Alcohol: Pricing

Lord Taverne Excerpts

Monday 29th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I thank the noble Baroness for drawing that to the House’s attention. I saw it this morning, so it must have been a pirated copy or something. I apologise if I misled the House, but, none the less, the programme did contain a particular inaccuracy about the calculation of the number of deaths that might be saved by a minimum unit pricing policy. Of course, that is the whole point of getting impact assessments right: so that we can consult on facts. But that does not reduce the effectiveness of the programme.

[Lord Taverne]

My Lords, having regard to strong results from Canada and from the Sheffield University research, which seem to indicate a very strong link between prices and the beneficial effects on hospital admissions, crime, absence from work because of alcoholism, and unemployment due to alcoholism, will the Government also consider a minimum price per unit of 50p, and will they link that with banning discounts, because the joint effect is all the more beneficial?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

The consultation is likely to cover both those elements—when I talk about discounts, I mean the multi-buy type of arrangement. That may well be included. The Scottish Government have already come forward with the 50p figure, but there could be different figures. We need to ensure that we are getting the maximum benefit without unnecessarily impeding the business of retailing alcohol, which is a perfectly legitimate one, or the pleasure that most people get from restrained consumption of alcohol.

Food Security Policy

Lord Taverne Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taverne]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow my noble friend because few Members of this House have contributed more to debates about agriculture and food, and the environment generally. Food security depends crucially on support for every kind of science and technology that increases yields, makes the best use of scarce available agricultural land, protects the environment, limits the emissions of greenhouse gases and feeds mankind without harm to health.

At Rothamsted Research, which is one of our oldest and most respected research institutes, a trial crop of genetically modified spring wheat is being tested in the field, with all these aims in mind. A group called Take The Flour Back has announced that it intends to destroy this crop next Sunday. The issues that this raises are enormously important, which is what I intend to talk about.

First, I should declare an interest. Ten years ago I founded the charity Sense About Science to promote good science and respect for evidence. Some anti-GM campaigners have denounced it as a pro-GM lobby group. It is nothing of the kind. It is a charity and not a lobby group. It has refused all financial support from the agricultural industry. In its first five years it was not concerned with genetic modification at all. While I have written and spoken about genetically modified crops, the charity has mostly concentrated on other subjects. Indeed, many of your Lordships have been closely associated with our work and have often expressed great appreciation of it.

Turning to the trial crops, the wheat has been modified by the insertion of a gene for a pheromone that repels aphids because it releases a chemical that they do not like. They do not like the smell. Furthermore, it also attracts the parasitic wasps which destroy aphids. Laboratory tests have produced good results but the trial is necessary to see if it works in the field.

Anti-GM campaigners say the crops have not been tested. They are right. That is what the trial, which the campaigners want to stop, is for. Who can justify suppressing evidence before you know what it shows? They allege that the wheat may be toxic to people and endanger our health. But the pheromone concerned is found naturally in some 400 other plants, many of which are consumed every day. For example, it is present in hops used for brewing beer. However, this is a trial and the crops are not for human consumption but to see if aphids are repelled in the field.

Campaigners are concerned about the environment—so they claim. They fear that the trials may spread the gene to other plants by cross-pollination. Wheat self-pollinates. Its pollen is heavy and is not blown far by the wind, and no cereals are grown within 20 metres of the site. But what harm could anti-aphid pheromones do that are already present in other plants? In fact, this wheat would greatly benefit the environment by reducing the need to protect it by spraying it with pesticides. At present, farmers can protect wheat only by spraying pesticides that kill the aphids.

What if the vandals succeed in destroying the crop? The environment will not benefit and the chance of developing a worthwhile crop that would reduce the use of pesticides will be lost. Publicly funded research will suffer. The cost of security for protecting trial crops from vandals is huge and only large companies can afford such trials. But this modified wheat will not be patented and will be supplied to farmers at minimum cost. The potential benefits of genetically improving crops will be held back. They are needed as one of the instruments to fight against hunger, global warming and water shortage. Outside Europe, they have been a huge success. The fastest increase in uptake of the cultivation of genetically modified crops is among small-scale farmers and more than 15 million of them in the developing world now grow GM crops. After more than 12 years of experience, no evidence of harm to the environment or to human health from genetically modified crops has been found by any top scientific academy anywhere in the world.

