A minimum price for alcohol will have a high political cost

jheath

Typical idea from the champagne socialists - based on dubious statistics and inevitably hitting those it did not mean to hit. Like all the other endless examples of "policy interventions" and "regulation".

Sally Chatteree

Why? Government seems to tinker endlessly with these things. I suppose it keeps large bureaucracies busy.

Cameron should be sacking these needless officials, not tasking them with more reasons to meddle in the lives of ordinary Britons.

NICK Wilson

The more expensive alcohol becomes, the greater the attraction of smuggled/alternatively sourced drink.

PayDirt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_monopoly

David Ossitt

Market forces must sett all prices, England is not (yet) a command economy.

Let government stop interfering.

timinsingapore

Au contraire - it would be one of the most popular measures Cameron could initiate. Large swathes of Middle England are fed up with the antisocial behaviour associated with excessive drinking in our town centres and on public transport, and some decisive action to counter it is long overdue. Forsyth's notion that cheap alcohol is somehow of benefit to underprivileged families is distinctly odd - a reduction in alcohol consumption would benefit them just as much as it would the drunken middle-class career women who vomit over London's Tube of a Friday night, or the fat ladies who stand in the streets of Manchester, shouting at random ...

In2minds

As all the serious politics is done by the EU all H2B has left is this silly tinkering. Serves him right.

Tanuki

Bah ! Humbug !

I despair of this social-engineering nanny-state-knows-best nonsense.

Surely a properly-Conservative, pro-free-market government should be celebrating the ongoing ability of capitalism to bring everyday necessities to the populace at ever-decreasing prices?

Matthew Blott

Concern for the poor on pricing is swill - if that was the case the government wouldn't have hiked VAT. Please conservatives be a little more honest.

SpankyTrish

Russian Joke

The price of alcohol is artificially jacked.

Son: “Father, now that vodka is more expensive will you be drinking less?”

Father: “No, Son, but you will be eating less.”

Tron

I thought we voted out Gordon Brown to stop this nonsense.

TGF UKIP

As your editor frequently tell us, James, almost exactly the same level of spending and borrowing and even higher taxes, added to which we have still more market-rigging "green" levies on both businesses and households, even more political correctness and hostility to Christians and now extra prissy market intervention nannying and bullying via alcohol price fixing.

One question for you James - just what difference?

DavidDP

On the other hand, if it reduces the costs to the rest of us of dealing with the negative externalities of excessive drinking, the low paid may be rewarded with tax cuts.

John Hall

Free market? Liberal economic measures? Or Nanny knows best, big government paternalism? How typically Cameroon! When will the Conservative party be led by a genuine Conservative again?

Mirtha Tidville

Great News...if you happen to run a French Wine Warehouse or operate a cross channel ferry..Should not come as any suprise that the Lib Dem leader of the coalition..Dozy Dave
thinks that this is good...Like the Doctors he also is very rich...

God its making mr nostalgic for Broon!!

Nicholas

"The minimum price would be accompanied by an “aggressive” public health campaign and a more draconian approach to curtailing the sale of alcohol in shops, pubs and clubs.
A Whitehall source said: “The Prime Minister has decided that when it comes to alcohol, something pretty radical now has to be done and he is keen on the minimum price.""

Cameron as the Great Leader? What happened to curtailing the big state and too much central interference? I thought we might have seen the last of this sort of thing with Brown but Cameron seems also to be confusing the responsibilities of his position with the power of his position.

Once again everyone is punished for the failure of the state to deal with a minority. Bunkum.

Kittler

Min prices will clear the shelves of the ASBO Brews and Jakie Juices like 7.5% White Lightning at £2 for 2 ltr. Sure it's interfering with the Market but so is not allowing heroin wraps on the shelves. Should help the pub trade to boot.

fergus pickering

But alcohol is surely an inelastic good. It doesn't matter what it costs because drinkers will still buy it. I certainly will, cursing the Government as I shell out. And the vomiting young will still buy it too. Please twll me what the new price of a bottle of cheap gin will be. I currently pay £9.00. I suppose if the cheap stuff goes up a lot I will buy better gin.

Peter From Maidstone

The problems in Maidstone seem to me to be caused by bad licencing decisions and ridiculous pricing in town centre clubs vying for young drinkers. People getting paralytic in their own homes is a different issue.

If there were less clubs and big pubs in the town centre, and if they were not allowed to propose special offers, and if there was a strict limit on numbers allowed in then this would have a much bigger effect than increasing the costs of drink from £15 for the night to £18 or whatever the pointless increase is likely to be.

