Hansard

I congratulate Kenneth Gibson on securing time for the debate. I know that we are here late in the day but I, for one, am grateful to have the opportunity to speak on something that, like Kenneth Gibson, I am very passionate about.

We are talking about a background of an exponential explosion in ever more sophisticated marketing tactics and access to products that are eminently harmful to our children and young people. The motion focuses on alcohol consumption, but we could quite easily speak about excess consumption of high-sugar food and drink products, high levels of caffeine in drinks, fast food, processed food or even the over-consumption of video games and social media—controversial.

However, as we are focusing on alcohol, we should applaud Scottish Women’s Football for its stance against alcohol advertising. The argument against is, of course, that it would be difficult to replace revenue in the associated sports. However, Kenneth Gibson, like me, is of the era in which the likes of motorsport and snooker were heavily sponsored by tobacco companies—I remember the famous JPS Lotus team, for example. Exactly the same arguments were made back then when legislation banned that kind of advertising. However, as we know, the sky has not fallen in on those sports and they have gone from strength to strength. In fact, Formula 1 is one of the world’s most cash-rich sports these days.

Sport is entirely the wrong environment in which to promote such products, because their consumption has exactly the opposite effect to the positive effect that sport can bring. Perhaps the stance that the Scottish Women’s Football team has taken will show the way for other sports when they consider that kind of sponsorship.

In our drive to tackle the many impacts of the consumption of health-harming products, we must acknowledge that there are many factors that this Parliament could affect. For example, we know that premises where alcohol can be purchased are disproportionately prolific in the most deprived areas—some 40 per cent higher, in some cases—so how this place, and local authorities, agree licensing of those premises gives politicians the ability to influence access to brands and their associated marketing.

Furthermore, we need to look at the exposure of children and young people to alcohol in the home environment. I met Alcohol Scotland a couple of weeks ago and was told about what the children of parents who have alcohol issues said when asked what they would want. Their most frequent reply was that they wished that their parents would abstain from drinking until the children had gone to bed. That answer should raise so many flags with us. Those children are basically looking for the parental attention that most take for granted; they are losing out on opportunities to have access to activities, indoors and out, in a family and community environment. Those behaviours are learned, so we need to consider how we can break that destructive cycle.