It’s a privilege to be here to address you this afternoon. Alcohol Concern is an important partner as we work to tackle the developing challenges of alcohol misuse in our society.

As a new minister, I had an awful lot of briefing to get through when I came to post.

But the story of alcohol and young people made for particularly worrying reading.

At the age of 11, only a small minority of children have tried alcohol. By the time they’re 13, over half have had a drink, and nearly a third drink once a month or more. By the age of 15, over a third of young people are drinking, mostly at home, unsupervised. By 16 and 17, about half of young people drink at least once a week, usually in a bar or pub.

That drinking pattern is a worrying story for us.

That’s why I’m pleased to come along to celebrate the work that Alcohol Concern are doing to tackle the problem. I know that you are involved closely in helping us to implement our Alcohol Reduction Strategy Safe, Sensible, Social that we published in June.

The Local Alcohol Strategy Toolkit that you are developing is going to be an invaluable source of guidance for local authority and PCT staff as they develop alcohol strategies And that expertise and guidance in their planning will help staff to work better with young people, families, and all in their locality for whom alcohol has become a problem.

The Alcohol and Youth Skills Training Project that you are launching today will provide a truly accessible and useful way for professionals working with children and young people to deal with issues around alcohol and I understand that you have already run a couple of sessions and that the feedback has been very good.

So the first thing I want to say today is thank you to Alcohol Concern for raising awareness of these important issues, and generally for the excellent work going on in local communities.

I also want to extend those thanks to all the professionals – in local government, in charities, and right across children’s services – for the work you’re doing with our young people.

No work could be more important than ensuring the health, safety, and welfare of children and young people, and that’s very much part of my brief too.

Good health is the single most important thing a person can possess.

Apart from the gateway to a long and prosperous life, good health is essential to ambition, achievement, and good relationships with the people around us.

We have to try and nurture that from the earliest possible age, and where threats to good health exist we must do everything we can to tackle them.

Alcohol is a very difficult problem for any Government. Enjoyed responsibly, it can be one of life’s pleasures.

But where it is abused, the effects can be devastating. The grip of addiction can stir up all sorts of psychological and other health problems and the media reminds us daily how it can topple careers, break up families, destroy relationships.

And it can leave a whole host of other problems in its wake: like drug addiction, like pregnancy, anti-social behaviour; not to mention the strains and costs on the health system.

It’s good news that fewer young people are drinking now than they were in 2000.

But those who are consuming alcohol are drinking more, and they are drinking more often.

If you look at the facts, of 11-15 year olds who are drinking, the average weekly consumption has doubled from 5 units a week in 1990 to 10 units a week in 2000.

Adults who drink a lot later in life often started drinking before they were 14, leading to early health problems for them, and problems later on, and a continuation of the cycle through behaviours their children learn from them.

I recently attended a consultation event on board the HMS Belfast, where I met a 15 year old who started drinking at the age of 6...

1.3 million young people are not drinking themselves, but are in households like that, and are feeling the full force of the damage alcohol can do through a parent who is drinking to excess.  That kind of environment is a very dangerous environment. 

And 70% of children in care came from a family where at least one parent was involved in substance misuse – most often alcohol.

No-one wants to deny young people a good social life and the experiences of youth.

But we do need to inform young people of the risks facing them, and help them to make the right choices, so that they can enjoy alcohol if they wish, when they are old enough to do so.

We need to get the right information out, so people know the real risks. We need to give people every opportunity to grow, develop and enjoy themselves safely. And we must ensure that we have excellent services that can respond and intervene quickly when people need them.

It’s got to be acceptable, in my view, for young people to say ‘no, I don’t want a drink’; it’s got to be acceptable for parents to say ‘no, you’re too young, I’m not going to share it with you’; and it’s got to be acceptable for shop owners and bar staff to refuse to serve underage drinkers.

It’s going to take a culture change to reverse some of these trends. As a Government, we are absolutely committed to that challenge.

Today, I want to talk briefly about our vision for making that happen.

That strategy places a greater emphasis now on children and young people:

For the first time, under 18s have been identified as a priority group for Government action on alcohol.

Reducing drinking amongst young people has now become a government objective, it’s the first time that’s happened. Previously, government indicators only included illegal drugs. Now, alcohol is one of those indicators.

And the strategy recognises the importance of wider cultural influences and parenting on young people’s drinking.