Herbert Thornton

If Cameron manages to get this watered-down version of Prohibition into law, it will, just as Prohibition did, cause yet more problems. Not that Cameron cares about that in the slightest.

His main aim is to divert attention from the many evils flowing from European interference with British affairs - by pretending that the only evil worth confronting is excessive drinking by the lower classes.

Cameron is less concerned about the demand for alcohol than about the universal demand for a referendum about Europe.

Andrew Tennant

Aren't all crap cheap alcohol drinkers Labour voters already?

wrinkled weasel

This is so wrong on so many levels it is beyond contempt.

Let the feckless drink themselves to death on decent booze and not some bleached out meths dressed up as vodka.

Of course, what a fab cash cow it would make for a cash strapped govt. Oh.

Bob Roberts

Spending and taxes up
More green rules
Do nothing police in the face of a riot
Now social engineering though minimum prices

Anyone remind me what the point of voting conservative was?

anyfool

If the government made the lazy overpaid social workers that call themselves cops do there job of locking up the antisocial drunks before they turn violent then there would be no reason for this tax rise.

Dennis Churchill

Whatever happened to the idea this was a free country that respected the liberty of people to hold unpopular views or live their lives with minimum state interference?
Was it the Miliband type influx we got before and after World War 2? Fleeing oppression the central European political class took over academia and from there spread their insidious totalitarian doctrine into our political class.
All this proposal will do is increase smuggling and illicit distillation.

TrevorsDen

There is an anti social element to beer pricing which is a loss leading below cost exercise for some retailers.

I have seen an over 18 ladling out cans of cheap booze to young under age acolytes from the boot of his car. I speculated that once pissed he would then start on the real drugs.

The issue is a difficult one and deserves a proper discussion.

David Cockerham

I'm always staggered by the utter hypocrisy of the politicians on this. If we all stopped smoking and drinking completely, there would have to be massive increases in taxes on just about everything else to make up for the lost excise revenues and stop the NHS and much of the rest of the country going bankrupt. Perhaps the politicians would like to tell us how exactly they would make up the revenue losses for any given level of reduction in our smoking and drinking habits, and at what point exactly they would like to strike the balance between preservation of our health and preservation of the health of the national finances. That would reveal their hypocrisy in all its glory. One thought that gives me great comfort is that if taxes have to be massively increased to compensate for lost tobacco and alcohol duties, it will be all the anti-smoking and drinking fanatics who have to pick up the tab for it, while for the smokers and drinkers they are persecuting it will at least be a major financial gain to compensate them for their lost pleasures.

Jumbo O'Reilly

Tim Worstall has done some debunking of the statistics which these wowsers pray in aid of their puritanisam. See, for example, http://timworstall.com/2011/12/28/see-how-statistical-lies-make-the-world-a-worse-place/

anne allan

Deja vue all over again. The booze run will be resurrected and a few more pubs and offies will go out of business.
We already have laws against drunken and disorderly behaviour; USE THEM.
Re-introduce the 'coolers' that once stood on the outskirts of each town. A night in one of those little cells, lying amongst your own and other drunks' vomit etc..... was a salutary lesson to all but the most determined of drunkards.

A pensioner

There is no problem so bad that government intervention will not make it worse! I like a drink (with friends, with a meal), but I don't get drunk. I'm not the target, but I will be hit all the same. I foresee a rise in home brewing and a huge increase in smuggling while those who abuse alcohol will continue to do so. Those of us who like the occasional tipple, however, will be penalised. Drunk and disorderly is an offence. Police it. Throw the drunks in the drunk tank overnight and put them up before the beak the following morning. Draconian fines and custodial sentences for repeat offending would do more to concentrate their minds and address the problem than making my occasional bottle of claret unaffordable. While they're about it, they can end the extended opening hours and return sales outside the old licensing hours to off-licences.

Mazz

I thought the EU Socialist State did not allow price fixing?

Magnolia

Once when I was young, in my old fashioned grammar school, the exasperated crippled physics teacher said "the next person who talks when I'm speaking will result in the whole class getting a detention" to which I asked of my friend "what did she say?" and "can I borrow your ruler?".
No prizes for guessing the result. I hated that teacher because she was weak and stupid and I never liked physics.
This is the political equivalent and the idiots who get drunk and puke in our streets and need A&E to patch them up are going to be punished along with the rest of us who like the taste of real ale. If we have to all be put in to detention over alcohol, then at least let those of us who are good earn a no claims bonus and work towards and be issued with a state supplied duty free entitlement card.
Pre Christmas I would have been really appalled by this but having seen two of my female relly's sink a bottle between them in half an hour and then ask for more I'm inclined to think that the lefty medics might be on to something. When I told them to watch out for their breasts they told me to shut up because it was Christmas. Who on this site measures out the units and sticks to them like I do?

