Hogarth's Gin Lane

I like a drink, especially good wine. I recently gave up alcohol for ten days after returning from Italy, an annual penance that I feel does me good. I find alcohol a relaxant, makes me feel convivial and an instant endorphin producer. And I’d better own up to the fact that I once owned half of a brewery and was a significant shareholder in a gin distillery. (You could say I live on gin). So I’m sympathetic to the vast majority of people who also enjoy it and recognize what a valuable role it can play in society. But we have to face facts. Drinking to excess in Britain has risen in the past 50 years. As the price has gone down drinking to excess has gone up. When the culture of heavy drinking is acceptable, as it is among many sections of society, then price is the key determinant on whether someone will drink to excess. The price of beer and cider has fallen by about 30 per cent in real terms since 1990, while wine and spirits have fallen by about 20 per cent. As earnings have risen, alcohol is within everyone’s reach, less than a pound now for a bottle of Eurofizz lager or cheap cider bought at below cost from supermarkets selling as a loss leader.

As Sir Liam Donaldson, the former Chief Medical Officer said last year, cheap alcohol is “killing us as never before”. He said that the nation was blighted by “passive drinking”, with innocent bystanders the collateral damage of drunk drivers, domestic violence and antisocial behaviour. Hospital admissions involving people with an alcohol-related disease are up 69 per cent since 2003 and will soon reach a million annually. Liver disease shows a fivefold increase in the under-65s in the past 30 years and almost all of this increased morbidity is due to alcohol.

Donaldson wanted to introduce a minimum price of 50p a unit of alcohol, the immediate benefit would be 3,393 fewer deaths each year, 97,900 fewer hospital admissions and 45,800 fewer crimes. The Government rejected it, and I do not have much hope that the Coalition will face up to the powerful antipathetic lobbies of the drinks industry. The solution is staring us in the face as it did in the 18^th century when the effect of gin on the working population was devastating.

In 1729 Parliament increased the tax on gin and this led to ill feeling in the working classes and ultimately to the gin riots . (Is this what the Government fears?) The government responded by reducing duties and penalties, claiming that moderate measures would be easier to enforce.  But Gin drinking continued to be a problem and by the 1740s the British were consuming 8,000,000 gallons a year. In 1751 the government took action and greatly increased duties on gin. The sale by distillers and shopkeepers was strictly controlled and these measures successfully reduced the consumption of gin in Britain.

Put the price of alcohol up to where it was twenty years ago and the problem would more or less be solved. Changing culture will take far too long, we are northern Europeans not southern European in our attitudes to drink. Someone will tell me that putting the price up would encourage smuggling (true) and that we can’t be so out of kilter with the rest of Europe. Why not? Even a small fiscal change would help us tackle the problem.

Those many well meaning people who wrote voracious comments on this a few months ago do need to look at the report on the death of Khyra Ishaq. the Report stated “The mother’s sound knowledge of home education legislation and a hostile and aggressive approach influenced and affected professional actions, preventing a full understanding of conditions within the home and seemed to render professionals impotent, thereby directing the focus away from the welfare of the children”.

It would be just too easy to blame the social workers for this. There is a problem if parents know they can take their children out of school without further intervention by anyone. The more home education spreads the greater the danger. If we are to have a successful home education sector then there does need to be regulation. I remember saying at the time of the previous debate that any future government was likely to return to this. The case of Khyra Ishaq makes my point with cruel clarity.

The House Magazine used to host an annual awards ceremony.  One of the awards was for Committee of the Year.   I thought  I would resuscitate the award and invite readers to nominate which committee in the House of Lords they believe has been the best committee in the House – and why.  

The Committees are the Communications Committee, the Constitution Committee, the Delegated Powers Committee, the Economic Affairs Committee, the European Union Committee, the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee, the Science and Technology Committee, and (extending beyond the House) the Joint Committee on Human Rights; though readers are also welcome to nominate a specific sub-committee of the EU Committee or one of the ad hoc committees of recent years (such as the Committee on the Barnett Formula).

The award will go to the committee receiving the most nominations.  However, as an incentive to readers, all those nominating a committee will be treated as quiz winners – in other words, only needing to win two other quizzes (rather than three) in order to be grand prize-winners and be invited to tea at the Lords.

“Danny Kushlik, Head of Policy and Communications at Transform Drug Policy Foundation, calls for ‘a system of strict control and regulation for the most toxic and dependence inducing drugs and a lighter tough regulation for the less powerful drugs’ and concludes that legalisation is not only the best way to defeat the drug gangs but ‘bringing illegal drugs into regulatory regimes will definitely reduce overall harm, and could in fact, reduce the availability of drugs. Pharmacists are vastly better controlled than the user/dealer with the reinforced door, pit bull and hand gun.’

