Russell Brown
Main Page: Russell Brown (Labour - Dumfries and Galloway)Department Debates - View all Russell Brown's debates with the Home Office
(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Browne
These are not matters that I am responsible for, I regret to say. On the point about the Health Committee, I am aware of its view. I suppose the only point I would make is that we would expect the Select Committee that was responsible for health matters to have a particular perspective on the issue. If we had a libertarian Select Committee, it might say that people should be free to drink even in ways that damaged their health, which would also be a legitimate point of view. I am not saying that, just because the Health Committee’s perspective is predictable, it is not relevant; of course it is relevant, but it is one of a number of points of view, all of which we are considering as part of the consultation.
Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)
As a member of the all-party group on alcohol misuse, I believe that minimum unit pricing is only one of a number of tools in the box. The Minister attended one of our meetings a number of months back. Can he explain why some of his views today have changed from what he said on that occasion?
Mr Browne
I do not accept that they have. I enjoyed the conversation that I had and I recognise that there are harms caused by alcohol. In fact, at the beginning of my answer to the question, about half an hour or so ago, I talked about violent crime and how much of it is alcohol related, about the atmosphere in town and city centres—everybody in the House will know from their constituencies how disconcerting many of our constituents find such behaviour—and about the number of hospital admissions that are alcohol-related. I therefore recognise that there are serious concerns, but there are issues that need to be balanced. Otherwise, we would logically end up with the Government being urged to ban alcohol sales altogether—as far as I am aware, nobody is urging us to do that—or with a minimum unit price of, say, £5 rather than 45p. That would have a very big impact on alcohol consumption, but there are other, competing concerns that would not be addressed by going down that route. That is why a Government who govern responsibly for the whole country need to consider all these matters.