Caroline Nodder: The Daily Mail misses the point - again

I feel like I'm in a bit of a time warp this week. The wranglings over the new government's proposed review of the licensing laws takes me right back to 2005 when Labour's licensing laws came in.

And hope as we might that the change of government would be a positive thing for pubs it seems that the same old myths and misunderstandings are 'informing' policy decisions within the new regime too.

The Home Secretary launched the licensing 'consultation' last week with a reference to how she had been "proved right" in her concerns that the Labour laws would not lead to the "continental café culture" being embraced by the UK.

This bothers me for two reasons. One, she is clearly going into a 'consultation' having already made up her mind. There can therefore only be one outcome - she will make sure it supports whatever she intends to do. And secondly, what sort of naïve person believes a whole country's drinking culture can be transformed in five years?

Having talked up their support for the British pub throughout their election campaigns, the coalition parties have now fallen straight into the trap that blighted the reign of their predecessor. They are determined to prove to the world that they have better ideas and policies than Labour so they have ploughed straight into repealing all Labour's major laws without doing their homework. It's a game of one-upmanship in which the main loser is always going to be the British public and businesses like pubs who have to live with the pointless laws generated.

It is also obvious from this announcement that ConDem thinking is very much coloured by the misinformation and misunderstandings that were a trademark of the Labour government too. The 'facts' on which the Home Secretary considers herself "proved right" are subjective to the point of being laughable if you look at them in any detail whatsoever.

For example, the rise in the figures for violent incidents happening "in or around" pubs which I have called into question before - in many cases these figures are based on victims being questioned about whether they had had a drink or been in a pub that day, regardless of whether or not the incident was related to drink in any way.

What also especially galled me was the Daily Mail's front page response to the review which crowed victory for it's ill-thought out "Say no to 24-hour pubs" campaign. For the record, Mail news team, your campaign missed the point first time round as there is a not a single pub in the UK that actually opens 24 hours a day. Very few have a licence to do so but even they haven't the staff or customers to justify using it - they simply want the ability to be flexible.

We pointed this out to you in 2005 and you changed the campaign to "Say no to 24-hour drinking" - you might want to look up the updated logo some time and have a word with the supermarkets. They certainly do use their 24-hour licences.