Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, I am moving this amendment to enable us to have a debate about the effect of pricing on the buying and consumption of alcohol. This amendment, therefore, proposes to set up a mechanism for creating a minimum price for various sorts of alcohol. I have done this, of course, against the background of alcohol consumption in the UK having risen markedly in the past 70 years. Although I heard the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, comment that we are just a nation of drinkers, consumption is very affected by price. That would also be shown to be the case historically because when Hogarth, for example, was complaining about Gin Alley, one proposal to solve that issue was to stop gin from being such an incredibly cheap drink. Among the young now, the drink of choice on which to get completely drunk before going out to clubs or pubs is vodka which, again, is remarkably cheap for a very strong spirit. Quite a number of studies have been done with regard to this; the School of Health and Related Research at the University of Sheffield has reviewed the effects of alcohol pricing and promotion. It did a detailed analysis of how much was spent, in particular, by those who were deemed to be binge-drinking already; that is, men drinking 50-plus units a week and women drinking 35-plus units a week. It is, of course, those people who are drinking far too much already who we really worry about, whether they are underage or over 18. The cost of that excess drinking in both health and social terms is something that this Committee has already touched on. The Government now have some experience of dealing with things that affect health, such as putting a high price on tobacco. It is just one of the many weapons in their armoury for the fight against smoking. The purpose of my amendment is to ask whether pricing could form part of the fight against the excessive consumption of alcohol. What I am also trying to do in this amendment is not to have anything more than a minimal effect on those who buy one bottle of quality wine or a pint of decent beer in the pub. In response to previous amendments, the Minister touched on the irresponsible promotions that take place. I shall quote some of the findings in the study that I have already referred to. The policy responses suggested in the study are to increase alcohol duty and link alcohol taxes to inflation; to link taxation rates to alcohol strength, including the introduction of tax incentives for low-alcohol alternatives; minimum pricing and policies targeting price-based promotions. A range of responses could be made. Research into the effect, for example, of setting a minimum price of 50p per unit of alcohol, which is pretty basic, shows that every year in England alone there would be 3,393 fewer deaths, 97,000 fewer hospital admissions, 45,800 fewer crimes and over 250,000 fewer sick days taken. The estimated total saving would be £7.4 billion over 10 years. Of course, those statistics are based on a number of assumptions, but common sense tells us that if the level of harmful binge drinking were to fall dramatically, obviously the monetary cost to society would fall as well. In June 2009, the Centre for Economics and Business Research published a report looking at the potential economic impact of a minimum unit price for alcohol being introduced in the UK. The report, which was commissioned by SABMiller—a brewer, of course—interestingly looked particularly at the evidence base of the Sheffield report. It concluded that the economic case for minimum pricing is weak, saying that consumers would pay a significant price for little benefit and, because heavier drinkers are relatively unresponsive to price changes, the savings to wider society would be minimal. It is not a cut and dried argument and there is a lot to debate. I would suggest at the very least that apart from debating the issue today, the Government should invest far more heavily in their own research. I do not think that they have done a lot in this area, but they are aware of the benefits of this approach through, as I have mentioned, the reaction to tobacco when ensuring that VAT rose to a level that provided a disincentive. This is an area worthy of far more examination, and I beg to move.