The Welsh NHS Confederation has called this Bill a

‘once in a lifetime opportunity to raise the profile of public health’, reduce health inequalities and reduce demand on the NHS. Several speakers have already mentioned the importance of tackling obesity and its absence from this Bill, but I want to raise a further issue that is linked to obesity but is, I think, an even bigger public health issue in terms of the harm it does, and that is the control of pricing of alcohol.

Drink is the biggest killer of people aged between 15 and 50, and we also know that 40 per cent of all adults in Wales report consuming alcohol above the recommended daily limit on at least one day in the past week. Those are pretty shocking statistics, and I would have thought we have an obligation to do something to address the fact that alcohol is far too cheap and people are therefore able to consume vast quantities of it, even if they’re on very low incomes.

Alcohol misuse directly leads to over 1,500 deaths in Wales and the number of hospital admissions due to alcohol misuse costs the NHS in Wales nearly £110 million a year. We also know that there are many, many people clogging up the accident and emergency system, despite the deviation we endeavour to implement here in Cardiff to keep people safely contained in the city centre and not have to send them off to hospital. But, unfortunately, all too many of them turn up in hospital and they are clogging up the system and we absolutely have to do something about this.

So, I’m really disappointed that we haven’t yet got anything on alcohol in this Bill, particularly as I think it does meet support across the Chamber. Indeed, when I asked the First Minister about this at the end of January, he did confirm that the Government supports the introduction of minimum unit pricing as part of a package of measures aimed at reducing the impact of alcohol misuse on individuals, communities and our public services. So, I would be very keen to know what consideration the Government has given to including minimal alcohol pricing in this Bill, because at the moment we have the situation where alcohol is being sold effectively cheaper than water.

We know that minimum alcohol pricing saves lives because in parts of Canada, where minimum pricing has been implemented, it has resulted in a noticeable reduction in the amount people drink, with fewer hospital admissions and fewer alcohol-related deaths. So, I think we have an obligation to do something about this. We know that minimum alcohol pricing enables us to tackle the cheap, strong alcohol sold in supermarkets and off-licences: drinks like own-brand vodka or gin, strong white cider and super-strength lager, mostly produced in the UK. The people who benefit most from this are those who are drinking at harmful levels, particularly those on the lowest incomes who can least afford to lose days off work.

Unfortunately, we cannot rely on the UK Government to take the action required, because the coalition Government sold the pass on this in 2013, on the basis that there wasn’t enough concrete evidence. Well, I would say there is ample evidence that this works. The alcohol industry—we know they will stop at nothing to resist responsible pricing, as we have seen in Scotland, where the Scottish Parliament passed legislation on this as early as 2012, but it’s all been held up in the courts because the Scotch Whisky Association is challenging it in the UK Supreme Court. We cannot wait another 30 years to tackle alcohol in the way that we had to spend 30 years combating the harm of smoking. So, I would hope that we would be able to include this in the Bill, and that some of the money raised could enable us to keep our leisure centres et cetera open. It would raise useful sums of money to help treat people with alcohol disease and go some way to attempting to combat the huge millions of pounds that are spent by the drinks industry in encouraging people to drink far more than is good for them.