Alcohol Labelling Bill [HL]

I am very glad to be able to support my noble friend Lady Coussins. She has moved the amendment with great skill and most comprehensively, for which I am grateful. I have had no chance to discuss any of these amendments with her before today's debate, but quite independently I arrived at the same conclusions concerning miniature bottles. Miniatures contain either five centilitres or, occasionally, only three centilitres—usually when the bottle contains cognac. It is almost impossible to get any meaningful warning on a bottle that size. If there were lettering a millimetre high it would swamp the rest of the bottle. I do not think anyone would willingly buy a miniature, not least because they are terribly bad value. If you multiply a miniature by 15 to get the price of a bottle, it would be enormously expensive. Mostly, you get given them free on British Airways flights, no doubt to compensate for your delayed luggage. British Airways are very good at that: I have a collection of empty miniature bottles which are useful for various things. This is an unanswerable point. I suppose that there may be other containers which are difficult to label, but the miniature bottle is certainly one. I urge the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, to think very carefully about it.