Roy Beers: Hooray for the SNP - it's giving minimum pricing to Britain

I hope it works, even if I don't think it will make a decisive difference to Scotland's massive overall drink problem, and that it works well enough to be taken up across the UK generally.

I admit it's ironic that a party frequently accused by the Nats' Unionist opposition of seeking to "rip Scotland out of the heart of Britain" may ultimately see its revolutionary approach to drink pricing rolled out across the whole UK - but there you go. Britain thrives on eccentricity.

Some (eg the Conservatives) argue some drinks will actually come down in price if a (widely touted) 40p per unit minimum tariff is brought in, but actually no they won't - that would only happen if retailers decided to deep discount on drinks (like the notorious Buckfast wine) which already make plenty of money at "normal" prices.

Remove the ability to sell beer at giveaway prices and the market should correct itself upwards.

No, the real effect (as with bans on bulk promotions) will be to clobber loss-leading beer sales in supermarkets.

However this is just one element of an increasingly-complicated plot, and we can also look forward to responsibility payments for "some" licensees (this appears to be a watered down Alcohol Disorder Zone policy) and a rule forcing off-sales to display alcohol in specific areas.

Meanwhile licensing boards have their own local policy documents out to consultation, as part of the Licensing Act requirements, and a substructure of local interpretations of various licensing principles will presumably seep into the system too. Opaque isn't the word for it.

The Act itself is laden with potential difficulties and ambiguities, having taken what seems like a century to reach fruition.

But if it seems complex to people who actually follow the detail, imagine what it's like for the hapless general public.

Last year the SNP announced they wanted to stop anyone under 21 from buying alcohol in the off trade, and were howled to derision by opposition parties and, of course, students.

You can marry at 16 in Scotland, and six months later you can decide to join the army. At 18 you can buy drink and also cigarettes (and, of course, vote in elections).

Where's the logic in denying drink to people aged 18 to 20?

Rather than abandon this nonsense, however, the SNP government has craftily parped the responsibility to local licensing boards, who as part of their statutory duties (assuming this goes ahead) would be required to consider if their area should have a 21-and-over policy.

This is simply bonkers. Minimum pricing has already got the Scottish red-tops predicting "carry out convoys" heading for Calais-style hypermarkets in Carlisle

to take advantage of still-legal English deep discounting.

Now there's the more realistic prospect of a "postcode lottery" on drink, with the age limit determined by how well-behaved a particular area is reckoned to be.

This means that if you're a responsible 20-year-old in a "naughty" area you could be denied drink by your local licensing board, or Chief Constable, and have to catch a bus to a "polite" area across the local authority boundary to acquire your bottle of Chablis.

But at least this is an off-trade problem, you might think, and won't affect the on-trade in the slightest?

Unfortunately that would be a rash assumption. If such a stricture can be slapped on one sector so casually it might just as easily be applied - just as maladroitly - to another.

It isn't too fanciful to suggest that the sort of weekend problems you see in Glasgow, Edinburgh or Aberdeen could lead to draconian sanctions against all operators, as opposed to just the theoretically guilty ones: as reported in The Publican Aberdeen is already facing a blanket curfew policy on late night venues.

Far from instilling respect in the general public I think the whole disjointed government reform plot (which is spawning so many unpalatable possibilities) is becoming so baffling and illogical that people will simply adapt their drinking tactics to counter each new situation.

Unless the off trade is hammered with major tax rises, which won't happen, we'll still have pre-loading (it will always be cheaper than going to the pub, even a 99p-a-pint Wetherspoon pub).

And even if you have to be 25 and accompanied by a clergyman to buy a bottle of booze we'll still have "agency purchasing" - buying for younger people not entitled to buy the stuff themselves.

The bottom line is that government cannot stop people from drinking or getting drunk. It will take years of concentrated effort and plenty of false dawns before we can expect real progress on serious alcohol abuse, and it may not happen even then.

Of course the government, whoever they may be, always gets stick for trying anything new, and on this occasion the SNP are taking pelters from all sides.

In their defence, when Labour were in power their version of an alcohol strategy was mere window dressing, centred around vague education programmes and silly TV adverts, and was promptly forgotten.

But there's a real sense of desperation to these latest attempted remedies, underpinned by the health stats. An incremental sense of growing urgency has finally arrived at "red alert" - and therefore vigorous policy initiatives.

The Scotsman newspaper has a picture of Mr MacAskill and deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon in a hospital, looking aghast at an X-ray scan of a cirrhotic liver.

Alcohol-related hospital admissions in Scotland are said to be up 28 per cent over five years to over 42,000 last year, and the country has one of the fastest-growing death rates from cirrhosis of the liver.

None of the measures proposed, and certainly not the curious tinkering with age-to-buy limits, are going to change that in a hurry.

But minimum pricing is a good idea, despite what the supermarket lobby thinks, even if it's just one tiny little step in the right direction, and if it saves some decent pubs from closure it's still one worth making.

It's not "the new smoking ban" either - because, surprisingly enough, amid the various flawed proposals unveiled this week, it actually makes sense.