In the north-west of England one person is admitted to hospital with an alcohol-related illness every seven seconds so we are very clear that alcohol consumption is a significant concern. The interventions proposed today are welcome in helping to get a cultural shift in the way people consume alcohol. Part of that is to provide information but obviously it’s more than that and today’s proposals cover a whole range of things that will help people consider their personal alcohol consumption.

It’s really important that people just take stock of what they are consuming. Many aren’t aware of increasing strengths of wine and because glasses have got bigger it’s worth asking how many units does this glass constitute now? It’s very likely that with increasing strengths and larger glasses, one glass may be two to three units.

In the North West, we have launched the Big Drink Debate online and have already got 25,000 responses, which tells me that people are concerned and want to get information about how much they should be drinking.

In this region we’ve been helping people to understand just how bad things have got in the level of alcohol consumption.

But it’s a careful balance between telling people what they should do and creating conditions for them to make healthy choices.

Dr Ruth Hussey is director of Public Health in the North West.

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