Alcohol Harm Commission: Report 2020

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lady Finlay for her powerful introduction. I declare an interest as one of the members of her commission, which she so admirably steered to producing such a wonderful report.

In the limited time that we have, I want to focus on calories. I have been banging on about calories since the Labour Government were in power and about the need for calories to be shown on labels for alcohol. Why is the drinks industry exempt from telling people what they are consuming and what it might do to them?

I am pleased that we are starting to make some progress. There is a firm recommendation in this report and I hope that the Minister will be positive. One of the old excuses for why we could not do anything was that we were in the European Union and legislation and regulations there prevented us from acting unilaterally. We have now come out of Europe and we now have the freedom to do as we choose. I look to see whether the Minister will take sides on this issue, now that he has the freedom to do so, if required.

I had a useful conversation this morning with Sir Keith Mills, who has been appointed by the Prime Minister to review the way in which incentives might be used to encourage people to reduce their weight and exercise more. He is looking at new technologies; there are some developments taking place that are of some significance. I see that the Minister is nodding in agreement, so perhaps when he comes to respond he might say a little more about that. A change would allow an app, on our mobile or on our wrist, to tell us, for all items that have calories marked on them, just what we are purchasing. We would know what is in our shopping basket while still in the supermarket. That would be a big change. We should not permit the drinks industry to be exempt from that change.

I hope that the Minister will assure us that the consultation will be concluded soon and the Government will come out with a strong indication that, for the first time ever, we will have formal labelling on alcoholic drinks.