Cameron under fire for ‘U-turn’ 
over minimum alcohol pricing

The Prime Minister said the Government was still examining the results of a consultation on the policy amid mounting speculation the move he personally championed will be abandoned.

A base price of 45p per unit in England and Wales has been suggested but a number of Cabinet ministers, including Home Secretary Theresa May, have made clear they harbour doubts.

Doctors’ leaders urged Mr Cameron to “be courageous” and take a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to save lives, save the country money”. But Tory critics said minimum pricing was a “blunderbuss” policy that would penalise responsible low-income drinkers while doing nothing to tackle problem drinking.

Mr Cameron was directly confronted in the Commons by Tory MP Sarah Wollaston, a former GP, who said abandoning minimum pricing would “critically undermine future efforts”.

He told her: “There is a problem with deeply discounted alcohol in supermarkets and other stores and I am absolutely determined that we will deal with this.

“We published proposals, we are looking at the consultation and the results to those proposals, but be in no doubt, we’ve got to deal with the problem of having 20p or 25p cans of lager available in supermarkets. It’s got to change.”

The alcohol strategy put out for consultation in November signalled that the Government had “committed to introducing a minimum unit price” and was seeking opinions on the suitable “price level and mechanisms”.

It also suggested additional options such as a ban on multi-buy promotions and changes to licensing conditions to reflect health concerns.

Ministers predicted that a 45p minimum would reduce total consumption by 3.3 per cent and lead to 5,000 fewer crimes, 24,000 fewer hospital admissions and 700 fewer alcohol-linked deaths a year.

The move was enthusiastically welcomed by health professionals and campaigners but appears to have been scuppered by opposition to Mr Cameron within his Cabinet. Commons Leader Andrew Lansley, previously Health Secretary, and Education Secretary Michael Gove are among those to have expressed doubts.

Senior Tory MP David Davis told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “They all think this is a bad idea and they are doing it on the basis of the evidence.”

Doctors and medical campaigners were “not presenting evidence that this works”, he said, attacking minimum pricing as a “blunderbuss of a policy” that would unfairly penalise the poor. “It will hit poor people, it will hit people in the north, it will hit the pensioner having their one bottle of wine a week, it’ll hit the hard-up couple doing the same. It will transfer £1bn from the public to the people who sell alcohol and it’s not going to work.”

The fastest-growing group of alcoholics is middle-class, he said, noting that the policy was “not going to change the price of Chateau Lafite at Chequers”.

The British Medical Association urged the Prime Minister to end “damaging” uncertainty.

Director of professional activities Dr Vivienne Nathanson told Today that her message would be: “Be courageous: this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to save lives, to save the country money.”

However, Miles Beale, chief executive of the Wine and Spirit Trade Association, said: “Minimum unit pricing would penalise responsible drinkers and treat everyone who is looking for value in their shopping as a binge-drinker. Evidence has also shown it will do little to tackle problem drinking.”

Shadow Leader of the House Angela Eagle said the Government was in chaos.

“I understand that there needs to be a debate but the Cabinet have already announced what their policy is, the Prime Minister has put himself at the head of it, we’ve had written ministerial statements, we know that the price is meant to be 45p and now we hear about these splits.

“It’s another U-turn.”