Alcohol (Minimum Pricing)

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be present in a debate under your chairmanship, Mr Sheridan, and to follow the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths), who made an eloquent and thoughtful speech.

I think that this is going to be a great debate. It will also provide a lot of information for political diarists. We have already heard this morning about butter-related crime, or the possibility of butter-related crime, from the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope); we have heard the hon. Member for Burton offer the working men in his constituency the prospect of welcoming my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman) with open arms, and we have also heard about the Minister’s various meetings with beer groups, of which I am sure there are many, although some will think that the Minister, with his youthful good looks, might not even be old enough to drink.

Having said that, this is a very serious issue and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) for choosing it for a debate. It has attracted so many right hon. and hon. Members to Westminster Hall on a Wednesday morning, each one of whom has a constituency interest and a desire to ensure that we continue to move in the right direction.

Other Members here will be able to talk about the health aspects of the issue, for example, the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), who has vast experience in the NHS. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent and the hon. Member for Burton both mentioned the cost of binge drinking to our health service and the health of the nation.

In the next few minutes, I want to concentrate on alcohol-related crime and the report of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, “Policing in the 21st Century”, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent referred. That report was published last year and it addressed the cost to the taxpayer and to the public of alcohol-related crime. When our Committee began the inquiry that led to that report, we were looking at what a police officer did with his or her time; we never intended to look at alcohol-related crime. It was only after we had visited a number of town centres, including Colchester, that we did so. The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell), who was then a member of the Committee, invited the Committee to visit Colchester and hear from local police officers there about the amount of time that they spent on alcohol-related crime, especially on a Friday or Saturday evening. The latest estimate is that 70% of police officers feel that they are distracted from other aspects of policing because they are dealing with alcohol-related crime.

A statistic was sent to the Committee from the Cabinet Office showing that it costs £59 extra to process someone in a police station who has been arrested because of alcohol-related crime. In the current climate, the Government want to save money on policing, and there is no better way of doing that than to have responsible laws that reduce the time that police officers spend on this issue.

[Mr Chope]

I do not think that anyone will disagree with the right hon. Gentleman about the problem, but how will limiting the price at which supermarkets sell alcohol be the solution? We know from our constituencies that it is alleged that small shops, where alcohol is sold at a much higher price than at the supermarkets, enable young people under the legal age to access booze.

[Keith Vaz]

I have huge respect for the hon. Gentleman because he was my Greater London councillor when I was in Richmond many years ago. I have always had a great deal of time for what he says, but I think that he is wrong on this issue. It is not the little shops or the pubs, but the supermarkets, that cause the problem. The evidence is clear, and it is in our report. As the hon. Member for Burton has pointed out, people get tanked up before they go out on a Saturday night, because of supermarkets’ special offers, which make beer cheaper than bottled water, even the cheapest water—I am not saying that we should not drink tap water.

[Mrs Chapman]

I do not know where the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) lives, but where I live I have noticed that small shops are actually becoming supermarkets, and those Tesco Metros and Sainsbury’s Locals have the same cut-price promotions on alcohol, which occupies a larger proportion of shelf or floor space than it does in a larger store. Such stores are taking over territory that we might like to see remain with small local traditional shops.

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She tries to tempt me down Leicester high street, especially the Melton road, where we are currently fighting an application by Tesco to build one of its supermarkets in the middle of one of my main shopping areas.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent mentioned the cost to the health service, but the cost to the taxpayer as far as crime is concerned is £7.3 billion a year—a huge amount. What do we do about that? It is in the hands of the Minister. At the last Home Office questions, I got up to praise the Home Secretary for moving in the right direction. We could not get the previous Government to do this; I do not know why. It is not that they were not concerned about the matter—I think that they were worried about alcohol-related crime and the pressure on the health service—but that the debate perhaps got distracted by claims that somehow the extension of licensing hours meant that people were drinking more alcohol. I do not think that that is correct, but as someone who does not drink alcohol, and has no constituency interest—no distilleries or production units—I feel that the previous Government should have taken up the Select Committee’s recommendations. This Government are moving in the right direction, but not far enough, as I think we will find from the contributions of most Members here this morning.

Some would say that the hon. Member for Burton has the most to lose because of the production in his town. I have visited Burton and been to the Coors headquarters there. It is a remarkable town, and the world centre of beer making, but down the high street there is an alcohol addiction centre—how very convenient. The people I visited made the case for minimum pricing, so if they can do that, we can look at the issue very seriously. There is something of a practical nature that the Minister can do, picking up on what the hon. Member for Gainsborough said.

[Mr Chope]

I represent Christchurch.

[Keith Vaz]

Oh, I am so sorry: Christchurch, of course. How could I confuse the hon. Gentleman with the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh)?

What the Minister needs to do is to get the chairmen and chief executives of the five biggest supermarkets around the table for an alcohol-free sandwich lunch with both him and the Home Secretary, to discuss the issues. It is in their hands; they can do this.

[Dr McCrea]

Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that if we are going to make a difference, the Government need to confront not only the supermarket low prices, but the non-stop availability of alcohol and the saturation of its advertising?

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Those issues have to be considered.

I shall end here, because so many other Members wish to contribute. The Government are moving in the right direction, but they have not accepted all the Select Committee’s recommendations. I make a plea to the Government to get those supermarkets together—that is in their hands—and I say to the Minister, “Do not be afraid.” I know that supermarkets are powerful organisations; we face them in our constituencies, and some of our constituents actually shop at them—I do. The fact is, however, that on this issue we need to make progress, and it needs to be now.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—