Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. I want to talk specifically to the minimum unit price for alcohol. Some of you may know that I’m a former licensee, and I have witnessed people who have thought, very often, that they were in control of what they drank. After all, they only came in for one, maybe two, pints on a regular basis, after work. But, the next week, they might have three pints, and so it went on. Even if they only had two pints every single day—and that was very often the norm—it became a habit. And that is the problem with alcoholism. It becomes a habit, and it becomes a need, and it becomes a dependency, and it builds and gathers momentum within the individual.

I have seen both men and women absolutely destroyed by dependency on alcohol. They were living very fruitful lives before that dependency grew. It is a real addiction, it does take over the individual, but it also costs their family, and I’ve also seen the result of that. So, needless to say, I will be supporting the minimum unit price for alcohol, because there is no doubt—. I do agree with the previous speaker when they said that individuals go to the supermarket, they are picking up alcohol as cheaply as they can, they are pouring it down their throats—and that’s the only way to describe it—before they even go out onto the street. It is also destroying public houses, and it was within the public house sector that most of the drinking was actually contained, and people were curtailed in what they drank by the norms of society, in most cases. I do think that there are huge, huge problems with supermarkets selling drink. You see offers all of the time. You only have to walk through the door and you can buy 20 or 30 cans of whatever it is for £10 or £20. That is a really dangerous way to be selling a product that can cause so much misery. So, I absolutely support that.

We must also remember, when we’re talking about dependency on alcohol, that it costs business vast amounts of money for the lost working days every single year; that it costs families, very often, their home; and society in the way that was described by Jenny Rathbone just now. But it also costs our NHS money every single weekend of every single year, and it costs the staff very often, who are affected by those individuals who come in with their brutish behaviour towards the staff. So, I most definitely will be, as you can tell, supporting the minimum unit price for alcohol. I actually think it is forward thinking, and I do commend the Government for putting it in their programme.