Alcohol Labelling Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 23: 23: Clause 11, page 6, line 27, leave out paragraphs (a) and (b) and insert ““to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale”” The noble Baroness said: I propose through this amendment to downgrade the potential penalties for breaches of the labelling requirements under the Bill. I do so for reasons of consistency and proportionality—two of the better regulation principles. I have already read out a bit of the advice on the principle of consistency; on proportionality, the advice is as follows: "““Policy solutions must be proportionate to the perceived problem or risk and justify the compliance costs imposed—don’t use a sledgehammer to crack a nut””." The first comparison that I would make is, again, with the Food Labelling Regulations 1996, under which any person found guilty of an offence is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, which is currently up to £5,000. The kind of offences that we are talking about under the food labelling regulations would be misleading nutritional information, selling food after the use-by date or not marking or labelling the product in compliance with the regulations. We are looking at a comparable type of message or advice in the Bill. No term of imprisonment is mentioned in the food labelling regulations and no reference is made to conviction on indictment. There is another comparison, which I suspect the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, would rather make—the penalty under the Tobacco Products (Manufacture, Presentation and Sale) (Safety) Regulations 2002, under which an offence would attract a penalty harsher than the one that I propose in that it specifies on summary conviction a term of imprisonment not exceeding three months or a fine not exceeding level 5—but please note the either/or. So even here there is no additional mention of a penalty on conviction on indictment of up to two years’ imprisonment, as is currently in this Bill. The penalty is also clearly either three months or the fine, whereas in the Bill it could be both—although I see that the noble Lord intends to try to change that himself. Would he consider going further still and support my amendment, taking the view that the parallel with the food labelling regulations and not the tobacco regulations is the fairer and more consistent approach? As I argued earlier, we are not in a tobacco situation here: we are talking about advice, not a warning. Smoking kills, whereas alcohol in moderation can be beneficial to some groups in the population. Even in the very specific and special circumstance of pregnancy, it is important to keep things in a proper perspective. I would hate us to fall into the trap of sending out disproportionately alarmist messages and thereby cause problems, not alleviate them, as happened in the USA and Canada in the 1980s, for example, when completely unfounded misinformation about foetal alcohol syndrome reportedly led to unprecedented distress, anxiety and even requests for abortion on the part of healthy women who had been light drinkers, but were scared by the way in which the media and others had distorted research findings that were applicable only to women who were clearly problem drinkers and consuming very high levels of alcohol. We are not dealing with a potential offence that should be capable of putting someone behind bars for two years or at all. A fine at level 5, which is the most severe level, is adequate. Anything more than that could be counterproductive, as it could be seen as so disproportionate that convictions would be unlikely. That would, in turn, defeat the whole object of creating an offence. I beg to move.