Alcohol discount ads could be banned

Alcohol adverts for discount deals could be banned under new government proposals.

As part of the coalition’s alcohol strategy, supermarkets would be banned from advertising deals on beer, wine and spirits in poster and TV advertising outside their stores.

A partial ban was implemented in Scotland last year, which restricted advertising around supermarket premises.

An aide to Prime Minister David Cameron told The Daily Telegraph: “The alcohol strategy will be published in a month or so. The PM has made very clear that he thinks the availability of cheap alcohol is a problem. It is not secret that this is an issue that the PM is concerned about.”

Recently Cameron announced that the government would be cracking down on what he called “the scandal of our society”, binge drinking and has previously made the impression that he would support minimum pricing.

This is despite calls from the industry that such proposals are unlikely to work. Stephen Robertson, the director general of the British Retail Consortium, said: “Increasing the cost of alcohol would not achieve its desired goal of curbing alcohol abuse. People who abuse alcohol are not sufficiently susceptible to price for it to make any difference.”

“If the average yob chooses to drink ten cans of lager on a Saturday night and the price of a can is £1, then a 10 per cent increase is only going to cost him an extra pound.

“It is like reducing speeding by putting up the price of petrol.”