Health: Alcohol Abuse

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord makes a valid point. Alcohol harm has a cross-government response, involving departments such as health, education and the Home Office. If we do not work together, we will diminish our responsibilities as a Government. In the troubled families programme, which is led by MHCLG, alcohol and substance abuse contribute to an awful lot of the problems in some of the families it deals with.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I was going to ask almost exactly the same question. Misuse of alcohol and drugs is often the result of suffering and hurt in people’s lives, which is an issue of health and welfare, not of Home Office enforcement. What are the Government doing to improve people’s well-being, tackle poverty and discrimination, and address the causes of substance misuse, rather than simply the symptoms?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I will try to answer the question differently. The noble Lord points to the wide variety of harms that alcohol causes—the economic cost is something like £21 billion a year. We can see the involvement of alcohol abuse when looking at domestic violence—later this year, we will be considering the domestic abuse Bill—and the effect it has on children. The children of alcoholic parents must suffer terribly, and of course poverty is one of the effects of alcohol.