Alcohol

Lord Imbert Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My noble friend makes a very good point, which is why the Government have taken action on tax. We will be raising alcohol duty by 2 per cent above inflation every year to 2014-15. We introduced a new additional duty on high-strength beers to address the consumption of cheap super-strength lagers and a reduced rate of duty on low-strength beers to encourage consumers to switch to those brands.

[Lord Imbert]

My Lords—

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords—

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, there is time for both noble Lords. Perhaps we may start with the noble Lord, Lord Imbert.

[Lord Imbert]

In the light of the 60,000 alcohol-related calls answered by the London Ambulance Service alone and the 18,500 alcohol-related crimes of violence in London alone in one year, does that not mean that we should introduce a compulsory alcohol sobriety testing scheme which magistrates can use to sentence in order to reduce this awful number of offences?

[Earl Howe]

The noble Lord is right to point that out. Proposals of the kind he suggests should be considered. As I am sure he will recognise, there is no single solution to the complex challenge of alcohol misuse. We need to look at licensing, pricing, health promotion, the criminal justice system, the role of local authorities, early engagement by the NHS and labelling, and the list goes on. But I am very happy to feed in the noble Lord’s ideas to my department in the work that it is doing.