Alcohol Abuse

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, for his persistence in keeping the matter of alcohol abuse on the parliamentary and government agenda.

Evidence and reports abound on this matter. Public Health England did a thorough evidence review in 2016, the Government’s alcohol strategy was issued in 2012 and there are numerous reports detailing the cost to the NHS, which has been outlined as £3.5 billion a year. Last year there was an excellent report by the APPG on Alcohol Harm called The Frontline Battle about the huge burden on the emergency services caused by alcohol misuse. However, there is precious little mention in these reports—or, therefore, praise or policy from Her Majesty’s Government in this regard—of how alcohol and its use varies in religious and ethnic minority communities, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report in July 2010, Ethnicity and Alcohol: A Review of the UK Literature, being a notable exception.

What is known is that in many ethnic minority communities the rates of abstinence are higher. According to the Public Health England evidence review that I have mentioned, 15% of white women, 38% of black women and 74% of British Asian women abstain completely. There are many reasons for this, including the physiological. According to the Berkeley university well-being project, it is very common in people from Chinese, Japanese and Korean backgrounds to have difficulty digesting alcohol because of a genetic variant that impairs the production of an enzyme that helps to metabolise alcohol in the liver. Within religious communities such as the Latter-day Saints, Muslims, the Salvation Army and Methodists, and for many within the black Pentecostal churches, refraining from alcohol is advocated, which may explain the lower levels of alcohol consumption in the British black and black Caribbean communities.

While the main government messaging needs to remain around drinking sensibly as this is the majority activity, the lack of commendation by the NHS and government Ministers of religious and ethnic minority communities, particularly Muslims, who refrain is remiss. Having taken part in the parliamentary police service scheme and been out on a Friday night on Shaftesbury Avenue, it is not people in obvious religious attire such as Muslim women or Salvation Army leaders that you see literally in the gutters and then appearing at A&E—a fact that is just not mentioned. These religious and ethnic minority communities are indeed ahead of the curve as they are in tune with the rising number of young adults, the millennials, who drink in moderation or do not drink at all.

Studies have shown that where there are young adults in a college setting with a significant number from a black or minority ethnic community, overall the young people in that group drink less. It has an effect of good peer pressure within the group. Yet the lack of evidence is serious as without it there are none of the bespoke policies needed to help those in these communities who drink. There is evidence that when such people drink they do so at higher levels, hidden away and facing barriers to accessing the help they need from the NHS. Also, if you drink without the enzyme to break down alcohol there are greater health risks and a higher incidence of hypertension. I have not seen any awareness of this within the NHS.

A national piece of work, looking at the evidence and policies in Yorkshire mill towns, city centres such as Birmingham, Chinatown and boroughs such as Lambeth is well overdue. It would show how much ethnic minorities save the National Health Service but also any deficiencies so that people could then access services they need. Perhaps religious leaders could also help bring down the barriers for communities when they need to access other professional services.