Nicholas

I hope "Prohibition Cameron" reads the comments here and at the Telegraph site.

Agree with all who say the key is proper enforcement.

2trueblue

As stated above there are laws that the authorities are loathe to use to cure the problem. WHY? The law is there and 'coolers' are not expensive to erect/run. Another situation where the law abiding have to pay for habitual offenders.

I find it so disappointing that we have yet another government who fail to engage brain in finding solutions that are no more than 'knee jerk' reations. We had 13yrs of Liebore who were experts in this field, don't go there Cam.
I do despair that our political class have little on offer to see us through any of the problems that we are enountering currently.

David Lindsay

Genius is often close to madness. Broaching the minimum pricing of alcohol during these 12 Days is one or the other on the part of the Government. But I am not sure which.

As someone who now drinks very moderately despite a capacity for alcohol long remarked upon by other people, I am not sure what to make of proposals for minimum pricing. They seem to be hitting the wrong target, which is alcoholic drinks stronger than beer, specifically designed for immature palettes, and, yes, priced for the pocket money market, or at least the Saturday job market.

Why shouldn’t I be able to buy four bottles of real ale for six quid? It would take me over a week to get through them. But making anything last over a week because it is worth savouring is not how the adolescent mind works. And being able to appreciate anything worth savouring in that way is not how the adolescent palette works. So why discriminate in favour of the adolescent pocket?

Minimum pricing is not the panacea for this country's endemic drunkenness, but it certainly has its place. However, we now discover that, even if they wanted to, the alcohol manufacturers could not arrange such a scheme among themselves, since that would be a breach of competition law. Was there ever anything - anything at all - less conservative than capitalism? Oh, well, over to the force that makes family values possible in practice: the State.

Maddy1

A quango could investigate the effects of alcholol and " urinating into the wind".
Howse abouts sewing the mouths shut of the underclass?

john mackie

All they need to do is charge people £500 a pop for alcohol-related visits to hospital.

Starting with A&E ones.

Steve Tierney

Price controls are for crazy people and crazier nations. This is madness.

Verity

The key factor that people keep missing is, Cameron is stupid. Or, if not actually dribbling, is not overly bright. He could not have got to the upper echelons, never mind the top place, of government had other, brighter, people not wanted him there.

xenophon

Nobody, as far as I am aware, has yet provided a convincing explanation of the fact that alcohol is generally cheaper (in some cases, much cheaper) in other countries which do not have our problem of city centres being taken over at night by drunken hordes, or A&E departments where decent people cannot get treatment on a Friday or Saturday night because of the crowds of injured drunks.

Nobody has yet provided a convincing argument to show that this is not a nanny-state proposal of the worst New Labour sort, which cannot achieve any of its intended consequences.

Holdsworth

I hate the non-thinking use of slogans like 'nanny state'. These things have to be debated on a case by case basis, using facts rather than vague notions.

Alcohol abuse is a major evil afflicting the UK. A major cause of this is the amazing decline in alcohol prices over the last few decades in relation to earnings.

"Min prices will clear the shelves of the ASBO Brews and Jakie Juices like 7.5% White Lightning at £2 for 2 ltr. Sure it's interfering with the Market but so is not allowing heroin wraps on the shelves. Should help the pub trade to boot."

Fully agree. And with Trevor's Den and (as usual) the excellent David Lindsday.

Let's get real here. Addictive substances ruin the lives of individuals and families. 'The Market' doesn't care about that; it only cares about making money within the limits of the law (or, at least, the enforced law). I am opposed to extremes like Marxism but there have to be boundaries and some effort to shape things for the better, organised centrally. For example, law restricting the sale of cigarettes to 12 year-olds. Is that the 'nanny state'?

So altering the law to shave a few percentage points off liver disease, alcohol dementia (which is on the way -- as if we didn't have enough of the other kinds of dementia to contend with), violence and crime, and so on, seems to me to be the right thing to do.

fergus pickering

Verity, I would have thought that David Cameron is brighter than our last two Prime Ministers, the present Leader of the Labour Party and Nick Clegg, and brighter than our last three Tory leaders (perhaps not Mr Howard as was). And brighter than the Hausfrau and the gallic dwarf. How do you rate that lot?

Ian Walker

If you don't want the excess going to the drinks companies, then why not levy it as a duty on those companies and leave them to make a profit on top, e.g. tax alcoholic beverages at 40p per unit.

