Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I rise with some trepidation as this Bill applies to England only, although there are some consequential effects on Wales. As I was speaking in Grand Committee on the Welfare Reform Bill upstairs a moment ago on initiatives in Wales which should be copied in England, I hope that initiatives in this area will be copied by the National Assembly for Wales and I very much hope that the spirit of the amendments, some of which I have my name alongside, can be taken on board by the Government, even if the wording is not perfect. I welcome the address made by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, in opening this debate and pay tribute to the work that she has undertaken in this context, which is recognised all round. I come from a generation in Wales where we used to have to smuggle ourselves out to the pubs because of the general ban on alcohol that used to exist. In previous generations, understandably and rightly, there had been a clamping down on alcohol use in Wales. My parents’ generation referred to whisky, for example, as medicine and very rarely used it. In fact, the pledge was a general feature of society there. My generation was responsible for a movement in another direction. The pendulum swung and is still swinging in that direction and it is time to start it swinging back. I have no doubt at all that alcohol is one of the greatest problems that we have in our society today. I say that not as a teetotaller although I restrict myself two months of the year to not touching the stuff because it is so important that we have self-discipline as well as discipline that may come from the statute book. But in terms of violence, the break-up of families, poor performance at work—one remembers David Lloyd George’s initiatives in the First World War to try and clamp down on alcohol because of the effect on the war effort—criminality, injuries and the pressure on accident and emergency departments in hospitals, and the social disruption that arises from it, we can see the effect all around. The effect seems to be hitting people younger and younger. Children at the ages of 11, 12 and 13 are showing the effects of alcohol. That cannot be acceptable. I realise that in an area of social responsibility such as this it is sometimes difficult to legislate. However, there must be pressure to turn the tide in another direction. Amendment 202 refers to establishing a duty to reduce alcohol harm. Amendment 328 covers the assessment of alcohol damage in local communities. Amendment 329 would provide appropriate places for representatives of alcohol services. These modest steps, taken together, would add up to a message that would come across. I implore the Minister, even if he cannot accept the amendments, to accept the thrust of the argument that lies behind them, because we have to do something about this great scourge of our society today.