Scotland is a soft-touch for drinkers

Jul 15 2008 by Murdo Fraser, MSP

THERE has been a heated debate over the last few weeks on the SNP Government's Alcohol Framework Strategy.

This proposes a number of measures, including a new pricing regime, separate checkouts in supermarkets for those purchasing alcohol, and raising the legal age for buying alcohol in shops to 21.

The Scottish Conservatives applaud the decision to put alcohol abuse at the top of the political agenda, and support any moves to better educate people about the dangers of excess.

However, before we think of introducing new legislation, the priority is to apply existing laws on underage sales and underage drinking. Until now, breaches by licensees have been paid lip service to rather than prosecuted. Too many lawbreakers have kept their licences. Those who get drunk and cause mayhem in our communities all too often get off scot-free in the SNP’s soft-touch Scotland.

The failure to apply existing laws should not be an excuse to introduce new ones – it is a reason to enforce the current ones. In any case, the key new proposals are wrong.

We should target the problem drinks and problem drinkers, not penalise everybody. Blanket price controls will undermine our spirits industry and penalise the poorest most. Why should pensioners and other responsible drinkers pay the price?

Banning off-sales to under 21s is a confusing move. The SNP want people to vote and marry at 16, smoke at 18, go to the pub at 18 but not go to the off-licence until they reach 21. Students and young adult workers will only be allowed to drink at the pub – again hitting the poorest hardest. Already we are seeing a huge backlash from student groups to these ludicrous proposals which demonise young people.

It is an equally ludicrous suggestion to stigmatise reasonable and responsible drinkers by forcing us to line up at a separate checkout in the supermarket to buy a bottle of wine, as if we are pariahs of society.

It looks as if the Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill is on an evangelical crusade on this issue, pursuing it with all the zeal of modern-day Temperance preacher. I think that he and his SNP colleagues have seriously misjudged the public mood, and will be forced into a series of humiliating U-turns on these proposals.

The Scottish Conservatives will be robustly opposing the most extreme measures, whilst supporting a more targeted approach that recognises the real dangers that alcohol abuse poses to our society.