Blair must listen to S&N says Andrew Pring, MA Editor

It was brave of Scottish & Newcastle to break ranks with rival brewers and publicly criticise the low-pricing policies of its biggest customers, the supermarkets.

Brave, but essential. For unless a group of that size and credibility speaks out, Government will continue to shy away from action against the biggest single contributor to alcoholic disturbances in our pubs and on our streets, and no doubt in many homes too.

It's been obvious for years that young people are tanking up on cheap booze from off licences and supermarkets before they hit the pubs. They arrive on the pub circuits already swaying and it takes just a drink or two more for them to abandon any attempt at self-restraint. The scenes we're all too familiar with quickly follow.

Thanks to exemplary door policies at many circuit bars, drunken youths are finding it much harder to gain entrance. But there's generally somewhere that's less responsible where they can strut their stuff. If not, well the local "offie" will sell them some booze so they can run riot in the streets or parks.

Only when Steve Thomas of Luminar pointed out this social phenomenon to Home Office Minister Hazel Blears last year did the supermarkets start getting invited to Home Office chats on binge drinking. Until then, they'd kept their heads down, maintaining a "nothing to do with us" approach.

That may be true on under-age drinking, which is much more an off-licence issue. But when you flog alcohol to 18-year-olds at half the price the pubs charge, you shouldn't be surprised if many of them just can't handle it. That makes you an accessory to public drunkenness and most likely, social chaos.

Governments hate making consumers pay more for anything. But most sensible shoppers at supermarkets would happily pay more if they knew it was reducing drunken yobbism in their neighbourhood. Tesco and the others pride themselves on helping communities. Raising the price of beer and spirits would be the most positive thing they've done for communities for years.

Well done to all those Camra volunteers who work themselves into the ground making the Great British Beer Festival such a fantastic showcase for real ale. And well done to the brewers, large and small, for producing such fabulous beers. Real ale may be niche these days, but thousands of pubs would lose their character and charm without it.