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Alcohol

My hon. Friend is right. I commend to him much of the speech of the hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Greg Mulholland), who made a number of telling points about the importance of pubs in local communities. I, too, would be happy to take up an invitation to the Otley festival, and I know that he comes along to the Saltaire festival in my constituency. The problem with the political classes generally, particularly in this House, is that when they are faced with a problem—there is no doubt that there is a problem with excessive drinking of alcohol—the solution that they propose has to be constituted of two particular themes. The first ingredient in any solution that politicians propose is that it must show that they are doing something; they have to be seen to be doing something. The second ingredient, which we always see, is that the proposal must not offend anyone and must be superficially popular. Once again, that approach applies to many of the recommendations, most of which would not make a blind bit of difference to excessive or under-age alcohol consumption. I was particularly struck by the speech of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who made the best speech that I have ever heard in support of a Scottish Parliament. I have never been particularly in favour of it in the past, but now that I have heard that there are so many sensible people in the Scottish Parliament who oppose his zealous drive for minimum pricing, I think that is a strong argument for it. Perhaps if the Scottish Parliament were closed down, however, we could have some of those people down here and then we might have a more sensible debate.