Finally, democracy suffers if a tiny minority can impose its view against all the evidence, prevent the acquisition of important knowledge and decide which scientific experiments may or may not be permitted. This happens in dictatorships; it should not happen in a liberal democracy.

Alcohol: Strategy

Lord Taverne Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My understanding is that any sale of alcohol falls under the control of the licensing laws. I appreciate that it is very difficult to deal with these matters, particularly when it comes to home deliveries of pizzas or whatever the noble Baroness is referring to. Again, that is something that we will have to consider if there is evidence of abuse because, as the noble Baroness is right to point out, it is illegal to sell alcohol to those who are inebriated.

[Lord Taverne]

My Lords—

[Lord Glentoran]

My Lords—

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)]

My Lords, we have plenty of time for this Question, and the fourth Question is on the same subject. I think that we should hear from my noble friend Lord Taverne first.

[Lord Taverne]

My Lords, I warmly congratulate the Government on abandoning their previous preference for banning below cost sales of alcohol and on adopting a policy that was strongly recommended by the previous Chief Medical Officer, by Sir Ian Gilmore, who is a great expert on this, and by a very convincing study of drinking in Newcastle, which is not known for its abstinence. I suggest to the Minister that this is only a first step, because a higher price could be even more effective. Does he not agree that it is rather sad that the shadow Home Secretary in another place, instead of welcoming something of great importance for the future, should have used the occasion of the Government’s announcement for making party-political points?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I shall not comment on my noble friend’s last remark. However, when my right honourable friend announced the strategy on Friday, other than objecting to the date of the announcement, I did not notice much that the party opposite objected to in the Statement. As regards my noble friend’s other points, I know Newcastle and have seen some of the problems that city centres such as that in Newcastle can face on Friday and Saturday nights as a result of excessive drinking. That is what we are trying to target. As I said, minimum pricing per unit of alcohol is just one part of it but I commend to the House other parts of the strategy, which will be available in the Printed Paper Office.

Universities: Non-EU Students

Lord Taverne Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I thought that was exactly what I just said in announcing a 13 per cent increase in those applying for universities. That strikes me as a very good thing indeed. It is quite right that we should stamp down on what the noble Viscount refers to as “bogus institutions”—I use his words, but I have previously used them myself. It is not fair on individuals coming to this country to come to an institution that is not providing them with proper education, and is being used merely as a vehicle to get around the immigration rules. What we have done is quite right. We are getting a grip on net migration figures but we are also seeing a growth in the number of genuine students coming to genuine universities.

[Lord Taverne]

My Lords, is it not true that there has been some decline in the market share of overseas students, particularly from India, who are a very important section? If students were not treated as migrants for the purposes of immigration policy, as happens in Australia and the United States, would this not be of great benefit to industry and to our universities; make it possible for the Government to meet their immigration targets comfortably; and make a difference of billions of pounds to the Treasury? Is this not a no-brainer?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, it is right that we should stamp down on those institutions which are trying to get round immigration by means of the bogus college route. My noble friend is also right to draw attention to the fact that there are some areas, such as the Indian sub-continent, where we are losing market share. There are, however, areas where there have been significant rises, particularly from Australasia where there has been an increase of some 20 per cent and from Hong Kong of some 37 per cent. We wish to continue to see those students coming in, but I also think they should be treated as part of the migration statistics. It is important that we get to grips with those, but we want to see them because they are a valuable export for this country.

Immigration

Lord Taverne Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Taverne]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will reconsider their curbs on immigration in the light of their effect on competitiveness and economic growth.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, we will not. We are clear that the United Kingdom remains open for business. Our changes mean that we will continue to welcome the brightest and best who have the most to contribute to this country. At the same time, we are putting an end to the unlimited migration of recent years that has created unacceptable pressures on our public services.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Taverne]

My Lords, I acknowledge that there is a need for some control, but the Government seem to have indicated that they will reduce the number of non-EU migrants who wish to settle here after they have completed their studies. Will the Government take note of a powerful letter, written about a month ago to the Financial Times, by a number of very eminent academics who came here as non-EU immigrants and who would not have come if they had been told at the start that they would not be allowed to stay?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, we will obviously listen to those academics but I have to say that the university sector as a whole is not complaining about what is happening. What we did was introduce a cap of just over 20,000 people, following the advice of the Migration Advisory Committee, on the number of skilled workers who were coming in. So far, in the first six months of this year, some 6,000 of those places were taken up—there is obviously a lot of slack in the system. There is no danger that any skilled workers are being denied the opportunity to come in.

