Policing and Crime Bill

The Government are clear that selling alcohol to young people is unacceptable, which is the view in the Chamber. I am pleased to say that that view is also shared by the majority of those who sell alcohol and their representatives. It is rather nice for the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, to own his own pub with his own name; it is a splendid thing to do. I hope that I can explain why I believe this is important and that the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, will give me more marks than the other place in achieving that. I will have a go. It is clear from the targeted enforcement campaigns that we ran that a number of retailers still sell to under-18s, which has to stop. It is not all just errors. In the summer of 2007 the Home Office ran its Tackling Underage Sales Of Alcohol Campaign—TUSAC—which targeted more than 2,500 premises nationally to ascertain the extent of underage sales and how frequently they were made over a three-month period. The premises targeted as part of this campaign had already been identified as problem premises, and the results showed that 40 per cent of the premises targeted failed on at least one occasion, 8 per cent failed twice and 1 per cent failed three times. Despite being told when it started that they were being targeted for underage sales, 8 per cent still failed twice in that three-month period. The Government are committed to targeting a minority of businesses that sell alcohol illegally. Even though those premises were targeted on the basis of local intelligence, we felt that the failure rates were unacceptable. If young people know that certain shops will sell them alcohol, they will take advantage, and it is possible that when under the influence of alcohol, as we all know, these young people will be involved in anti-social behaviour, possibly crime and they can cause themselves harm.