Thank you, Llywydd, and I beg to move the motion standing in my name on the agenda. We move from a tax to something that is akin to a tax: the Government's proposal to impose a minimum price for alcohol. Our motion makes two basic points, that a minimum price will have a disproportionate effect upon those at the lower end of the income scale—the poorest people in society—and that it won't actually achieve its stated objective, because the people with the biggest problem with alcohol, of course, are the ones who are least likely to be affected by changes in price. They are addicted to alcohol, and people with an addiction are driven by demons inside, which are not generally susceptible to alteration by changing the price of whatever it is that they consume. Indeed, in the case of controlled drugs, of course, they're not available for sale at all. They're banned and it's a criminal offence to use them, but we have massive drug problems in this country, and in the 1920s, when the United States did the same for alcohol—attempted to prohibit it by law—that created a massive series of social problems and the growth of crime but without actually dealing with the problems of alcoholism itself.

I'd like to start by asking how big a problem we actually have with alcohol in Wales. I was interested to read a report by Alcohol Concern that said that, since 2005, the overall amount of alcohol consumed in the UK—unfortunately, I couldn't find figures for Wales—and the proportion of people reporting drinking, and the amount that drinkers report consuming, have all fallen, and this trend is especially pronounced amongst younger drinkers. On the other hand, 77 per cent of the highest earners report drinking in the previous week, compared to 45 per cent of the lowest earners and, of course, the highest earners are the ones who are least likely to respond to changes in price at the lower end of the alcohol market, whereas the 45 per cent of lowest earners are the ones who are going to be targeted by the proposed changes. 

So, this proposal is introduced at a time when drinking is being moderated by the overwhelming majority of people, and the number of people who actually have a real problem, and create other problems for us in society, is either remaining static or diminishing as well. What's proposed here is going to be a general imposition upon the population at large to try to deal with the problems created by a very small number. So, it's the very opposite of targeted intervention, which is what would be required in order to solve the social problems, which the Government wishes to do.

Now, international comparisons are always dangerous, because different societies are very, very different in their history and social composition, and human behaviour differs between countries as well. When the health Secretary came to the Finance Committee to give evidence to us, I asked him if he had any statistics that produce the evidence for any correlation between the price of alcohol and the number of health-related diseases or other medical conditions that were found in those countries, and he said that he wasn't interested in statistics; they were of no value. Well, I think that there is some value in looking at the experience of other countries. You, in the usual arrogant way, dismissed a point that I was trying to make seriously. But I think there is some value in looking at international comparisons to see whether there is any relationship between the price of alcohol and the effects upon health. I've again found it very difficult to discover the statistics that I wanted, but I have found statistics for alcohol-related deaths as a percentage of total mortality. For England and Wales in the period 2006 to 2009, alcohol-related deaths as a percentage of total mortality amounted to 2.3 per cent. Now, that compares with 9.8 per cent in Finland, 3.2 per cent in Sweden, 6.5 per cent in Denmark, all of whom have much, much higher prices for alcohol than we have in the United Kingdom. Countries like Spain and Italy have much, much lower prices of alcohol and there isn’t a great deal of difference between their rates of alcohol-related mortality and ours.