Another idea - make the tax lower for sales in pubs.

RocketDog

This is another PR piece gone wrong
It isn't Cameron's job to stop people getting pissed in parks, it is the job of the police. Cameron's job is to maintain our sovereignty and the security of these shores. One happy accident with Mlle. Sarkozy and some heartfelt mumblings about us remaining a Christian State (as if that should ever have needed talking about in the first place) and he thinks that he is our Nations's Leader
Well we do need one, but I am with Verity on this. I think that he is a glove puppet and we need to watch out for whomever is really operating him. This is PR gone bad

Nicholas

"Minimum pricing is not the panacea for this country's endemic drunkenness"

But deep, socialist imposed misery is the cause. As it was in the former Soviet Union. A whole generation or two of young people with no hope, no identity, if in employment suffering under the corporate yoke, if unemployed just suffering and all living for the oblivion of drink and holidays and the fantasy of celebrity "culture". Cameron won't get this country back on its feet by tinkering, however well intentioned. The destruction has been going on for too long and is too deep rooted. Ahead lies increasing crime, ethnic and sectarian violence, paranoia and state intervention. Life imitates art. Brazil and Children of Men here we come.

Remittance Man

@Timinsingapore,

I fear you are confusing two issues.

The problems in Britain's town centres on Friday and Saturday nights are not the result of Sainsbury's stocking cheap canned lager. Those stem from ill-considered changes to the licencing laws, poor policing and ineffective punishment of offenders by the courts.

Forcibly raising the price of Von Ratzpizt Uberbargain Lager on the shelves of your local Tescos will affect it not one jot.

DeeJay

There are so many contradictions. I can understand why Conservatives would be reluctant to interfere in the market price of alcohol but in the absence of any cogent policy to combat the pernicious effects of alcohol abuse what should a responsible government do?

If its not to be price control, what hope can this government give to the thousands and thousands of family members and friends who are so deeply affected by this blight on their love ones?

I agree that the police already have powers but the seem reluctant to enforce the existing laws. Equally I fail to understand why local councils tolerate the existence of 24 hour off-licences and uncontrolled late night drinking establishments and don't seek to alter the licensing laws. And make no mistake, the social and economic costs of this epidemic are colossal and affect ALL levels of our society.

So if its not price control what solutions do the Conservatives propose? Some of us are quite anxious to know.

Julian F

David Lindsay: "Oh, well, over to the force that makes family values possible in practice: the State." Back to Basics!

Heartless Curmudgeon

As with his Hero, the H2B jumps on passing bandwagons. And as always, the majority suffer for the reckless minority, - or, - the hangups of the vocal - and usually PC - po-faced brigades.

Bliar and his minions did for guns, knives, smoking, fox-hunting and promoted 24 hour drinking a la fantasy cafe society. [Note: there are now more illegal guns and knives than ever, while genuine sports- 'persons' are monitored like criminals.]

His follower, the erstwhile H2B, now proposes to meddle with drinking, - doubtless a prelude to yet more meddlesome actions by the 'Caring' State.

My reaction, and doubtless that of many others, is " B*gger Off you interfering little pip-squeak!! " Just make the perpetrators of bad actions pay, - and pay heavily. Simples, - but too much for the spineless H2B.

Tiggy

Meddling Nanny-State.The politicians are at fault for driving us to drink in the fitst place. Cameron is Nu-Labour, only thinly disguised!

Ghengis

DeeJay - Previous to newlab meddling with licencing law and removing the responsibility from the Justices of the Peace to the County Councils - The peace in relation to alcohol was maintained most adequately by the police and the Bench. What suffered as a result of the move from Bench to apparatchik is to be observed in most town centre's at weekends. The JP's, being empowered, at police request would have closed trouble premises or placed limited hours in place. The apparatchiks have no conception, probably deskbound as are their minds.

David Lindsay

Holdsworth, very many thanks.

Nicholas, these Islands' love affair with the sauce has been remarked upon both by their inhabitants and by everyone else since time immemorial.

Julian F, and why not?

starfish

This is complete nonsense - and as revealed eslewher by Tim Worstall, based on very dubious stats

Given that the police have abandoned the streets they are now trying to price drunks out of bad behaviour - I have news, serious abusers will always find the money

If they really think this is an issue why do they permit the sale of alcohol anywhere?

I wonder if the minimum price will include the subsidised bars at the Houses of Parliament?

