Health chiefs are trying to get national campaigners to rally around a Greater Manchester bid to ban cut-price booze.
Council and health bosses are drafting a bylaw to stop the sale of alcohol below 50p a unit in Greater Manchester shops and businesses.
A national summit at Manchester town hall will bring together council heads from across Britain to drum up support for a change in the law.
The M.E.N. broke the news of how the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA) was launching a war against bargain booze.
The move sparked international debate and is part of a drive to lobby government for national minimum pricing.
It is hoped the conference, scheduled for early February, will help step up efforts by securing the support of local authorities around the country.
Representatives from councils in every region as well as the Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies and Scottish Parliament are being invited to the summit. They are expected to explore solutions including legislation, voluntary codes for the industry and licensing measures. The conference would coincide with the passage of minimum pricing legislation through the Scottish Parliament.
Alan Higgins, Greater Manchester’s lead director of public health for alcohol, said: “While we are developing a model bylaw for councils to consider, our preference is for national policy to introduce minimum unit pricing and we see the consideration of a bylaw as a way of lobbying for that. What we hope to do at this conference is draw representation from councils across the country to discuss the way of introducing minimum unit pricing through a bylaw and from that to further build a coalition of interest and willing parties to promote the case for national legislation.”
Over the past year, health chiefs in Greater Manchester have spoken to dozens of counterparts across the country to build a ‘coalition of support’ for minimum pricing, with Cheshire, Liverpool, Lancashire and Newcastle among areas who have explored a bylaw.
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No doubt the Councillors afetr a nice lunch will be swept along by the jingoism of the health lobby! what is happening to Freedom in Mansalchester!
While I fail to see how minimum prices will change anything, I'm sure that retailers will be very happy to see this idea implemented and the powers that be can at least appear to be tackling the issue. I would love to hear how this policy is expected to make an impact.
great, another nail in the coffin for our local shops, as a regular traveller to my home in france i will just fill the van with beer from the continent again as i did in the 80's rather than buy it here as i have been doing since prices came down to a reasonable level.
Well done manchester council another well thought out propaganda campaign to ruin the country's retailers.
Is this the same council that throws around licences to sell alcohol as if they were confetti ?
The problem with underage drinkers could be at least partially solved by reducing the number of corner shops (more likely to sell to underage drinkers) given licences, making licences more expensive to fund more 'mystery shopper' checking, and taking licences away more readily for misuse.
The problem with binge drinking in the city centre is not about cost. Drinks are expensive there, but the people falling around drunk of a weekend are younger, with high disposable incomes.
Also, at a time when MCC are trying to save money, how much is this costing ?
I'd imagine drafting a bylaw and hosting a summit doesn't come cheap.
Did increasing the price of cigarettes stop people smoking?
Did increasing the price of fuel stop people driving?
No, it simply made people spend less on other things whilst trying to buy fuel or cigarettes. Demonising alcohol and increasing the price will have no positive effects, other than to increase hardship on the average joe.
Yet another stalinist tactic from labour councils with no clue of how to actually manage the issues.
Drink may be the opiate of the masses according to Marx, and given parrallels in Huxleys Brave new world, but what both were saying is that for the majority of the populace drink is sensibly used as an outlet for the stress & frustration of everyday life. The vast majority do not drink excessively (although the nanny state may dissagree). The consequence of pricing poorer people out of their daily tipple might well be far reaching and very expensive. A bottle of fortified wine - sherry or port which has 20 units of alcohol will cost a whopping minimum of £10 - no more sherry trifle, and granny isn't going to be able to afford her favourite tipple.
To make matters worse no one really knows what a safe number of units actually is, in the USA a reccommended 1 - 2 units a day, but in Italy it's 5 - 6 the UK is 3 - 4, but the health Nazis want to lower that further even though they have no good evidence to support it.
Manchester should stop trying to do what socialists love - social engineering, and leave us the freedom to decide what is best for us. Higher prices will not deter the empty heads from binge drinking and who are used to paying city centre prices anyway. I'm lucky, I live close enough to the border to be able to escape and buy at freedom prices.
Typical hypocritical politicians. They condemn others for breaking the law, then ignore it when it gets in the way of what they want to do.
who gets the profit ??????????????????????? would it be more tax i wonder
Why can these people not realise that all we want them to do is provide schools, refuse, roads etc.
I dont want this bunch of morons dictating how I live and what I should eat or drink.
All of you just crawl back under whatever rock you slithered from and live people alone, life is to short and all you seem to want to do is make it even more miserable than it already is.
It is not the pricing that is the issue, it is the over indulgence.
This just hits everyone whether they drink responsibly or not, and whilst excess drinking is bad for your health many surveys show a moderate amount can be good for you.
This policy will almost certainly increase smuggling too, whether it be by dodgy gangs importing from abroad or people having a trip to Stoke to stock up on booze.
Will the pricing have an impact on those who binge most? My understanding is that many bingers view alcohol as a priority and increasing the price will cause them to cut back on their other spending rather than their alcohol.
Cigarettes do not have minimum pricing though they do have high tax rates so the increased costs do find their way to the government to allow them to spend it on healthcare if but here any additional revenue would go to the retailers (mainly supermarkets) who don't need any help making a profit at the moment.
A fairer way to disincentivise over indulgence may be to make people pay a contribution towards their alcohol related health care. Whilst this could be done relatively simply with a charge for using A&E with drink related symptoms this would pose two issues for longer term problems - how do you charge someone for needing liver treatment but not heart treament (for example) and would the threat of increased medical bills a few years down the line deter bingers now?
The real problem is the perceived alcohol reliance of our country as a whole. We are lead to believe that our European neighbours do not have such a dependency, such as Italy where people have a drink to be sociable and enjoy the drink whereas in England people drink to get drunk.
Until we can understand why so many want to drink so much and then work out how to change this mindset this problem will never go away however much people are charged.
A remarkable decision from the fork tongues town hall pre-madonnas who lush on bottles of freebie spirits at town hall functions.
erm? the government backed down on the minimum pricing campaign because it turned out it was illegal.
and now the amga want to ignore this and try and force one through anyhow.
all the while wasting our money we pay in taxes. and if they do get it through, it'll soon be abloshed by the european courts. for once that may come in handy.
like i've said many times before on here. the amga are a dangerous organisation. they continue to ignore the majority.
the sooner they get broken up the better.
I read this article while laughing my little socks off! I say let AGMA have their way with their minimum price, and everyone start home brewing instead! 50p a unit?? HA! im currently brewing top quality ales and lager for around 20p/pint! any strength i want to make it! im currently quaffing a nice 5.5% stout as i type this!
Oh yea, and I too live near enough to the border to be able to nip into gods country (Yorkshire) and buy all the cheap booze i want!
If everyone were to buy there booze cross border or brew there own, the supermarkets would soon force AGMA's hand and a climbdown would soon happen!