Alcohol Labelling Bill [HL]

My Lords, I agree absolutely that it is vital for women who are pregnant, or who are planning to be, to know about the effects of alcohol on the developing foetus so they can decide whether they should modify their drinking in the interests of the baby’s health. I also agree that putting information or advice on the labels of alcoholic drinks is one important way to promote awareness of that message. The question for me is only whether imposing a statutory duty is the most effective way to achieve that. I hope I might convince the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, when he reads this speech, that he would see his underlying objective amply fulfilled by placing his confidence in the voluntary labelling agreement announced last May by the Government and the industry. Legislation at this point would have a disproportionately adverse impact on the industry without achieving any significant increase in women’s awareness of the impact of alcohol on pregnancy and would almost certainly produce no change in their behaviour. Indeed, some evidence suggests that if consumers are presented with information cast as a warning, as proposed in the Bill, they are likely to react unfavourably, especially if the warning comes from the Government. If I thought that labelling were the only or the most effective way to inform women about alcohol and pregnancy, then I would have no reservations about supporting the Bill. If I thought that pregnancy labelling could be achieved only by forcing the industry to do it with legislation, I would again have no reservations. The fact is, however, that the industry has moved significantly on this issue since the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, last introduced his Bill a year ago. I know from my 10 years as chief executive of the Portman Group that the drinks industry can often be spurred into redoubling its efforts and speeding up its actions on social responsibility if there is the threat of legislation as a backstop. However, the situation on this issue is that voluntary commitment to pregnancy labelling, if I can call it that for short, is now so widespread that the disadvantages of legislation simply outweigh the benefits of having the threat of it waiting in the wings in case voluntary labelling fails. I want to develop my argument a little bit more. Your Lordships should know that although I no longer work for the Portman Group, I have an interest as a non-executive adviser on social responsibility to Brown-Forman, a global wines and spirits company. In my earlier career in the voluntary sector, I worked and campaigned with a number of organisations concerned with maternity and infants’ rights and welfare. First, there is the question of timing. The Government and the industry have agreed a five-point voluntary labelling scheme, one element of which is pregnancy information that is broadly in line with what the Bill proposes. The Department of Health will monitor compliance throughout 2008 and has said that it will decide at the end of the year whether legislation is justified. The noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, knows that when his Bill comes to Committee I shall be as helpful as possible, but in the light of this timetable for the voluntary agreement I am hoping he might agree that it is putting the cart before the horse to deal with the Bill now. Secondly, the industry is not just paying lip service. I shall illustrate with just a few figures. Taking the wine sector first, 23 per cent of the UK market is supermarkets’ own-label brands, and all these retailer chains have already begun the production process to include the pregnancy advice on the label. Some are in the shops already. The largest wine company in Europe, Constellation, has a further 22 per cent of the UK market. It already has the French logo on some brands and will include it on 80 per cent of its brands on the UK market by this autumn. Half a dozen other global companies have between about 1 per cent and about 8 per cent each of the wine market, and several of those have also already agreed that they will adopt the pregnancy labelling point within the voluntary agreement. Most of the remaining 35 per cent or so of wine here comes from French companies and is already labelled accordingly. In the spirits sector, the retailers’ own brands are over one-third of the UK market, and again are already carrying the pregnancy advice or will certainly do so shortly. Of the five or six major producer companies which, between them, account for virtually all the rest of the UK’s spirits market, half are already committed to including the pregnancy advice on the label, including, I am pleased to say, the company I advise. In the beer sector, supermarkets’ own brands are a very small part of the market, although all these now carry the pregnancy advice or have a production timetable in place to do so. It is the same with the two major producers whose brands between them make up 40 per cent of our beer market. Another two are actively considering it and others which are currently unwilling might well change their mind if there were consistent medical advice, a point I shall return to in a moment. I hope noble Lords will agree that this represents genuine progress. I believe that by the end of the year, when the department evaluates the scheme, a significant majority of total product in the UK market will carry the pregnancy advice. Ironically, if the Bill proceeds, progress is likely to dry up because companies will no longer be sure what is expected of them. They will not want to invest this year in one new label design only to face a new statutory scheme next year. Those already complying with the voluntary scheme would effectively be penalised by having to fund two changes. It is unfair to penalise the industry’s most responsible companies in this way. A key milestone which could trigger further compliance will be when we know the outcome of the review by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. At least two of the very largest drinks producers are currently holding back from pregnancy