Alcohol Abuse

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the debate. My noble friend made a very powerful statement about the major challenge that we face over alcohol abuse and the knock-on impact on the National Health Service. He opened by asking for an honest debate about funding. The report of the Select Committee of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, will be issued on Wednesday, and I hope that it will lead to an open debate. However, no one can be in any doubt about the seriousness of this situation for the NHS. This morning, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation said that there now has to be a trade-off between, for instance, fast, efficient emergency care and non-elective surgery. That shows the state that we have got to. Clearly, the impact of alcohol abuse on the NHS is significant.

My noble friend’s speech was particularly persuasive in relation to low prices. Public Health England produced a very good report on the public health burden of alcohol and the cost-effectiveness of alcohol control policies. That report had a lot of good things to say. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has already referred to the £20 billion a year cost to our society in relation to criminal justice, the economy and the health service. In addition, there is the fact that we now have over 1 million alcohol-related hospital admissions per year, and the kind of pressure it puts on the health service and the emergency services, as the noble Lord, Lord Smith, referred to. PHE points out that the average age at death of those who die from alcohol-specific causes is 54.3 years, compared to 77.6 years for death from all causes. The other very striking statistic is that more working years of life were lost in England as a result of alcohol-related deaths than from cancers of the lung, bronchus, trachea, colon, rectum, brain, pancreas, skin, ovary, kidney, stomach, bladder and prostate combined. Therefore, the scale of this disease, as we need to call it, is very striking indeed.

My noble friend obviously did not dwell much on taxation and price regulation, because he covered a much wider canvas. However, the analysis by Public Health England said:

“Implementing a minimum unit price is a highly targeted measure which ensures any resulting price increases are passed on to the consumer, improving the health of the heaviest drinkers”,


is surely right. As PHE points out:

“The MUP measure has a negligible impact on moderate drinkers”—


who we do not want to undermine—

“and the on-trade”.

I hope that the Minister will be able to say something about where the Government are on the MUP.

I pick up the point raised by my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, on labelling. Post Brexit what the Government do about labelling will be entirely in their hands. As the Minister is responsible for the Department of Health’s response to Brexit, can he say what work is now being done by either his department or Public Health England to look at what the Government are going to do when they have control over labelling? Potentially, we could be much more effective than current EU regulations allow us to be.

Finally, I acknowledge a very good briefing that I had from the British Medical Association on this issue. It has set out a number of requests—principally, that the Government should:

“Publish a new updated alcohol strategy”.


Will the Minister agree to do that? It mentions minimum unit pricing and reducing,

“the affordability of alcohol through taxation measures”.

It makes an important point about ensuring that health,

“is a key factor in licensing decisions”.

I know that we will receive a Select Committee report on the implications of the big change in licensing 10 or 12 years ago. However, this obviously needs to be considered very carefully. The BMA also goes on to ask for an implementation of,

“evidence-based measures to reduce drink driving levels”,

and,

“a range of measures to reduce and better manage pregnancies affected by alcohol”,

and makes a number of other requests. At heart, there is a request to the Government to take stock of the pressures that we face, update the current alcohol strategy and take some courage in their hands and be prepared to move on from the rather insipid voluntary approach that we have to a tougher approach, in which they must look at taxation and a minimum unit pricing policy.