Clause 9
Finance Bill
5:00 pm
Jeremy Browne (Shadow Chief Secretary To the Treasury, Treasury; Taunton, Liberal Democrat)
I am grateful for that intervention but also confused by it, because I read that the Minister of State, Department of Health, the right hon. Member for Bristol, South (Dawn Primarolo), told the British Medical Association’s public health conference, which is an audience that is likely to be persuaded of the virtues of trying to improve the health of the nation:
“Our estimates suggest that higher taxes, if they do feed through to price, will mainly affect the 7 per cent. of the population who drink one third of all alcohol consumed in Great Britain. And that, in England alone, the total number of lives saved up to the end of March 2013”
will be
“3,250 lives by the Department’s calculations.”
We are now in a confusing position where the Treasury maintains that those measures have nothing to do with public health, but the Department of Health, when talking to the BMA, claims that those measures will save 3,250 lives by 2013. For the Committee’s benefit, that is roughly half the number of people killed annually in road traffic accidents in the UK, which is a large number. We do not know which Department is making the most persuasive case, but perhaps we will hear now.