Pop stars and supermarkets are encouraging a culture of excessive drinking that is fuelling drunken street disorder, a junior Home Officer minister said yesterday.

Meg Hillier hit out at “drunken pop stars” while hinting that the Government may be forced to take action against supermarkets and off-licences over heavily discounted sales of alcohol.

The Home Office is increasingly angry at the failure of sellers to tackle the issue seriously and is looking at the possibility of imposing curbs on cut-price sales.

Ms Hillier rejected calls from Peter Fahy, the Chief Constable of Cheshire, for a ban on public drinking and an increase in the legal age for drinking alcohol to 21. But she backed Mr Fahy in his warning that part of the problem of teenage disorder on the streets is the availability of cheap alcohol.

Ms Hillier said: “We have this attitude that it’s OK to go out and get plastered, publicly and privately. It is not something that Government or legislation or the police alone can solve, it’s much more of an attitude in society.”

She criticised pop stars and celebrities “who should know better” for their public drunkenness: “There are role models out there . . . repeatedly featured in the media for having nights out drunken, pictures of drunken pop stars and so on. I think those individuals need to recognise that they have a young fan base.”

The Government is about to begin a review of the impact of pricing and promotion on consumption levels amid criticism by police and the medical profession at the way supermarkets are selling cut-price drinks.

Mr Fahy said that the aggressive promotion of alcohol through price reduction in supermarkets was not helping parents and police in their attempt to exert control over young people.

He said that the problem was supermarkets and late-night shops selling drink to young people.

Figures for the first month of the Home Office’s latest campaign to tackle underage drinking show that almost one in five of 3,000 targeted premised sold alcohol to teenagers under 18 in May, the same as in the previous campaign last year.

The latest figures for children aged 11 to 15 show a fall in the percentage drinking alcohol in the week before they were questioned.

But those who are drinking are having more – and more often. Last year the average consumption among 11 to 15-year-olds who had drunk in the past seven days was 11.4 units, up from 5.3 units in 1990, according to the Government.

Ms Hillier said that the review of price promotions of drink, which will report next year, was crucial to the issue. But she dismissed the idea of raising the drinking age to 21, saying that it would demonise or prevent a lot of adults who were drinking responsibly. Ms Hillier also said it was preferable to leave it to local councils to decide if the consumption of alcohol should be barred in particular areas.

The drinks industry and campaigners for tougher action against the availability of alcohol also dismissed raising the legal drinking age to 21.

Ian Gilmore, of the Royal College of Physicians, said: “When we are sending people [under 21] to Afghanistan and saying they can get married, it does not make sense to say they cannot drink.” He called for much more enforcement of existing laws on the sale to alcohol to people underage and to individuals who were drunk.

Professor Gilmore said that the Government should gradually increase the tax on alcohol to bring prices in real terms to what they were 20 to 30 years ago. He also backed linking taxes to alcohol content.

The idea of raising the legal age for drinking alcohol to 21 was also dismissed by Alcohol Concern and the Wine and Spirit Trade Association.

A spokesman for Alcohol Concern said that the law on underage drinking was already difficult to enforce. “Raising the age risks alienating a generation of young people who drink sensibly.”

The Local Government Association dismissed the chief constable’s proposal for a blanket ban on drinking in public. Sir Simon Milton, chairman of the association, said: “This sort of draconian approach could lead to ‘booze burrows’ springing up as drinkers take to drinking away from the public gaze.”

Taxes on alcohol have fallen in real terms while consumption has risen by 50 per cent since Labour came to power, the chartered accountants Grant Thornton said.

There has been no increase in duty on spirits since 1997. However, duty collected went up from £1.5 billion in 1997-98 to £2.3 billion in 2006-07, suggesting that consumption rose by 50 per cent.

Duty on wine has gone up by 20 per cent since 1997 and the duty collected increased from £1.4 billion to £2.4 billion, suggesting that consumption rose by 40 per cent.

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