A leading expert on alcohol and health problems said that almost 3,500 lives could be saved every year by introducing a minimum price of 50p per unit.

Professor Martin Plant, director of the alcohol and health research trust at the University of the West of England, said increasing prices would cut hospital admissions by almost 100,000 people a year, reduce crimes by 46,000 a year and save the taxpayer an estimated £1 billion a year.

Prof Plant was speaking to an international panel of experts at a conference on youth, alcohol and crime, held at the Watershed yesterday.

Drawing on research from a team of social scientists, he said: "This policy would only add £14 a year to the alcohol expenditure of moderate drinkers.

"It is strongly recommended that reducing mortality should be the top priority for alcohol control policy."

His claims were echoed the words of England's chief medical officer, Professor Liam Donaldson, who earlier this year called on the government to introduce the 50p per unit minimum price.

A study conducted in the eight largest cities outside London found the price of alcohol is falling, and that the price of some drinks works out at as little as nine pence per unit.

Speakers at the conference included leading police officers, lawyers, psychologists and social scientists from the UK, Iceland, the Netherlands and Sweden.

Tackling other aspects of youth crime Rod Morgan, professor emeritus at Bristol University's school of law, said that in recent years the UK had criminalised more children and young people between the ages of 10 and 17 than ever before, but the amount of crime that young people were responsible for had fallen since the mid 1990s.

Detective chief superintendent John Carnochan, director of the Scottish violence reduction unit, said that the criminal justice was only part of the solution to the problem of violence in young people.

He said: "Criminal justice will not affect the social determinants of violence, such as inequality, lack of aspiration, life skills that young men lack, gender inequality or access to alcohol.

"Unless we try to develop collaborative interventions we will be in the same place in 30 years time, with more prisons and more legislation. If we use a public health analogy, criminal justice will stabilise the pain, but the cure will be delivered by other things."