Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, in commenting on the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, I should perhaps explain to your Lordships my interest in this matter. In 1997, when an electorate sent me from this side of the House to the other side of the House, I founded a late-night bars business. I do not have to declare an interest any more because we sold it two years ago. It was floated on the Stock Exchange. It was a very responsible operator and I gained a certain knowledge of the industry. On the last Saturday night we operated, we had over 30,000 patrons in our various bars round the country, in Wales and Scotland as well as England. So I had a little interest in the business. We saw ourselves as encouraging drinking, but not to excess, and we did not encourage drunkenness. Indeed, the Prime Minister was on our board, so, as you can see, we were enormously respectable. However, our biggest problem was not what happened inside our bars but what happened outside, for numerous reasons. First, supermarkets were selling tins of lager for 50p when we were selling a pint of lager for up to £5. The problem was that people arrived having had too much to drink before going out. The Government have made some statements about minimum pricing. It will be interesting to see whether my noble friend the Minister can say any more on that. The other problem, I have to say, was drugs. Someone would take drugs before they came in, with the result that one or two drinks magnified the effect to the extent that they could have been drinking all night. That was the issue. The ones that ended up on the street might have looked drunk but the reason behind it was a combination of drink and drugs. That is important, and that is why in the interest of public health you must bring in the whole thing; you cannot lose one and not the other. That is why I think the amendment is extremely interesting. I would say in defence of bars that in the cities we operated in we had a very good relationship with the local authorities and with the police. We found that if there were no facilities for young people in cities, the problems were even worse because they had nowhere to go. They would go to the supermarket or the garage, as the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, would say, buy alcohol and end up being on the street, or wherever, causing a much greater problem than if it was properly regulated. I do hope that your Lordships will think that drinking is not bad if it is properly regulated and properly organised. I recognise that my grandmother, who was the first woman to sit in another place, campaigned for 30 years against drink being sold. However, on her 80th birthday we persuaded her that Dubonnet was non-alcoholic and she drank away. I hope in that spirit your Lordships will see that drink in moderation can be quite a good thing.