Alcohol Strategy: Role of Drinks Industry

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lady Coussins for instigating this important debate. It goes to the heart of where the line is drawn in the relationship between government, all the public health concerns of government, and the drinks industry. There is a fundamental conflict of interest here. The Government pick up the costs, particularly the healthcare and social care costs, of the victims of alcohol abuse. You only have to go into an A&E department at night to see the large numbers there or visit a liver transplant unit.

The other side of this divide—and it is a divide—is that those who work in the drinks industry have a duty to their shareholders to maintain their profits. Therefore, however they work with Government, they are certainly not there to put themselves out of business.

There are some things which the drinks industry can do, and is uniquely placed to do. For instance, training bar staff properly to challenge those who are underaged or who are already intoxicated and wanting to buy more alcohol. That has improved greatly.

The labelling commitments, however, are lagging far behind. Some of us wonder, where are these clear labels? Where are the labels unified on a voluntary basis? There was an attempt to bring in legislation in this House during the term of the previous Government, but that has not come to fruition. The responsibility deal has yet to prove its worth. As has already been said, the BMA felt that it could not carry on. Neither could the Royal College of Physicians, for the same reason. It felt that the voice of the drinks industry was disproportionately strong in the way that the forward path for alcohol control and strategy was being developed.

There has been talk already about unit pricing, but I would ask the Government, what has happened to the question that I raised previously about such pricing being index-linked? As soon as we begin to have inflation the price per unit will become almost insignificant, unless that is priced as a proportion and index-linked as a percentage cost rather than an absolute cost. Indeed, it is worth noting that Scotland has already put up its so-called minimum price.

Some of the advertising we see is very clever. A phrase such as “Why let good times go bad?” has a subtle message behind it: that you have a good time by drinking. There is not a message there that you can have a good time on sparkling water. I am from Wales, and we have some wonderful sparkling water. It comes in blue bottles, called Ty Nant. It is extremely fashionable in Wales.

There is a message that you can have a good time without even having to have a drink. But there is a subtlety behind some of this advertising that is worrying, particularly in the use of social media.

While I applaud the Government for the action that they are taking, I would ask them to take a long hard look at the conflicts of interest that lie inherently in having too close a relationship with the industry, and in not having a high enough profile for the voices of those in public health; in particular, working with local authorities and others to make sure that alcohol control measures are effectively implemented.

We hear a lot about education strategies; I am afraid that the evidence that those have actually altered behaviour is very weak, although there is certainly evidence that they have increased awareness. I am afraid I cannot say that all is going perfectly well. I would like to see a little more separation—not to stop any of the moves, but to try to get clearer labelling in place, and index-linked prices.