Minimum booze price ‘no-brainer’

Greater Manchester will lead the rest of the country with a new bylaw setting minimum alcohol prices which Oldham council leader Howard Sykes described as a “no-brainer.”

The bylaw will forbid the sale of booze at less than 50p a unit and will also ban cheap loyalty offers in bars.

It would mean that a bottle of red wine would have to cost around £4.80 and a pint of lager no less than £1.40. Anyone breaking the bylaw will be fined up to £500.

Oldham was the first authority to take action on cheap offers after becoming known as the binge drinking capital of Britain in a series of reports in the national media.

Councillor Sykes and fellow leaders heard at a meeting of the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities that their bylaw plans had won the support of the Prime Minister and attracted enquiries from as far away as Jersey, Devon, and Scotland.

He said: “Our licensed trade think it’s a good idea. The only people who are against it are the supermarkets — and that is a good reason to introduce it.

“People are buying cheap drink and presenting themselves absolutely drunk at licensed premises. It is a no-brainer for me in terms of some of the behaviour that goes on in our town centre. This is already part of our strategy and I would be prepared to go it alone if necessary.’’

The 50p minimum would be reviewed every year and raised to keep pace with inflation. Experts reckon that the bylaw would reduce alcohol-related hospital admissions by 4,482 a year in Greater Manchester and save health services a staggering £1.375billion a year.

As far as young people are concerned in Greater Manchester, five out of the 10 boroughs are in the highest percentage of alcohol misuse in the whole of England. These are Oldham, Tameside, Rochdale, Salford and Manchester.

Oldham and Tameside have the highest percentage of young weekly binge drinkers in Greater Manchester (29 per cent) while Manchester has the lowest (19 per cent ). Rochdale has the highest level of alcohol-related admissions among young men while this figure was highest among young women in Bolton.

Despite Oldham’s shocking record of teenage binge drinking, for people of all ages, Oldham is eighth in the list of Greater Manchester’s alcohol-related hospital admissions and sixth in the league of alcohol-related crimes.