Alcohol (Under-18s)

Debate between Stephen Gilbert and Fiona Bruce

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)]

Thank you very much, Mrs Riordan, for calling me to speak. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time in a Westminster Hall debate. I suspect that it is not what I am about to say that is causing colleagues to leave Westminster Hall so quickly.

At the outset, I declare an interest, in that the father of the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), who is the Minister responding to the debate, is a constituent of mine. I hope that that fact might sway the Minister when he makes his remarks.

This debate has been prompted by continuing concerns in Newquay, which is in my constituency, about under-age drinking, including its health impacts, its role in causing antisocial behaviour and the part that parents can play in providing children with alcohol for consumption in an unsupervised setting.

The Chamber will be aware that, like many other seaside towns and many of our city centres, Newquay has had its share of problems associated with binge drinking. The Chamber may be interested to know that 5,000 unaccompanied 16 and 17-year-olds arrive in Newquay every year during a four-week period, mostly to celebrate the end of their GCSEs. Sadly, this annual pilgrimage—some might call it a rite of passage—has become associated with drink-related antisocial behaviour.

The tragic deaths of 16-year-old Paddy Higgins and 18-year-old Andrew Curwell in 2009 served as a wake-up call to the local community in Newquay that action needed to be taken to protect children and young people when they visit Newquay to prevent similar accidents occurring in the future. Newquay has risen to that challenge. The formation of the Newquay Safe Partnership has seen organisations and individuals including Devon and Cornwall police, Cornwall county council, residents, local businesses and organisations representing pubs and clubs, the off-licence trade and providers of accommodation working together to tackle alcohol misuse and irresponsible behaviour.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, as has been stated in a recent report by the think-tank Demos, parental involvement is vital? That report shows that, if income, education, ethnicity and gender are discounted, styles of parenting are very influential, and it also showed that a combination of discipline, affection and parental involvement ensure that 16-year-olds are less likely to engage in dangerous drinking.

[Stephen Gilbert]

The hon. Lady has pre-empted a point that I was going to make later, namely that in many cases parents underestimate their influence on their children. She is right to quote the Demos research.

Public services in Newquay have risen to the challenge of dealing with under-age drinking. We have seen the introduction of Challenge 25, with staff being given training to spot fake identity cards; there is a confidential phone number to report proxy buying, which is the buying of alcohol by adults for children; and a code of conduct has been introduced for bar crawls. The police have introduced a “follow you home” scheme, which sees the local Newquay force inform parents and local authorities in an individual’s home town about instances of antisocial behaviour that take place on holiday. There are also new minimum safety standards for local providers of accommodation, and there is concerted police action to seize alcohol in the streets and on public transport. Coast Safe, an alcohol awareness and seaside safety lesson package for teenagers, was launched yesterday. It was put together with the help of Newquay schoolchildren, and it is sponsored by St Austell Brewery. It aims to provide a resource for schools across the country to reduce loss of life and serious injury among young people by encouraging sensible drinking and responsible enjoyment in seaside towns.

The cost of crime in Newquay in 2008-09 was more than £9 million. The success of the Newquay Safe Partnership is that it has reduced that cost by more than £250,000. Nuisance behaviour is down by 22%; violence is down by 7%; and drug offences are down by 14%. I commend all the people who are involved in the Newquay Safe Partnership scheme.

Although most parents want to introduce their children to alcohol in a responsible and measured way, one contributory factor to the binge drinking and antisocial behaviour that we see in Newquay, and indeed in other seaside towns, and it is a factor that the police remain concerned about, is the way in which some parents send their children to Newquay with huge amounts of alcohol. I will give some examples of this parental behaviour supplied by Devon and Cornwall police, which put the issue into context and which may benefit the Chamber.

One Newquay guest house has reported that parents regularly turn up with their children and a car boot full of booze. When told by the management that that is unacceptable, parents seek to meet their children elsewhere in the town to pass the alcohol to them. In one case, 67 cans of Special Brew were seized from four children who were visiting Newquay for a weekend. Another guest house reported finding 350 items of alcohol in one room that had been let out to just six children who were visiting Newquay. A local caravan site seized more than 353 cans and bottles containing alcohol from 16-year-olds during a 10-day period, including 117 cans of Stella and 5 litres of vodka. On one day in July this year, police confiscated 443 cans and bottles containing alcohol from children arriving in Newquay on public transport. One 16-year-old girl arrived in the town for a four-day break with £300 in her wallet, and later that same day she was found incapacitated by alcohol and her parents were asked to come to Newquay to collect her. A youth mentoring scheme reports that 70% of young people have been given alcohol by their parents.

As I have said, the vast majority of parents want to introduce their children to alcohol in a responsible and supervised way, but it seems that some parents are not considering the impact of leaving their children unsupervised in an unfamiliar town with large amounts of alcohol. When police and other local authorities or local people, such as the managers of hotels or guest houses, try to reproach parents about their behaviour, they are often met with hostility. Police were told by the parents of one 16-year-old boy, who had 64 cans of Special Brew seized from him, that they were “spoiling his fun”.

In Newquay, as in other seaside towns, local public authorities effectively adopt young people when they are in the town.