Bristol MP wants end to happy hours

Bristol MP and health minister Dawn Primarolo has spoken of her determination to target happy hours in an attempt to cut the £2.7 billion cost of drink problems to the NHS.

Details of a consultation were revealed as it emerged that 811,000 or six per cent of hospital admissions in 2006 nationally were alcohol-related.

Figures published in May showed that in the Bristol PCT area there were 2,302 hospital admissions due to alcohol in 2006/07, 892 in South Gloucestershire and 805 in North Somerset.

Bristol South MP Ms Primarolo, in her capacity as public health minister, wants to make a code for licensees to become mandatory and not voluntary, to restrict the way alcohol is sold.

Small glasses and measures would be available alongside large ones, happy hours and other cut-price promotions would be limited, and staff at shops and bars would have to be more aware of underage customers and refuse to serve them.

But landlords in the Bristol area say that any crackdown on promotions must also include supermarkets, which sell drinks at well below even happy hour prices.

Ms Primarolo told the Evening Post that 10 million people, about 26 per cent of the adult population, drink 76 per cent of the alcohol consumed in the UK. She said: “Most people are drinking perfectly sensibly but there is a small group causing significant harm and it is a huge cost to them, their families and to the health service.

“People need the information so that they can clearly understand if they are drinking too much it damages their health. It is not a risk-free experience.”

She said the drinks industry has a “vital role to play” in changing attitudes to drinking, and while she agreed there are businesses complying with the voluntary code, with some licensees failing to be responsible there is a need for more stringent rules.

Chairman of Bristol City Council's licensing committee, Ron Stone, believes there is a simpler solution to the issue of binge drinking – a legal minimum re-sale price for all alcohol.

He said: “If alcohol was the same price, wherever it was purchased, whether bar, club or a shop there would be the situation where people could charge more but there would not be the real problem we have now of proliferation of cheap alcohol.”

Chairman of the Bristol Licensees Association, Adam Cole, who is also a director of Henry Africa's Hothouse, welcomes plans that will improve health and safety. He said: “I think a lot of bars would be positive about these suggestions, providing they are also applied to the big supermarkets, because a lot of people are drinking at home and, as a result, bars are suffering.”

Mike Harrington, who runs two pubs in Chipping Sodbury, said the cheapest pint of beer he sold in the George in Broad Street was £2.65 but an equivalent can in a supermarket was 60p.

Mr Harrington, who is also landlord of the Beaufort, said: “In pubs, people are drinking in a controlled environment, but they can go into a supermarket and buy as much cheap alcohol as they want.

“We don't have a level playing field and pubs are only trying to compete by having happy hours.”

Mark Thompson, who runs the Farmhouse in Wellington Road, Yate, said: “I don't think landlords will mind there being a review as long as pubs aren't victimised.”