Alcohol Labelling Bill [HL]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Mitchell, and with the permission of the House, I rise to speak at this point in the debate and to move that the Bill be now read a second time. Some have greatness thrust upon them. I am glad that the Bill is of such a length that I could read it properly and prepare myself in a way that allows me to speak first on this issue. I was drawn to it as a subject when I believed that its field of application would be more widely drawn than has turned out to be the case. However, even this discrete area of proposed legislation allows me to consider the points that would have been perhaps more germane had there been a wider field of reference. I begin with both a disclaimer and an expression of interest. The disclaimer is that I speak, of course, as a Methodist—but a Methodist with a very nice wine cellar. In case there might be some misapprehension, I am proud of my church’s teaching on questions of social importance across the generations, but life is too short to go without the pleasures of life and we must find a proper way of enjoying them and, at the same time, safeguarding the vulnerable and the weak. I believe that the Bill makes one such proposal along those lines. The expression of interest is that our daughter will, within three or four weeks’ time, produce her first child. Our daughter loved the social life, which involved the consumption of alcohol and the smoking of cigarettes, prior to her pregnancy. My wife and I have watched with personal interest my daughter’s stance on those pleasures as she began, with her husband, to think of starting a family. With great pride we can say that her readiness and her ability to give up both habits have raised her considerably in our already rather aggrandised view of her qualities. As she is to give birth to her first child, our first grandchild, in Cambodia, I think that the misspelling of my title on the Order Paper suggests some kind of Freudian slip on someone’s part, but I am very grateful for the great care and attention that has been given to making me feel very much at home. Who can be against the proposal at the heart of the Bill? No one, I would have thought. It is sensible to give the right kind of warning and to display that warning in the proper place—visibly—to make its own point. I do not think the debate will involve noble Lords putting forward an opposing point of view. The reason I felt drawn to the debate is largely that I want us to remind ourselves that we should not imagine that by putting such a Bill on the statute book we will cure or solve the problem we are envisaging. In other areas of life in recent times, we can see where similar animadversions have been brought to bear on our social mores and have brought short-term benefits. For example, the safe sex campaign made a great impact when it was launched with all the advertising that went with it—some of it negative advertising showing the danger of HIV/AIDS—but more recent reports have shown that unsafe sex and sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise again. So there may well be a partial and immediate benefit to be gained from the Bill—I certainly want it to happen—but we should not imagine or delude ourselves that it will solve the problem once and for all. A similar thing has happened in the area of smoking, where health warnings abound. It is one of the ironies of life to see people clutching a packet of cigarettes that has a health warning which is visible to those looking at the smoker; whether it is visible to the smoker is another matter altogether. When one realises the recidivism and the dependency that are built into some of these pleasures, we should never imagine that what we are considering today will once and for all deal with the problem. How do we effect a change of culture? How do we create an ethos within which people recognise the choices available to them and choose sensibly? How do we avoid the repression of the culture I grew up in, which was so condemnatory of anything that purported to carry pleasurable connotations? How do we avoid the obvious negative aspects of that without just moving into a free-for-all ethos in which it seems that anything goes? In a post-modern culture where we make up our own ethics as we go along, nothing can be supposed to be bad. How do we avoid those two extremes? It is a Scylla and Charybdis situation. Those of us who are associated with bodies that, in the public mind and common perception, are negative, condemnatory and judgmental institutions find it very difficult to persuade others that there might be proper and objective grounds for some of the restrictions and that the desire to rein back the licence is reasonable. I commend the Bill on behalf of my noble friend. I thank the House for giving me the delusion that I am a Front-Bench spokesman and I hope that the Bill will be warmly endorsed—with the caveats that I have described. Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Griffiths of Burry Port.)