Alcohol and Cancer

Danny Chambers Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. I very much appreciate the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Cat Smith) securing this important debate.

We vets often treat liver disease and cancers, but in animals they are rarely caused by excess intake of alcohol. On the few occasions that we use alcohol in veterinary medicine, it is therapeutic. It is quite common for cats to drink antifreeze, which causes kidney damage, and one way of treating that is to hook them up to a drip with vodka, because it is the antidote to antifreeze. That has probably saved the lives of thousands of cats in the UK over the last few years.

I remember that when I was a student there was a particularly vicious boar that everyone was too scared to go anywhere near, but its feet needed trimming. The only way to get anywhere near it was to give it a huge amount of beer. It would get completely drunk and pass out, and then we could safely go and trim its feet. We had to repeat that performance every six months. That is my own experience of using alcohol in veterinary medicine.

The point of this debate—highlighting the link between alcohol and cancer—has been made repeatedly by other Members. Most people are aware that alcohol causes liver problems, but so many people are not aware of the proven link between alcohol intake and cancer. We have listed at least seven related cancers, including breast, bowel and liver cancer. It does not matter whether the alcohol consumed is beer, wine or spirits; the risk it poses is real and increases with consumption.

The mechanisms are well understood. We know that alcohol gets metabolised into toxic chemicals. It damages DNA and has effects on other hormones in the body that increase cell division. These are well-evidenced biological processes. Indeed, the British Journal of Cancer has found that between 2% and 4% of cancer cases in the UK are attributable to alcohol, which means that thousands of lives are affected every year, many of which could be saved through better public health, education and early intervention.

I pay tribute to Professor Julia Sinclair, who lives in Winchester and works at the University of Southampton. She is a professor of addiction psychiatry and focuses very much on alcohol. I have worked closely with her, even before I was elected. We have had roundtables here in Parliament, including with the British Liver Trust; its headquarters are in Winchester, so I have worked closely with it. I have also spoken on panels at the Royal College of Physicians.

All those experts discussed alcohol and alcohol-related harms. There is not only a human cost but an economic cost. Alcohol-related harms cost the NHS £4.91 billion every year, and that is before we even consider the wider cost to families, employers and society. Other hon. Members pointed out that the misery and loneliness of the pandemic resulted in people increasing their alcohol intake, and that intake has not really decreased since that time. That has resulted in alcohol-related deaths increasing by 42% since 2019, which means that over 10,000 lives were lost in 2023 alone.

Along with the Medical Council on Alcohol, the Liberal Democrats are calling for a comprehensive national alcohol strategy that is properly funded, cross-departmental and informed by the latest evidence and public health expertise. Part of that strategy must be rebuilding and reintegrating alcohol treatment services, ensuring that addiction support is fully joined up with mental and physical healthcare.

We have heard from so many doctors who talk about people being admitted to hospital for their physical symptoms to be treated, but once they have been detoxed, essentially, they are discharged without any automatic mental health support. Of course, that means that they eventually come back in for further physical treatment. They can be treated as many times as they need to be when they get to a physical crisis-point, but we are never treating the underlying mental health issue that needs to be addressed.

We need to restore the public health grant so that social services can run alcohol cessation and early intervention programmes. We also need to invest in digital tools, including a kitemark for apps that are clinically proven to help people reduce their alcohol intake and live healthier lives.

We must recognise the wider context in which alcohol causes harm. Alcohol misuse does not happen in isolation; it is often closely linked to trauma, poor mental health, loneliness and disadvantage. Crucially, alcohol harm is not equally distributed. As the Medical Council on Alcohol’s research shows, rates of alcohol-related cancer, liver disease and premature death are highest in the most deprived communities. This is a matter of health inequality, and it should shame us that we have allowed those disparities to grow.

I was on the Tobacco and Vapes Bill Committee for several weeks. Fascinatingly, Professor Whitty told the Committee that the Bill was not only the single biggest piece of public health legislation in about 30 years, but probably the most impactful piece of legislation in addressing inequalities, because health inequalities between the wealthiest and most deprived postcodes are so large partly because of smoking rates—and, we also know, partly because of patterns of alcohol drinking.

We must see alcohol harm and alcohol-related cancer as preventable public health issues. That means that we need the political will to expand social prescribing to reduce isolation, deliver mental health MOTs at key life stages, open mental health walk-in hubs in every community, and legislate for a cancer survival Act to ensure that patients start treatment promptly and that research is funded for cancers with the poorest outcomes.

Alcohol is a legal product, but it is not harmless. People have the right to know the risks and get support when they need it. We need to stop treating alcohol-related cancer as an inconvenient truth and recognise this as a crisis of alcoholism.