Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Lord Rea and Lord Northbourne

Wednesday 16th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Northbourne]

I rise to support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. One thing that has so far not been mentioned is that it is important to think about the alternatives to alcohol and to regular alcohol use. I used to spend a certain amount of time with very disadvantaged young people, and a great deal of their problem was boredom, inferiority complexes and no belief that there was any real future for them, so let us also think about all sorts of other things that they might be doing.

[Lord Rea]

My Lords, as a former GP, I echo the words of my noble friend Lord MacKenzie. Screening for alcoholism should be added to the QAF measures in view of all the reasons that have been eloquently adumbrated by other people. I want to raise a fairly basic problem which is the cost of alcohol services. At the moment, a lot of these are funded as outreach programmes by PCTs, and those are going to be transferred to local authorities. They will have to be paid for out of the index-linked £4 billion-odd that is going to be given to local authorities for this purpose. Perhaps the Minister could say whether the actual cost of running these alcohol services is being taken into account when considering how that £4 billion is going to be calculated. There are also plenty of other services being transferred to local authorities.