Mixed messages on underage drinking

It seems abundantly clear to me that the Home Office did not want to lose licensing when Tony Blair sprang that surprise switch to the Department for Culture Media & Sport (DCMS) back in the middle of 2001.

Increasingly since then they have taken the lead on alcohol issues, while the DCMS has shilly-shallied with its portfolio of alcohol, entertainment and gambling, making a poor fist of it all, according to most observers.

At that time, remember, Blair took the "yoof" line, texting voters about 24-hour drinking and an end to antiquated licensing laws. Now, in contrast, Home Office minister Vernon Coaker thinks there will never be an end to underage stings against the licensed trade. The blame culture is at its apex - young binge drinkers are entirely the responsibility of irresponsible licensees and drinking under 18 is probably more of a social evil than stealing or drugs.

I note that a "target-rate of zero" is the new mantra for sales to young people. Is it really? Did the young Vernon never try to get a drink before he was 18? Does he remember that far back? Or has he taken the usual hypocritic oath of most government ministers: "Don't do as I do - do as I say"?

As far back as I remember (and that goes considerably further than young Coaker), selling alcohol to under-18s has been one of the main no-go areas for the vast majority of the licensed trade. But they know youngsters get hold of drink elsewhere; they know that it is not actually illegal for children over five to drink alcohol in the UK; they know that outside the trade and the Home Office everyone else thinks it's a game, not a crime. What concerns me is that they have now upped the ante: so that selling to young people is really seen as a criminal offence (for which you can be charged, finger-printed and receive a criminal record, which could affect your credit, your mortgage prospects and your job).

Is this genuinely proportionate? I don't think so. Up until 2005, the law was that you should use your best endeavours to prevent under-age sales, which most people did. If one or two slipped through, you may be seen as careless, but not a criminal. You had to try harder.

Now, it is as if the first slip-up lands you on the road to Tyburn! Three strikes and you do not even have the defence of due diligence. So great is the sin that your business can be taken away from you at a stroke.

To listen to ministers, you would think that coping with young drinkers is easy: you simply set up a system that cuts out a vast proportion of your market (some are suggesting 25 as a cut-off age), then challenge everyone who looks below that age, refusing to serve even a 21-year-old who looks young (it happened to me, dear reader) and even then if you make one mistake you can be hauled into court, fined and have your licence under threat.

This is not really the point. Those pictures so beloved of documentary film-makers of incapable youngsters on the street are of a binge culture that involves over-18s as well. The prosecution of licensees for selling to those who are technically underage will not end the aspirations of those youngsters to grow up faster, as any sociologist will tell you. It is the classic double-standard of a modern liberal-capitalist society that we offer temptation and then stamp on it when it goes wrong.