Alcohol Harm Commission: Report 2020

Baroness Jenkin of Kennington Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)]

My Lords, as another of the commissioners, albeit a rather absentee one, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for instigating this debate and to all those who participated in the report either as witnesses or by taking evidence. Its findings were powerful and worrying.

The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and I worked together in 2011 to persuade the Government to legislate for compulsory sobriety tagging for alcohol-related crimes. The alcohol abstinence and monitoring requirement, which checks offenders’ intake every 30 minutes, was piloted successfully and is now rolled out across the country. There is a clear connection between problematic alcohol consumption and crime, particularly heavy drinking or binge-drinking and violent crime. The most recent findings, from the Crime Survey for England and Wales in 2018, estimate that the proportion of violent incidents where the victim believed the offender to be under the influence of alcohol was 39%. The estimated total social and economic cost of alcohol-related harm in 2018 was £21.5 billion.

Reducing alcohol-related crime will mean fewer victims, save taxpayers’ money and have a positive impact in communities and on individuals. The legislation to introduce this solution to alcohol-related crimes took more than 10 years from conception, when Boris Johnson as Mayor of London first asked for it, to final implementation. It is a common-sense, effective, value-for-money solution. Why did it take so long?

In the time I have left, I, like others, commend the Government for their commitment to calorie labelling of alcoholic drinks as part of the obesity strategy. Polling shows that the UK public are overwhelmingly supportive of health and nutritional information on alcohol labels. It is clearly absurd that alcohol-free beer, for example, shows nutritional information but ordinary beer does not. This has to change. It is another common-sense, effective policy and I urge the Government to stick to their plans.