Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, this has been a useful and good discussion, repeating to some extent what we discussed in Committee but taking the debate a step further. The interesting thing about how the amendment now looks is that it has picked up a lot of the points that were made when we discussed this the first time around and tried to come up with a fresh look at some of the issues causing concern. To a greater or lesser extent, those aims have been achieved for the amendment. We should therefore consider it carefully. At the heart of all this is a feeling that has not yet got through to some of those responsible for drafting and supporting the Bill, which is that alcohol is a drug and falls to be considered alongside cigarettes and hard drugs, and is not to be treated as a distinctive social phenomenon that we tolerate but are not concerned about unless it gets to a certain level. This came up time and again in our earlier debates, and is at the heart of what has been said today. We know from the experience of trying to deal with this over the years and across many countries, and the number of reports that have come out, that you cannot treat any of the problems that alcohol causes in isolation from the three main strands. You have to deal with price; you have to deal with availability, in terms of the times that it is available to be purchased and used; and you have to have treatment. You cannot satisfactorily come up with a policy in this area unless you deal with all three. I think that the debates have again shown that we have still not got the answer on price, although there are some measures going forward that we might want to consider in due course. Availability is indeed the subject of much of the discussion of some sections of the Bill. One hopes, although it is a bit of an experiment in some cases, that questions of availability will be dealt with. We may have to come back to that in the future. Treatment is the big black hole into which we seem to pour all our aspirations, but from which we do not receive any real solutions. I said in Committee that, looking at how society deals with alcohol—and drugs more generally—we are moving far too quickly to a penal approach. We do not think about the impact that other possible solutions might have. We do not seem to be bringing forward alternatives for consideration at a time when there are worrying consumption trends and concerns about the fact that our young people seem to be drinking stronger and stronger drinks and causing problems. Although I understood what the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, was saying about drunkenness, it plays to my concern about the effects of the pursuit, use and abuse of alcohol, which come before that rather sympathetic view of drunkenness: ““He’s just drunk; sorry about that””. Actually, it is much worse than that because that leads on to violence, as we have heard, both in the home and outside. It leads on to car crashes, traffic incidents and other problems—and, of course, the impact on children, which we have heard about. The figures cited initially by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, were astonishing. If that is the effect of these schemes, admittedly in different cultures and places, we are bonkers if we do not try to take account of those and get some schemes going on this. On whether this scheme is the one that we should get behind, we have our doubts. We are not necessarily going to support this in the Lobbies if it goes to a vote because we are strongly of the view that the Government’s role in this matter is to remove the barriers to those who would wish to undertake pilots in this area, but not necessarily to support this particular scheme in this particular location. I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response to that. Governments should not stand in the way of those who have the interest, the capacity, the funding and the structure to introduce such a plan, and we wish them well with it, if they wish to go ahead with that. It seems completely wrong for the Government to be obstructing that at this time. The consequence of our position—and this will probably be true of the government Front Bench—is that it seems to be only the Front Benches who are against the scheme. Speeches from all around the Chamber have been supportive of it. We were discussing that on the Front Bench before I stood; we seemed to think that we were probably in the wrong on this matter. I am afraid that I do not quite see the solution to it, but we will have a further discussion after I have sat down to see if I can persuade us to move gently towards any Lobby that might be opening up before us. We will certainly encourage people to move through that Lobby, even if we cannot do so ourselves. That may feel a little strange.