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Alcohol

I am indeed, Mr. Deputy Speaker. With the leave of the House, I want to thank all the people who have taken part in the debate on the Select Committee's report. Someone said just a few minutes ago that we have not debated all aspects of the report. The report was not about finding solutions: if there were simple solutions to binge drinking and ill health owing to alcohol, we would not have those problems in our society. Clearly, we have tried to open up the whole issue. I want to thank all Members who have taken part in the debate. It is true that the pricing of alcohol has been mentioned up by practically everybody. There might have been a consensus on minimum pricing—that is a start—but we think that even if a minimum price per unit of alcohol was introduced, other duties should be considered at the same time. The representatives on both Front Benches mentioned considering duty as a means of encouraging people to drink lesser strength alcohol, and that will be to the general good. Such types of duty have hardly moved for years, so I thank them for their support. I have two further points to make. First, the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Dr. Taylor), who is a member of the Committee, and two other speakers who intervened on the Minister, mentioned A and E. The hon. Gentleman said that he had had some students who had said that there should be a "three strikes and you're out" policy in A and E. If people go to A and E for a third time with an alcohol-related problem that has effectively been self-generated, the A and E should think about charging. I am not there yet on that point, but if hon. Members look at the Library note for this debate they will see that binge-drinking or misuse of alcohol costs the national health service and therefore us as taxpayers £1.7 billion a year. The note states:""Around 70 per cent. of A&E attendances between midnight and 5am on weekend nights are alcohol-related."" I do not think that my parents' generation argued for a national health service for it to become a comfort to people who act irresponsibly and expect taxpayers to pick them up off the street and pick up the bill for doing so. My hon. Friend the Minister will have heard me say these things before, and I say them as an individual, not necessarily as the Chair of the Health Committee. The second point concerns EU competition policy, which has been discussed by Front Benchers on both sides. We looked at that issue in relation to introducing minimum prices per unit of alcohol, and we discovered that people often use it as an argument against minimum pricing. Clearly, the Scottish Government wanted to introduce minimum pricing in Scotland, but it does not look as though they can convince their Parliament to do so at this stage. They have considered the issue thoroughly and they strongly disagreed on this point, as our report states:""The Scottish Government, which has examined this issue thoroughly, strongly disagrees and EU Competition Law does provide for a public health exemption. This exemption has been successfully used by the French Government to ban alcohol advertising and sponsorship in certain circumstances"—" indeed, the Committee took evidence on that in France—""winning a number of cases in the"" European Court of Justice""which were brought by the alcohol industry."" So there are public health exemptions from EU competition law. If Front Benchers are looking at that issue, I say to them that we should not shy away from making the changes if there could be a public health gain. I was convinced by the evidence in the Sheffield report. Clearly, not everyone in this debate has been convinced by it, but this issue will not go away. At some stage we will have to take action, possibly on pricing, to restrict the availability of alcohol and to lower levels of consumption among many of our fellow citizens because those levels are harmful to their individual health. Question deferred (Standing Order No. 54 (4)).