Health: Alcohol Abuse Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Hogan-Howe
Main Page: Lord Hogan-Howe (Crossbench - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Hogan-Howe's debates with the Department for International Development
(4 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberI will try to answer the question differently. The noble Lord points to the wide variety of harms that alcohol causes—the economic cost is something like £21 billion a year. We can see the involvement of alcohol abuse when looking at domestic violence—later this year, we will be considering the domestic abuse Bill—and the effect it has on children. The children of alcoholic parents must suffer terribly, and of course poverty is one of the effects of alcohol.
My Lords, I am pleased that the sobriety scheme is being rolled out, but it would help to hear a timeline for it. People may be aware of one benefit of the sobriety scheme. It came from South Dakota in America, where district attorneys, sick of seeing people die on the roads, introduced compulsory testing every day for a year. It led to a huge reduction in the number of people killed on the roads, but also the amount of domestic violence because, when the drunk drivers got home, they had been assaulting their partners. We experimented with this in the Met and it worked well, but I am concerned that the certainty of outcome is not as clear in our scheme because, should someone fail the test, we move them to the courts rather than insist on one day’s imprisonment. Will the Minister update us on the scheme and say whether we are prepared to look again at the penalty imposed at the conclusion of a positive test?
I am afraid that I do not have an update on the scheme for the noble Lord, but I concur with everything he said. I will write to him with an update and place a copy of the letter in the Library.