The reason that conclusion doesn’t surprise us is that we know instinctively now that smoking tobacco is bad for your health and that an increase in the price is clearly a useful tool in the challenge of encouraging more people to give up tobacco. What we have here, if truth be told, is the beginning of a real debate on how we can use price and financial incentives to influence how much alcohol people drink. There are differences between alcohol and tobacco. I’m not aware that there is such a thing as moderate smoking that can be acceptable in terms of the level of risk to health. We do accept that someone can drink moderately and carefully, and we need to keep that in mind, but the fundamental point here is that drinking too much alcohol is bad for your health. Not only is it bad for your health personally, it’s also damaging to society. It can have serious impacts on children, it’s a strain on public services, and it can have an impact on poverty. And I have to say that I was surprised to hear Neil Hamilton rejecting this idea that alcohol is damaging to our society, because it is, and what we have here is an attempt to tackle that.

Now, each and every one of us should believe that trying to encourage people to drink less is a positive thing. And following on from that, I agree, as with the case with tobacco, with the principle of trying to use financial incentives in order to encourage people to consider drinking less, and also to think about alcohol in a different way, to think about alcohol as something that can be harmful. Now, I do agree with Neil Hamilton and Mark Reckless in as much as I do believe that it’s through taxation that that should happen. That would allow the funds that would be generated to be gathered by our own Treasury here in Wales and spent on tackling the abuse of alcohol and its impacts. But we can’t do that, because we don’t have the powers here in Wales to do so. So, the concept of a minimum alcohol price per unit is another approach—an imperfect approach, perhaps, but a possible tool—to try and vary prices of various kinds of alcoholic drinks in order to encourage moderate drinking and less harmful drinking.

We have a Bill, and there are many elements of that Bill that I want to see strengthened before I can be comfortable that we are going about this in the right way. I agree with the motion, which raises the risk that low-income households could be hit by this. I am asking for assurances through amendments about the way in which the minimum alcohol price will be set—50p is the figure that’s been discussed most. I’m no expert, but I feel that that possibly isn’t quite right; it’s a little high perhaps. So, I am introducing amendments to insist on more data, more modelling, and I think there’s also an opportunity to see how this works in Scotland, as the price is set there. So, we need the best possible evidence. I also want to see better communication around the Bill and a commitment to educate people on how to avoid paying more for alcohol, for example by drinking alcohol that has a lower alcohol content, and I think that that would be a positive side-effect. With any public health issue, we need to persuade people as to why these steps are being taken, and this is no different in that sense.

So, we are focusing many of our amendments on the elements of evidence and communication, and on the evaluation elements, in order to bring people with us. That’s where I stand on this. What the motion in the name of Neil Hamilton attempts to do is to shut down the debate as we are still going through the legislative process. There are major gains if we get this right. Getting it wrong would hold public health efforts back in future, perhaps. So, let’s focus on trying to see whether we can achieve a Bill and then an Act that is stronger by working constructively.