Cat Smith

I thank all hon. Members for making time to take part in the debate. I am disappointed that there are no plans from the Government at this stage for a national alcohol strategy. I urge the Minister to take a message back to the Department that such a strategy would be an important tool for improving health outcomes and reducing cancer diagnoses. The debate has been specifically about alcohol and cancer and how to prevent that link. Many hon. Members have personal reasons for taking part. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood (Lorraine Beavers) has been a good friend for 20 years. I know her family well and the impact on them. She is not the only person to come to the debate with a personal motivation to drive down the harm caused by alcohol in our communities. I welcome what the Minister said about labelling, which is an important first step to reducing alcohol harms. At the moment, alcohol needs to display only alcohol by volume, product volume and allergen information; even the pregnancy warning is optional for the industry to add. Anyone going into a pub or bar in this country today to buy a bottle of beer and a Fruit Shoot, will find that the latter provides more nutritional and health information than the beer, which is unsustainable. Labelling should be clear that there is a link between alcohol and cancer, because it is easy to play that down. I believe in freedom of choice—I am not trying to restrict anyone’s right to drink alcohol, but that needs to be an informed choice. We should know that there is no safe level of drinking alcohol when it comes to its potential to cause cancer. At the moment, with only 7% of our constituents knowing that fact, they are not able to make that informed choice. I hope the Government’s actions on labelling that the Minister is taking forward will see that figure of 7% massively increase, so that our constituents will make informed choices about what they put in their bodies. I again thank everyone for making the time this morning to take part in this important debate, and I thank you, Mr Stuart, for chairing it so ably. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered alcohol and cancer.