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Mr. Maclean: I am conscious that, despite my best efforts, I may not be allowed to serve on the Committee that considers the Bill. I hope that my hon. Friend will not mind if I explore the internet sales problem on Report,
possibly through an amendment. I shall happily vote for the Bill, and I hope that it becomes law, but I also hope that he agrees that the problem is worth exploring on Report.
Mr. Heald: It would helpful to hear the Minister's view, which is backed by the Home Office's considerable research facilities, on the extent to which internet purchase of alcohol is a problem. Most internet arrangements involve the use of a credit card, and most credit cards are not in the hands of people under 18. However, various hon. Members commented during the debate that abuse is possible. It would therefore be useful to know whether proposed new section 169F tackles the problem adequately and whether there is a need for the amendment that my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) mentioned. He has a background in the Home Office; some years ago, he held the job that the Minister now fills. He did it in a distinguished way.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire referred to alcopops. He pointed out that many young people who go into off-licences purchase alcopops. During the debate, hon. Members considered the reasons for the attraction of alcopops to young people. Alcohol Concern explained that attraction in its advice, which states:
We should not be too hard on the industry. The Portman Group has done useful work through its code of conduct. It has tried to provide sensible guidelines for the promotion of alcopops. Its Prove It! scheme, which involves cards, has also been useful. Last year, 62,000 cards were issued, and 500,000 have been issued since it began.
A general point was made about identity and how to tell whether a person is of the right age. The Minister ought to comment on whether the youth card, which is being promoted by the Department for Education and Employment, is likely to prove useful. It proposes issuing such a card to all young people in their final year of compulsory education to represent their entitlement to further learning and to remind them of their continuing access to careers guidance and education. It is proposed that the card might even use smart technology so it would be interesting to hear whether he thinks that it might be used to identify young people who want to purchase alcohol.
My hon. Friend the Member for Daventry made a wide-ranging speech, but remarked particularly that we should not forget the effects of under-age drinking on the wider public. He made the point that public order is a substantial issue when young people cluster round supermarkets or other outlets that sell alcohol and others are prepared to buy it for them. The Minister might refer to that when he publishes his final proposals in March, but is he satisfied that existing measures--including the Bill promoted by Robert Spink in 1997--are adequate or does more need to be done to tackle the problem?
In an amusing speech, the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) described political parties by drink. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and
Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) was not in the Chamber then, but he described the Conservative party as bitter. That is rather shocking, considering the smooth and mild way in which we have received the Bill. We were shaken, if not stirred, after the general election, but we have become pure genius. I shall not continue in that vein and notice a certain amount of relief at that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale asked whether licence holders are being satisfactorily dealt with if the only real penalty is taking away their licence. We should note that the position of the licensee has been as important as the offence in controlling the dispensing of alcohol. For many years--this may still be the case--large numbers of publicans said that losing their licence was the most terrifying prospect because they would also lose their livelihood. Therefore, there is already considerable pressure on publicans to ensure that their staff are properly trained and able to cope with slightly intimidating situations in which young people want to buy alcohol.
The licence is of great importance, but the Minister intervened to refer to graduated penalties. We could have a sensible debate about them and in its submission to the Home Office, the Brewers and Licensed Retailers Association suggested such penalties as a good way forward. I hope that he will consider them seriously, as he seems to be doing, before he makes his own proposals.
I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West was unable to buy drink at the pub and was sent off to the White Lion. I hope that nowadays he finds it possible to buy a drink. He made a range of points about identity and the difficulties faced by staff. Hon. Members on both sides of the House will agree that he made a valuable contribution.
It was interesting to hear from the hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Ross) about the operation of the identity card scheme in South Ayrshire. It was a good initiative to use as an example. My hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove is right that we should not be too old-fashioned and patronising towards young people on the subject of alcohol, as though none of us had a youth. However, it is right that young people should be persuaded that alcohol has real dangers.
The comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove that we should not be fuddy-duddy and patronising with young people were counterbalanced by the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden who said that parents must take responsibility. Parents need to strike a difficult balance: they must exercise responsibility without patronising young people, and they should treat them as intelligent sentient beings. Parents have an educative job.
It is often said that young people nowadays have many more pressures on them than they did some years ago, but being a parent is not that easy either. We often argue that parents must take responsibility, and of course that is right, but they need a good deal of help and support to do that. I would be interested to hear the Government's views on how parents could be supported in trying to instil in their children sensible ideas about alcohol use.
