Violent Crime Reduction Bill

Yes. The fifth measure in the Bill is the crime of persistently selling alcohol to children. The House has grappled for some years and on many different occasions with the unlawful sale of alcohol to children. Since 1988, progressive changes to the licensing law have attempted to create more effective powers to deter such irresponsible retailing. However, the number of children under 16 who consume alcohol has not changed significantly since 1988. About a quarter drink alcohol, but in one important sense at least, the position is deteriorating: those young people who do drink are drinking more. In the past decade, the average number of units of alcohol consumed per week by such children has almost doubled—from 5.3 units in 1990 to 9.8 units in 2001. That should concern us all. The responsible parts of the alcohol industry, which helped us to establish enforcement campaigns such as last summer’s alcohol misuse enforcement campaign, are as disturbed as we are by those results. Alcohol is obviously a contributory factor in raising levels of youth crime. This Bill will create a more robust deterrent to unlawful sales by threatening the profits of irresponsible businesses, rather than just the individuals making the sales. So the Bill will create a new offence of persistently selling alcohol to children if, on three or more different occasions in a period of up to three consecutive months, alcohol is unlawfully sold on the same premises to a person aged under 18. The penalty for the new offence on summary conviction will be a fine not exceeding £10,000. Where the offender is the licence holder, the premises’ licence could be suspended for up to three months. But the Bill goes further than that. On detecting an alleged offence, it will be open to the police and trading standards officers to serve a closure notice requiring the licence holder to cease sales of alcohol on a specified date for 48 hours, or face trial in the courts.