Alcohol Labelling Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 3: 3: Clause 1, page 1, line 3, leave out ““warning”” and insert ““advice”” The noble Baroness said: Amendment No. 3 and those identical to it deal with replacing the word ““warning”” with the word ““advice””. Again, the parallel with smoking is an issue. For tobacco products, the word ““warning”” is justified. The messages on packets of cigarettes, such as ““Smoking kills”” or ““Smoking causes serious damage to your health””, are warnings. But in the case of alcohol, this Bill is seeking the promotion not of a warning but of advice. It cannot be a warning, partly because we do not know enough for it to be as bold as with smoking. Private Members’ Bills should of course be evidence-based even if they are not obliged to come up with a regulatory impact assessment. In June 2007, the British Medical Association said: "““Determining the incidence of FASD is complicated by a lack of reliable and consistent data collection, and the difficulty in diagnosing the range of disorders. Consequently, the incidence of FASD in the UK and internationally is not accurately known. The relationship between maternal alcohol consumption and the development of the range of disorders is not fully understood””." However, we know enough to understand that there is some kind of relationship to worry about, which is why the current Department of Health guidance is framed as it is. It states: "““As a general rule pregnant women or women trying to conceive should avoid drinking alcohol. If they do choose to drink, to protect the baby they should not drink more than one to two units of alcohol once or twice a week and should not get drunk””." For labelling purposes, this is abbreviated to: "““Avoid alcohol if pregnant or trying to conceive””." The second part of that advice is extremely important. It is not just about the dangers of damaging the foetus, but also about excessive alcohol consumption having an adverse impact on fecundability or the chances of conceiving in the first place. I believe that the Department of Health knows from recent qualitative research that this aspect of its pregnancy advice is less well known and less well understood by the target audience, so it is particularly important to include. I am very supportive of the text proposed in this Bill, apart from the words ““GOVERNMENT WARNING””. We also know from research over several years that people’s responses to so-called health warnings are not positive and can even be counterproductive. It is much more sensible to position this in terms of advice. I propose to delete the words ““GOVERNMENT WARNING”” from the beginning of the prescribed text because we must start from the consumer and what we know about how they would respond to public health messages. Having what is called a warning would be bad enough, but I am afraid that something calling itself a government warning is doubly bad for the chances of its being taken seriously. There is simply no need for it; let us concentrate on advice. In any case, all labels will carry the Drinkaware website address, which has detailed information about alcohol and pregnancy. I beg to move.