The backlash against plans to liberalise Britain's drinking laws has gathered pace with the issue provoking splits within the Labour Party.

Senior backbenchers and the police have all expressed reservations over the proposed 24-hour licenses set to come into force in November.

With the influential Daily Mail having launched a campaign against the implementation of the Licensing Act, splits have come out into the open this week.

Former ministers Frank Field and Kate Hoey have been joined by select committee chairmen David Hinchliffe and Donald Anderson and others in calling on the government to proceed with caution.

Field said ministers should establish pilot programmes to test the idea rather than go ahead with big bang approach at the end of the year.

He fears the law will exacerbate, rather than tackle, the problem of binge drinking when it comes into force.

However ministers have insisted that they acted on police advice in seeking to even out drinking hours, rather than cramming them all into the evenings and suffering from mutual "chucking out times" throughout town centres when fights and yobbishness are most likely to take place.

"Anybody who thinks the status quo is good enough has not been out on Friday night recently," an aide to culture secretary Tessa Jowell, who piloted the legislation through parliament, told the Financial Times on Friday.

But Morecambe MP Geraldine Smith, who supported the bill in the Commons, said she had now changed her mind.

"There's this culture of yobbish behaviour and drinking and I do have reservations. I think it could lead to more problems," she said.

And the Police Federation have dispute the claim that forces are supportive of the move.

"Our officers' experience is that if even more alcohol becomes available through 24-hour opening there can be only one result: even more drunkenness," Metropolitan branch chairman Glen Smyth said.

The Mail has also claimed that a majority of senior officers are sceptical about the move.

Home secretary Charles Clarke said it was "reasonable and fair" that forces would get more resources to help them cope with policing town centres throughout the night.

But shadow home secretary David Davis said the government was panicking.

"They need to get a grip of this situation and postpone implementation of 24 hour licensing laws until proper policing brings binge drinking under control," he said.

"If the government lets 24 hour licensing go ahead, no amount of patchwork responses, like this proposal to charge publicans, will stop our town centres becoming no-go areas for decent people."