot buy alcohol. Supermarket promotions must be stopped, because the pre-loading takes place at home before people go out and that is the end of it. We must also aim the message at children. The hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) mentioned parenting, which is extremely important, but if the parents are not doing the job, someone else will have to do it, and, to my mind, that has to be the state.