Minimum Alcohol Price Plan No Cure All For Binge Drinking Britain- LGA

16 March 2009

Responding to the call for a minimum price for alcohol, Chairman of the Local Government Association, Cllr Margaret Eaton said:

"The overhaul of alcohol licensing was long overdue and the new system has been very effective in pulling together and simplifying archaic licensing laws that dated back to the First World War.

"The new drinks laws have had little impact on reducing the alcohol-related violence that blights town centres and turns them into no-go areas on a Friday and Saturday night. The vast majority of local councils, police and hospitals have reported no change at all, with violent incidents generally just being shifted later into the evening.

"There needs to a wide-ranging national debate about how freely available alcohol is, how the nation views social drinking and how we can go about reducing consumption. It seems that we have a deep-rooted social and cultural problem in this country in the way that we view alcohol that cannot be addressed by one simple piece of legislation. It will take years, possibly decades of concerted action across the board.

"There are the real financial strains that the new laws have had on councils, hospitals and other local services. Hospitals and the police are finding that they are called into action 24 hours a day, stopping disruption, breaking up fights and patching up the walking wounded.

"Town halls have been landed with an accumulated bill of £100m from the new laws and have been left with little option but to pass the cost on to the council taxpayer. It is totally unacceptable that the hard-pressed council taxpayer should be forced to pick up the bill for something that the government said would not cost them a penny."

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