Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, in welcoming this initiative, both as tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and as supported and encouraged by the Mayor of London, I look forward, if this is successful, to the Boris bins where people will go for their regular breathalyser. The initiative could be one that runs. I particularly support this initiative because, as my noble friend Lord Brooke has mentioned, of its recognition of the role that alcohol plays in crime and, especially, in domestic violence.

As an Alcohol Concern report has shown, there is already clear evidence of the link between alcohol and domestic abuse and, indeed, with child protection issues. Alcohol Concern has documented how often the criminal behaviour is repeated if the alcohol abuse is not tackled. It has many examples of its clients saying, “He only hits me when he's been drinking”—and I am afraid it is mostly a he. The response of advisers such as the alcohol support workers is, “If you knew you were going to hit the person you most loved once you have drunk, do you think you'd have that first drink?”. That is the problem—the fact that so many men continue to take that first drink shows how valuable an intervention aimed at offenders could be. The sobriety scheme could play an important role in this, although it is not enough on its own.

As my noble friend has just mentioned, alcohol referral schemes need to work alongside the sobriety scheme because people who have failed to tackle their misuse of alcohol are likely to need some assistance to work in parallel with this breath-testing. This may involve just a fairly brief intervention by experienced staff but I hope that the scheme would be allied to the provision of such help. Such help will depend on the provision of resources both by the Greater London Authority, if it happens there, and by the Government. It is deeply discouraging that the Department of Health has just cut by 100 per cent the funding of Alcohol Concern, the national agency on alcohol misuse which not only does the bulk of preventive work in this area but helps to set up and support local voluntary agencies that provide front-line services such as the Camden alcohol service agency, in which I declare an interest as a trustee.

Without Alcohol Concern and other national agencies working to ensure that help is available across London and elsewhere for such people who would enter this scheme, we risk this excellent initiative being undermined by dealing only with short-term sobriety rather than longer-term drinking problems. Nevertheless, I warmly welcome this initiative and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, on introducing it. I look forward to seeing such a pilot, albeit one that I hope is supported with treatment for those who have failed to manage their alcohol abuse.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, I, too, support this initiative introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff—so much so that I have put my name to Amendments 242 and 243. I will not detain the House for long in explaining why but, briefly, I, like everyone else, also have concerns about antisocial behaviour and crimes. They are the sorts of crimes that are often fuelled by alcohol. My interest is in how the people and communities affected by those crimes are impacted in terms of their own morale and their ambitions for themselves and their families. So when I first heard about this initiative proposed by the Mayor of London’s office, it struck me as something which made sense and was worth a go. For that reason, I thought that this proposal was seriously worth considering and I wanted to support it today, not just because of what it is trying to achieve in reducing the kinds of crime that affect people’s lives in a penetrating and long-term way but because the simplicity of the way it operates. As has been described in detail by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, if alcohol is found to have been the primary reason behind a crime, the offender commits to staying sober, is required to take a test twice a day for which he has to pay, and if he fails that test or does not turn up for it, then straightforward consequences occur.

The initiative has a clear aim and is simple in practice. It is inexpensive once the initial set-up costs are covered—it appears, from the information I have received, to be cost-neutral. The evidence shows that it can work; we have seen it work in the places in America where it has been in operation. For those reasons, I support and commend the amendment.

[Lord Soley]

My Lords, I support the amendment too, but I do not wish to repeat what has already been said in considerable detail about the effects of alcohol on the National Health Service, social services, prisons, police and the general population. I was chairman of the alcohol education centre many years ago at the Maudsley Hospital in south-east London. The problem of alcohol has not changed in its results since the 1970s; however, because of its increased availability in terms of price and outlets, it is now a much greater problem, and we see it on our streets. What I like about Amendment 242 in particular, as well as the other amendments, is that such a scheme can be piloted and evaluated. There have been many attempts to deal with the street problem of alcohol and of other aspects such as drugs, and the experiments do not always work. Evaluation and piloting are, in my judgment, a good idea.

I know that the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, is right about the drugs problem. We should not ignore that, but alcohol is different in one very important respect. It is a very powerful drug—as powerful as many others—but it is socially accepted and expected. That means that people use it without drugs; some use it with drugs but a large number of people use it without drugs and to excess.

My noble friends Lord Brooke and Lady Hayter made the point that it is a question of resources. That is the sort of thing we should build up over a period of time and why I have directed my remarks primarily to Amendment 242. When we see young people on television who are drunk in the street, you know that everyone sitting in front of their television sets is saying, “What do their parents think? What do those kids look like?”. At times like that I make myself think back to how I behaved in my adolescence. I would not like to go into this in too much detail, but—and this is relevant to what the noble Viscount said—I am afraid it is recognised that it is not just a mark of masculinity for men but for women too it is a mark of femininity, in a rather unusual way. That troubles me considerably, because although we all sit in front of our televisions and ask what their parents will say, the reality is that in many cases the parents will not say anything.