The binge-drinking saga has become an object lesson in chaotic British government. Labour ministers thought that the Licensing Act 2003 would strike electoral gold. People would be delighted at being able to drink when they liked. Pressed by the pub owners before the last election, Labour actually sent teenage voters text messages proclaiming, "Cldnt gve a XXXX 4 lst ordrs thn vte lbr on thrsday 4 extra time".
The law was duly passed and ministers sat back to await the plaudits. All they got were brickbats. Now they are scurrying about trying to change the law and in doing have made matters worse.
The Licensing Act is in principle a good one. Communities are offered the chance to regulate their own pub hours hours and fight anti-social drinking. Power is granted to local people. Yet this power has coincided with what seems a drunkenness epidemic. The cause has been an unrelated government policy, to lower taxes on alcohol and encourage young people to drink rather than use (untaxed) recreational drugs.
The street price of these drugs has fallen to the level of a cup of coffee, helped by the Government's refusal to regulate or tax the drugs market. Brewers and pub owners have been frantic to hold down the price of drink and "liberalise" the drink laws. They have succeeded. The price of alcoholic drink in relation to average earnings is lower today than when Labour came to power. It is just half what it was in 1968. Consumption of alcohol per head has risen by 50 per cent. Happy hours, "all you can drink for £10" and free drinks for women have become an entertainment cult. Binge-drinking is virtually public policy.
The Government was, at least until last month, singing from the industry song sheet. But a deafening discord has emerged from the police, hospitals, schools and anti-alcohol charities. The idea of a "continental cafe culture" was cloud-cuckoo land, they said. Reality was violence, noise, filth and disorder anywhere near an urban pub. Ministers panicked. By last Friday they had done what governments always do. They brought in knee-jerk measures, inspections, bans, fines and taxes.
The new law was hardly libertarian. It replaced magistrates with local councils as licensing agents. It extended the rights of local people to restrict pubs, clubs and bars. If a pub wants to stay open after 11 o'clock, it must persuade its community this will not cause a nuisance. Neighbours can demand an inquiry and request a licence be withdrawn. This could be a far tougher restriction than now. The law means more binge-drinking only if councils, the police and communities allow it.
The trouble was the weight of regulation required by the new Act, implying fees of from £50 to £2,000 on pubs and an army of inspectors. This bureaucracy was increased by last week's new measures. These propose "alcoholic disorder zones", yellow cards, "three strikes and you're out" bans on drinkers and complex levies on pubs to pay for extra policing. Nobody knows what this will cost. Ministers are already being sued by councils, notably Camden and Westminster, for grants to pay for enforcement. What should have been a measure of deregulation and liberalism has become the opposite, bureaucracy beyond all sense.
The alcohol lobby has only itself to blame for this. It has been frantic to boost its profits. It disregarded the fact that half of all assaults and a majority of nocturnal hospital admissions are drink-related. They were not its business. The alcohol lobby is Britain's version of America's gun lobby.
Now the alcohol industry finds itself with more stringent controls than before. The Government is suddenly committed to the one thing the pub owners fear, reduced alcohol consumption. Ministers once eager for credit from young people for allowing more drinking time are now treating them like soccer hooligans. Parliament is like Alice Through the Looking Glass. It first passes a law, then consults on it, then defines the problem the law was meant to solve.
For all that, I am still in favour of communities having the right to regulate nuisances on their patch. If my neighbourhood wants a late-night culture and the profits and problems it brings, fine. It must deliberate within itself and reach a verdict. The nanny state should become the neighbourhood state. But if people want to curb those new drug pushers, the corporate bar owners, and their drunken acolytes, then people must exploit the new powers they are being given. They have the power. They should use it.
- In Germany, lager is far cheaper and stronger than it is in the UK but we don't experience your pub spill-out hooligan problems. Maybe a culture thing, caused by that 11pm deadline. But it also shows that drinking is a serious business best left to people with no sense of humour. Ingo Hinrichs, Hanover
The British attitude towards public drunkenness will take at least a generation to reach the maturity of that shown by southern Europeans. In Spain being drunk in public is considered shameful. Here it is seen as a bizarre badge of status. This country lacks a culture of family and community, with our teens being seen as an alien, threatening species. Public drunkenness should achieve the same level of censure as drink-driving. Name and address withheld