But Professor Neil McKeganey, Director of the Centre for Drug Misuse Research at Glasgow University, argues that ‘drugs don’t become harmful because they are illegal; they are illegal because they are harmful’ and warns that legalising drugs would not only not significantly reduce crime but also could lead to a tenfold increase in the level of heroin addiction without reducing the acute problems associated with it: ‘in the UK some 400,000 children are being brought up in homes with addict parents. Legalisation of illegal drugs would not help those children; it would simply mean that their addicted parents now had a legal supplier to turn to.’”

You can read their exchange here.

He was an expert in genealogy and also a first-rate designer of coats of arms.  He designed mine (pictured) and did a splendid job: his draft design required no changes.  He was also something of a character.  He had a reputation for occasionally causing difficulty with a new peer’s choice of title (allegedly at times finding rules of which no one was previously aware) and was also keen to persuade a peer to have a coat of arms.  When I saw him, he had no difficulty in accepting my choice of title (a relief) and instead moved quickly to give me a leaflet from the Passport Agency, explaining how smooth the process of changing my passport would be (in the event, it was anything but), to inquire if I would like a coat of arms, and then to chat about the USA.  ‘How many states have you visited?’  He then proceeded to explain he had visited all fifty.  The obituary in The Times records ‘He lectured widely on heraldry in the US and prided himself on having visited every state’, so I suspect I was not the only one to have that conversation.

His salesmanship in respect of coats of arms (designing them brought income to the College of Arms) did not necessarily persuade all new peers.  One peer told me that he asked Garter what use he could make of a coat of arms.  ‘Well’, said Garter, ‘You could have it woven into your carpet’.   He will be missed.

Lady Deech mentioned the rumours that are flying around in one of her blogs so I thought I’d keep you up to date about what’s happening. During a debate on reform of the House of Lords, on Tuesday 29 June, Lord Strathclyde announced he would be setting up a Leaders’ Group to investigate the options for Members to permanently leave the House of Lords. A Leader’s Group meets informally and does not have the powers of a Select Committee but can make recommendations for consideration.

At present neither life peers nor elected hereditary peers are able to retire or disclaim their seat in the House; only the Bishops and Archbishops retire at a fixed age of 70. The new Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 allows for peers who are not deemed to be resident, ordinarily resident and domiciled (ROD) to terminate their membership of the House of Lords if they wish to maintain their non resident status

The group, chaired by Lord Hunt of Wirral and including representation from all sides of the Lords, will identify options that would allow Members to leave or retire from the House of Lords. I am the crossbench member of the group, which has begun its work. We will be meeting during recess so as to produce some options for the House to consider in the autumn.

Members can at present take Leave of Absence for the remainder of the Parliament, some do when they are ill or too frail to attend. Many others simply do not turn up. Out of nearly 800 members now perhaps half are not regular attendees and perhaps 100 or so never appear (they’re cheap though!) The average age of peers is 68, meaning that we are an aged house and some would say too aged. But a compulsory retirement age is being phased out for the rest of society; it would seem strange to introduce one in the Lords.

There have been many attempts to introduce a retirement possibility recently, notably via David Steel’s recurrent Private Members Bills on constitutional reform, which by the way garnered massive support from backbenchers of all sides of the House.

All ideas gratefully received but no jokes please, I’ve heard them all already.

I’ve always had a soft spot for David Hunt, who as a junior minister in the department of local governemnt back in 89-90 and was the poor minister responsible for trying to find ways to make the Poll Tax more palatable. A colleague and I working in mental health were delighted when he accepted our arguments that people with serious long term mental health problems like dementia should not pay poll tax on the basis thay could not properly exercise choice about how it was to be spent. To our surprise (and I suspect to the deep irritation of the Department of Health, who feared it would be unworkable), I suspect he was keen on anything that made the  tax look more human, he accepted our arguments and while the Poll Tax died, the exemptions live on in a number of different kinds of exemptions from council tax . So people with mental health problems who are exempt from council tax have cause to be grateful to Lord Hunt.

1.  I was twice a member of the British Olympic team (athletics).  I later became an MP and Treasury minister.  Who am I?

2. I gave up my ministerial post in order to pursue my interest in motor racing.  Who am I?

3. I won an Olympic Silver Medal for rowing.  Who am I?

In the early 1980’s when I was a fairly new MP I went to see some of the political party’s in Northern Ireland who had a military wing engaged in violence. I saw both Unionist and Republican. I shall be giving a talk on this in the Irish Centre in Hammersmith on October 13th.

When I met Gerry Adams and Danny Morrison on the second occasion I wanted to know if they accepted that Britain could not withdraw from Ireland and that if we did it would produce greater violence. In order to explore this I asked what they would do if a British government announced a withdrawal. After several circular arguments about what would happen next Danny Morrison said “Look we are not daft – we are not going to invade the Shankill” . I knew then that they were facing the hard fact that a British withdrawal would have been a disaster for them.

I would like to know if the Real IRA currently engaged in a bombing campaign understands the same basic fact. Maybe I should ask them.