Diane Abbott MP, the Shadow Public Health Minister, responds to the ‘Don't let drink sneak up on you’ campaign
03 Feb 2012
Diane Abbott MP, the Shadow Public Health Minister, has responded to the ‘Don't let drink sneak up on you’ campaign, saying that the campaign had an ‘important message’, but she raised the alarm about the government’s approach to tackling alcohol abuse: ‘This campaign has an important message, but the danger is that this will be a call out into the dark. What is needed is a proper and substantive strategy to bring about the big change the country needs and deserves. We’ve got to empower people to make the healthy choice.
‘Under this government, hospital admissions linked to alcohol problems have reached a record high so we need radical action to divert the crisis the government is driving us towards. It is clear that for Andrew Lansley, all that matters is whether his friends in big business are happy, and, unfortunately, it is costing our NHS and British families an absolute fortune. A recent report predicted that binge-drinking will cost the NHS £3.8billion by 2015, with 1.5million A&E admissions a year.’
‘I want to help popularise approaches that the UK has not tried before, and I think there are a number of important lessons to be learnt from overseas. I think the figures show that we should equipping young people with the skills they need to resist peer pressure to go out drinking.’
--ENDS—
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