There are three important areas we’ve identified for action: we must intervene when problems arise; we must encourage young people to take responsibility for their own health and make healthy choices about their lives; and we must empower the people around them, including parents, to be able to give them the support and information that they need.

So firstly, we are acting to ensure that young people who are involved in alcohol misuse get the support they need to turn things around.

Over 97% of treatments occur in a familiar, community based setting. Using cognitive behavioural therapy, motivational interviewing, and other counselling approaches, and sometimes also drawing members of the young person’s family, to provide a more complete picture of support.

In 2002 we charged the National Treatment Agency to do the demanding task of increasing the numbers of young people in treatment by 50% between 2004 and 2008, to make sure that that process reaches more of the people it needs to.  And by the way, that is not a bad thing – its’s a good thing to get more treatment to children and young people who need it, because it shows the Government is acting to tackle this problem.

I’m delighted that the National Treatment Agency has met that target – it’s a real actual mark of progress.

Secondly, we are focusing on getting the right information to young people through their schools and other services, and making schools healthier places.

There has been a quiet revolution expanding school sports in the timetable, a healthy selection of food in the canteen, and Personal, Social and Health Education in the classroom, pupils will not only get the information they need to make healthy lifestyle choices, but they’ll actually get into the routine of doing it every day.

Education has an enormous role to play in helping people take responsibility for their own health. People soon realise that actually, just a few small changes can have an immediate impact on young people’s health, and sense of wellbeing, and achievement, not to mention the long term benefits of a healthy life.

These are big changes from when I taught before 1994, when there was a decline in sports, and profit was put before healthy food.  Schools were not always healthy places

But it's not difficult. We all know that a healthy body and a healthy mind go together. Just as misuse of alcohol can bring other problems, positive changes have other positive knock-on effects.

So where do we go from here?

We have renewed our commitment to all aspects of child safety and wellbeing, and we are being held to account for it through the new Public Service Agreements announced earlier this month.  A PSA means this issue is woven into health and wellbeing, it’s woven it’s Government spending plans and action. 

These weave the central principles of Every Child Matters – health and wellbeing, attainment, and every child fulfilling their potential – into the Government’s spending and action plans. 

Crucially, where previous government indicators on substance misuse related only to illicit drugs, now alcohol is included as an indicator for several of those Public Service Agreement targets. And its context ranges from hospital admissions for alcohol related illnesses to tackling anti-social behaviour. 

Those agreements are binding across Government between departments and they force us all to take a share in the accountability.

My secretary of State, Ed Balls is very strongly committed to that, and I know that my colleagues at the Department of Health, Justice, and right across Whitehall are committed to that too.  

We are also working together across government to develop a new Drug Strategy, which will be published next year, laying out how we will reduce the risks that substance misuse poses to children and young people and alcohol will definitely form a part of that work.

But more specifically, next year we will also be producing guidance to parents on the risks associated with young people drinking.

That brings me to the third area I mentioned: empowering parents and others working with children and young people to give them the support and information they need.

We all know parents, even more than schools, parents are the single most important influence in young people’s lives, so it’s vital that we get the information across to them to help change and shape young people’s attitudes to drink.

I am very pleased to be able to announce today that we have established an expert panel of paediatricians, psychologists, and eminent specialists in alcohol studies. They will review the latest evidence that we have on the effects of alcohol on young people, and their research will form the basis for our guidance to parents to be issued next year.  

But we welcome the views of all our partners, who have expertise and experience in this area and something to bring to that discussion.

I know that later on today you will be brainstorming suggestions, and I think it’s a great idea for Ed Balls, my boss, on possible ways to reduce drinking by young people, and I am genuinely very much looking forward to reading those ideas and including them in our thinking as we develop policy over the coming months.

So, professional services and treatments of the highest standards; encouraging young people to take responsibility for their own health and make healthy choices; and empowering parents to provide the additional support and information that they need.

Those are the things that will start getting the culture change underway. The real measure of progress, and the real success, I think, is when it is normal, or even cool not to drink before you’re 18; and when there is no peer pressure to do so.

I do detect a culture change happening with cigarettes, just from talking to my daughter and her friends, which many young people now perceive to be an anti-social, ‘un-cool’ habit. It can happen with alcohol too.

I look forward to working with all of you in the coming months to do just that, to make sure that every child has the very best chance for a successful future.

Thank you.