labelling because they are, quite defensibly, reluctant to put their reputation on the line and even risk legal action by carrying misleading or inaccurate information. In the past year we have seen conflicting advice from the Department of Health, NICE and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Although the chief medical officers are agreed, this really must be underpinned by a solid consensus among the scientists and practitioners, otherwise the reluctance of some drinks companies will remain with good reason, despite their genuine wish to play a part. Noble Lords might say that if the majority of the industry is so sympathetic to pregnancy labelling and so many are already doing it, why would it be so dreadful to make it mandatory? Legislation would not ask the good guys to do anything they are not doing already, so what is the problem? The problem is that the price of mandatory labelling for all brands of all alcoholic drinks would be disproportionate cost and serious threat to the viability of many small businesses, with a consequent impact on consumer choice. This would apply particularly in the wine sector, where thousands of small producers from all over the world, using hundreds of UK agents, use the UK market to test thousands of new wines every year. We are talking about a very small percentage of the market in volume terms, but the cost to these companies of labelling for just one market would be prohibitive and might even raise questions about fair practice within the EU’s competition regime. It would also mean that choice for the vast majority of UK consumers—who are not pregnant—would be diminished. A regulatory impact assessment is needed to calculate the effects of what may seem like a modest labelling requirement but which could have much wider ramifications. I would happily argue that all this would be a price worth paying, and well worth paying, if it were the case that only by labelling could we inform women about the effects of alcohol on pregnancy, or even if it were the case that there was a vast knowledge gap that needed to be plugged. But neither of these things is true. In June, the Government published the revised National Alcohol Harm Reduction Strategy, which revealed that the proportion of mothers who drink during pregnancy fell in the five years between 2000 and 2005. Some 46 per cent said that they did not drink anything at all and 92 per cent of the rest drank two units or less a week. This is absolutely in line with the advice endorsed by the chief medical officers; that is not surprising, as nearly three-quarters of mothers who drank said that they had received information about drinking in pregnancy, mainly from their midwives. The others may just have been following the message from their own body which, in my experience, stops you drinking the minute you are pregnant by making you feel nauseous at the very thought. The Government also said that they would be launching a new campaign in April this year to ensure that women are aware of the revised advice. Labelling is a sensible way of reinforcing this advice, but is by no means the primary source of information for women. Indeed, were it down to labelling alone, we should almost certainly not have such a positive story to tell. Research in the US and Denmark suggests that pregnant women’s attitudes are largely independent of the advice they get on health warning labels. So my conclusion is that the price of forcing every producer to label every brand is not justified either by the information gap among women or by the role played by labelling within the whole range of sources of advice available. The department seems to accept this point, because it stated in the voluntary agreement that, "““it may not be practicable or may be disproportionately costly for labels of some products to carry all or any aspects of the sensible drinking message””." There is one other argument against legislation, to do with the principles of better regulation. If a policy objective can be achieved through voluntary action or self-regulation, it is surely a waste of public expenditure and an unwise use of parliamentary time to create, administer and police a system that the industry is demonstrably able to produce and pay for itself. I also think that there are ways in which the Bill could be more proportionate and consistent, and I will mention them in passing, leaving more detailed discussion for the Committee stage. For example, I should have thought that the guidance on legibility of labels from the Food Standards Agency would be perfectly adequate for drinks containers, without having to go further and be as prescriptive as the Bill. The penalties also seem excessively harsh, given the existing penalties. A lot of emphasis has been placed on action taken on labelling in other countries, particularly within the EU. But I think that the UK is leading, not catching up. France is currently the only other member state with a statutory requirement for pregnancy labelling. Finland and Sweden will follow suit, and there are discussions in a small number of other countries. But in this context, the UK’s voluntary scheme and its likely impact of a very high percentage of market volume being labelled by the end of this year looks pretty impressive to me. What would be unhelpful would be 27 different statutory schemes, each requiring a different format and different message. Already quite different labelling protocols are emerging in France, Finland and Poland. The Bill would add to the variety and the confusion. If there has to be legislation, it would be far better from the point of view of the industry and, I think, the consumer, for it to be a single piece of EU legislation prescribing a common and consistent approach across all markets. I think that the voluntary agreement on labelling will achieve the step change in information which the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, seeks through the Bill, but without the unintended consequences and disadvantages that I have outlined. As for improvements in behaviour in the light of that information, in the end that is down to women themselves.