Hon. Members have referred to the problem of older brothers or relatives going into stores to buy alcohol for young people. Does the Minister believe that a suitable way of dealing with that would be to enhance the power to confiscate alcohol from young people outside premises,
or does he think that it would be possible to have an offence of purchasing alcohol for a young person if it is not intended to be taken back to the home? It is difficult to deal with the person who buys alcohol for another without attacking the parent who legitimately wants to buy a bottle of wine to have with a meal and may want to give a small glass of it to a child. With all the advice and help available to him, does he think that it is possible to frame such a law to enable the mischief to be attacked without damaging responsible parenting and attempts to teach young people to be careful when drinking wine?
Does the Minister see any parallels with the way in which alcohol abuse has been tackled on the continent? That issue was raised by the hon. Member for Luton, North (Mr. Hopkins). Is there a method of educating young people that we should consider? In France, attitudes towards alcohol have changed dramatically. The problem there is still worse than ours, but a substantial change has occurred. Is that something that an alcohol concern education package can tackle? Does the Minister have any such proposals?
Mr. Malcolm Savidge (Aberdeen, North):
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell) on the Bill. It is an ideal private Member's Bill, because it comes out of a constituency case, albeit a tragic one, and attempts to introduce a small amendment. That was interestingly brought out in the exchanges between the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean), and the hon. Members for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) and for Bromsgrove (Miss Kirkbride). It tries to sort out this clear injustice in law that I am sure the quaint language of the licensee and servant, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) and the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Collins) referred, did not intend to create. If a young person--or a group of young people--visits a small corner shop and a shop that is part of a large off-licence chain, and makes under-age purchases in both, it must be wrong that the staff in one shop can be prosecuted and the staff in the other cannot.
The Bill does not introduce new law, which makes me optimistic about the Sisyphean task faced by my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey. I am hopeful that, in pushing his little rock to the top of the hill, he will be able to enlist the support of all Members--including two right hon. Members who could be described as traditionally not the most enthusiastic supporters of private Members' Bills, and who, adopting what I think is termed the "libertarian right" position, usually take the view that new laws should not be introduced. This, as I have said, is not a new law, but an amendment to an existing law.
Interestingly, the same can be said of my Health and Safety At Work (Offences) Bill, which also features on the Order Paper; but I shall not stray on to the subject of my Bill, and my own Sisyphean aspirations.
Let me return to the serious matter of the Bill that we are discussing. The tragedy of David Knowles was the ultimate tragedy, but the figures showing a rise in youth
alcohol abuse cited by, in particular, the hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) reflect a number of other sad possibilities. People are injured; as I know from my experience as a teacher, children must sometimes have their stomachs pumped to avoid serious illness. There is also the problem of crime. I know that the Bill would apply only to England and Wales, but it is said that, in Scotland, 80 per cent. of cases of youth involvement in breaches of the peace result from alcohol abuse, and that it is responsible for 88 per cent. of cases of criminal damage.
As we know, there is a more general pattern among young people, who may under-achieve and end up unemployed. They may become involved in drugs. They may engage in street drinking, which can not only damage them but cause great distress to those around them. I see that in my constituency, and I suspect that many other hon. Members do as well.
The hon. Members for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) and for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) suggested that alcopops were a relevant factor. As I said earlier, they seem to be aimed at the teens and the pre-teens. I find it particularly worrying that the alcoholic strength of alcopops is often greater than that of the beer, porter and cider referred to by the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth)--of whom I shall speak with even more deference than my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North, although of course that has nothing whatever to do with my Bill. Unlike my hon. Friend, who did not invite sponsors from Opposition Members, I did--perhaps tongue in cheek--invite the right hon. Gentleman to be a sponsor, but I think he felt that that was a bridge, or a Bill, too far.
It would have been much better if alcopops had been introduced with a low alcoholic strength. If they had been, perhaps they could have been used to introduce young people to drinking sensibly, in a family environment. That brings me to my next point. Parents must have a major role: this really is a question of parental responsibility. I have encountered cases in which, given the state of the children involved, their parents cannot possibly not have known, when they arrived home, that they had drunk far too much. I am talking about very young children. The question of the internet, which has been raised a number of times, must be relevant to parental responsibility.
Parents are the one group of people who cannot claim ignorance of the age of the children with whom they are dealing. Obviously, licensees and their staff may experience difficulties in determining age, but it is worrying that one in five children aged between 11 and 15 who obtain drink do so from off-license premises.
I shall need to abbreviate my comments and miss out one or two points. My hon. Friends the Members for Northampton, South (Mr. Clarke) and for Luton, North (Mr. Hopkins) asked what was the correct age for drinking. Many would ask, "If people can get married at 16, why cannot they drink at 16?" The answer is that, in marriage, people's ages are identified precisely. That brings us to the whole question of identity cards, or youth cards.
"An established control on young people's drinking has been that youngsters find the taste of traditional drinks unpalatable. With alcoholic lemonade, cola, flavoured milks etc"
the natural element of control was removed. Alcopops present such a danger because they are attractively packaged and flavoured.
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