Health: Animal Testing

Lord Taverne Excerpts

Tuesday 4th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for those remarks. That is something that we will be looking at in due course. I cannot comment at this stage.

[Lord Taverne]

My Lords, the committee set up by this House some years ago on the use of animals in scientific procedures observed, among other things, that the most bureaucratic controls are not necessarily the best controls of animal procedures, and there was some suggestion that there was too much bureaucratic control. Can the Government assure us that steps have been taken by the Home Office to make their procedures less bureaucratic?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I hope that they are not over-bureaucratic. As I have said, it is important that we look at and license three aspects: one, the place; two, the person; and three, the project. We will continue to do that as is appropriate. Obviously we will make sure that we are not imposing excessive burdens on any project as and when it should happen. We also want to make sure that the proper research continues in the appropriate manner.

Drug Use and Possession: Royal Commission

Lord Taverne Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taverne]

My Lords, all the speeches so far have made an overwhelming case for a really authoritative, weighty inquiry into the whole question of drug use. The first question is: should possession of drugs be a crime? When I was a Minister in the Home Office in that glorious period between 1966 and 1968, when Roy Jenkins was Home Secretary, possession of drugs was not actually a crime. Heroin addicts could get a GP’s prescription for uncontaminated heroin and they were much more likely to go for treatment. Of course, circumstances were very different, but it is notable that at that stage drug addiction was much less of a problem than it is now.

Is the criminal law the right instrument for dealing with drug abuse? The experience of Portugal, the Netherlands and a number of other places shows that education and rehabilitation are a far more profitable route. Why do the Government not recognise the reality that the war on drugs is not being won and never will be won? If you are losing a war—or certainly not winning it—at enormous cost, is it not time to look at the whole question again?

There is the further question of the reclassification of drugs. As the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has just said, it is absurd to have ecstasy put in the same category as hard drugs of other kinds, and the reclassification of cannabis has no scientific evidence behind it.

When it comes to alcohol, it is high time for us to consider what could be a much more effective approach. The recent inquiry by the independent committee on drug use showed, in a very systematic analysis, that alcohol was by miles the most harmful drug being sold at present. At the moment it is less directly harmful to the individual, but even that may change. On present trends, many people forecast that liver disease will soon be a bigger killer than heart disease.

The present policy is not based on scientific evidence. It is true that scientific evidence is not necessarily conclusive. However, if the policy is not based on scientific evidence, reasons should be given why it is not and it should be based on some other evidence. All these are eminently matters for a royal commission. The Government should recognise, if they make any pretence of having policy based on evidence, that the present way in which they approach drugs is not.

Drugs: Classification

Lord Taverne Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Taverne]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether, in the light of the recent report from the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs on the harmful effects of different classified and non-classified drugs, they will reconsider the present system of classification.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Neville-Jones)]

My Lords, the Government do not intend to review the drug classification system established by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. The criminal justice system expects—and the Government must provide—a stable and enduring system. The current system continues to serve that purpose.

[Lord Taverne]

My Lords, this recent report is perhaps the most thorough analysis of the impact of different drugs not only on users but on others in society at large. If the Government believe in evidence-based policy, is it not obvious that, in light of this report and of many other reports that have reached similar conclusions, the present classification—with ecstasy in class A and cannabis in class B—is in no way based on evidence of either the physical or social impact of drugs?

Will the Government further accept that they would be utterly irresponsible and failing in their duty to society if they did not provide much stronger disincentives to the indulgence of the abuse of alcohol, which comes top—by miles—of all other drugs in its impact on society as a whole?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, on the whole question of drugs classification, there is clearly no consensus about what constitutes evidence. The Government simply do not agree that a system of a sliding scale of harms, such as is suggested in the Nutt report, constitutes a good basis for government policy. We do not believe that structuring drug-harm classifications in the way that the recent report does would be better than the current basis for government policy.