I misunderstood in that case, but that was what I thought was the gravamen of your remarks.

Nobody's arguing that demand can't be influenced by price, and therefore the higher the tax, at certain levels, there's bound to be an impact on demand. But the key question is: who is going to be most affected by the increase in the price? Is it going to be people who are moderate drinkers or only occasional drinkers or those who have a greater dependence on alcohol? I'm not talking just about alcoholics here, I'm talking about people for whom alcohol matters more in their daily lives as a form of amusement, entertainment, enjoyment—call it what you will—than others. It seems to be vanishingly implausible that, at a level of 50p per unit price minimum, there's going to be any substantial inroad to the number of people who are described as hazardous drinkers.

The official definition of 'binge drinking', let me say, is somebody who is a male and drinks eight units per day, which is the equivalent of five glasses of wine. So, if you have five glasses of wine in one session, I'm afraid you are a binge drinker according to the official statisticians, and these are the figures that the Government relies on. So, when we're talking about hazardous drinking, we have to recognise that this is a very subjective term. I don't, personally, believe that drinking five glasses of wine exposes me, in reality, to any hazards at all. I probably drink that most days, actually—I'll happily admit—and it doesn't make me any less coherent or worth listening to. Perhaps, in fact, it makes me more worth listening to.

John Griffiths described, in the course of his speech, some of the ill effects of alcohol, the same as Dai Lloyd, who spoke eloquently about the medical aspects of excessive alcohol consumption, but that really isn't the issue here. The issue is whether this legislation is well enough targeted and going to be effective to produce the results that they would like to see. I think, what we're dealing with here are cultural problems more than economic problems, and attitudes towards alcohol and the speed at which you consume it are very important in the mix of argument here. I see no reason why the general public, for whom alcohol is not a problem—they don't create problems for society generally—should have to pay more for their enjoyment in order to have a very, very moderate or minor impact upon the statistics.