Julian F

David Lindsay: the precedents (for Back to Basics type policies) are not good but I'm nonetheless inclined to agree with you on this one. Uncontrolled alcohol consumption can have devastating effects and there is a strong case for government intervention, if an effective system can be designed. The analogy between alcohol and heroin wraps is valid - were it to be discovered now, alcohol would probably be banned from the outset. It is astonishing that, as a an apparently civilised country, we allow it to exert such an evil and pervasive influence, to the detriment of all (alcohol addiction seems to be class-blind, though I admit that I know of no research to support this supposition).

Julian F

Of course, an alternative might be to impose surcharges on alcohol abusers for their unreasonable demands on the NHS. A true market in health insurance would lead to something like this naturally but, alas, we are unlikely to reach such a stage anytime soon. In the meantime, government intervention appears to be the only viable alternative.

john miller

The only cheap alcohol I'm concerned about is that quaffed by MPs and hangers on in the Commons bars and caffs.

Rather typical of MPs to raise the price for everyone else while taking money from us to subsidise their own drinking.

All done without batting an eyelid.

The fact that they can enjoy a fag with their cut-price booze merely adds to the hypocrisy.

Verity

Uncontrolled licensing laws was another vicious, destructive move in the deconstruction of the country he and Cher hate by Blair. Everything Blair did in office was geared towards destruction of our society. As his father was a barrister and thus part of the establishment, this just goes to prove how weird Blair is... as some of us noted when he first bounced into the public sphere with his fake estuary accent and fake "memories" of standind behind the goal post with his dad, the barrister.

starfish

@Julian F

"an alternative might be to impose surcharges on alcohol abusers for their unreasonable demands on the NHS"

or consumers of cream buns? or those that persist in an unhealthy lifestyle....or indulge in sports?

where would this end? and lets not forget that the people who actually pay for the NHS are those same people that consume alcohol

fergus pickering

Come along, Julian. Heavy boozing permeates the civilised world. Christ himself was a boozer. Modern Islam doesn't drink but what has Modern Islam to offer? Ancient Islam is another matter. See Omar Khayyam.

Dave

I like the 500 quid surcharge for booze related medical treatment but as ever I can't help wondering why an increasing percentage of the population needs to spend so much time smashed. Perhaps instead of addressing the symptoms big government should try providing a reality that doesn't need alchohol to be rendered tolerable.

Juan Bautista

The minimum price for alcohol should be zero.

Sorted.

fergus pickering

All reality requires alcohol (and religion) to render it tolerable.

Nicholas

"Nicholas, these Islands' love affair with the sauce has been remarked upon both by their inhabitants and by everyone else since time immemorial."

Does "love affair with the sauce - since time immemorial" equate to the current situation? I don't think so. But typical of you to try to demonise the past and airbrush out the socialist role in bringing about our present state. Funny how all the positive, "progressive" stuff is attributed to socialism but all the negatives are either conveniently forgotten or blamed on the Tories.

Hmm, let me think, was the current situation in my local town on a Saturday night the same in 1980, in 1950, in 1920, in 1890, in 1860, in 1830, in 1800, in 1770, in 1740, etc.? Er, no, it wasn't. It is a unique distillation of cultural marxism, very stupid New Labour ideas, impoverished policing and enforcement and the very succinct change ("New Labour meddling") described by Ghengis.

Suck it up, boy, and for once try to accept reality.

Julian F

starfish @9.56pm on 29th Dec: you are quite right, of course. I didn't think that one through. In the absence of private health insurers setting tailored premiums, such surcharges could only be random and poorly targeted...much like all state activity, in fact.

DavidCage

There have been dozens of studies world wide and all come up with the same conclusion that low consumers are heavily price concious, medium ones are somewhat price concious but heavy ones merely switch to cheaper forms or spend more at the cost of real essentials to get the same alcohol content.
If they really want to cut binge drinking make a pedestrian breath test similar to that for drivers but at a realistically higher level.

DeeJay

This is not encouraging. Unless I have missed it, not a single suggestion to combat the seemingly relentless rise in persistent and excessive alcohol consumption. Is the situation really that hopeless?

starfish

"Unless I have missed it, not a single suggestion to combat the seemingly relentless rise in persistent and excessive alcohol consumption. Is the situation really that hopeless?"

apparently not

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12397254

DeeJay

@starfish at 9.30pm

I am obligied to you for posting the above link and I ought to be encouraged, but I hope you will understand that submissions made on behalf of British Beer and Pubs Association and the Portman Group (acting for drink manufacturers) might not be entirely impartial. I'm afraid the empirical evidence suggests something rather different.

Ghengis

starfish - Yes, you missed it.