Police chief calls for alcohol ban in public places

One of the UK's most senior police officers stepped up his campaign against alcohol-related youth crime today by calling for a nationwide ban on drinking in public.

Peter Fahy, the Chief Constable of Cheshire, said that licensed establishments such as pubs should be the only public places where alcohol could be legally consumed. He blamed parents, drinks companies and the advertising industry for failing to tackle the problem of alcohol-fuelled disorder.

Mr Fahy, who is police chief in the area where father-of-three Garry Newlove was murdered by a gang of youths, said that the present presumption should be changed so that drinking was automatically banned on the street.

This would be a reversal of the current situation, where drinking is allowed unless a local authority specifically declares an area to be alcohol-free.

"At the moment you can drink anywhere you like in Great Britain in public unless the local authority have designated that you can’t drink in that area," Mr Fahy said, speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"I would actually like to see the emphasis changed the other way: that we actually say drinking in public is not permitted apart from in those areas where a local community, local authority say ’yes, in this particular park, this particular location, people can drink’.

"It’s that sort of thing which starts changing the popular culture, which starts getting the message across."

Yesterday, in a statement released only hours after three teenagers appeared in court charged with Mr Newlove's murder, Mr Fahy had said that too many parents were abdicating responsibility for their children by allowing them to go out on the street, drink alcohol, and cause mayhem for local communities.

He added that traders were continuing to sell high-strength alcohol at low prices and advertisers were guilty of promoting alcohol as glamorous to young people.

In an interview later in the evening with Channel 4 News, he also called for the legal drinking age to be raised to 21.

"To see the issue of antisocial behaviour by teenagers as a problem for the police to resolve is naive," he said.

"As a nation, I believe we need those who sell the alcohol to young people, those who price alcohol so cheaply, those promote alcohol as glamorous, those parents who turn a blind eye to where their children are, those teenagers who ignore the rights of others to live without intimidation or abuse - we need all these elements to our society to rack their conscience and consider what duty they have to beat the scourge of antisocial behaviour by young people."

Both the Government and the Conservatives welcomed Mr Fahy's comments, but dismissed the idea of raising the drinking age today.

Meg Hillier, a Home Office Minister, said: "If we raise the age to 21, it’s not going to stop people. It would demonise or prevent a lot of adults who are drinking quite responsibly."

She also said there were "no great plans" for a blanket ban on drinking in public, and that it was up to local councils to decide what was appropriate in their areas.

Asked about the availability of cheap alcohol, however, she said a review of licensing laws, due to be published in 2008 "may lead to some changes, who knows".

James Brokenshire, a Conservative spokesman, also said that raising the minimum age for buying alcohol from 18 to 21 would not tackle the problem.

"Just having a 21-year limit will not deal with the 11 and 12-year-olds who are binge drinking on a monthly basis and the 15 and 16-year-olds who are getting alcohol very freely," he said.

Mr Brokenshire added that highly-visible community policing and far greater involvement of communities in deciding the operation of local licensing was the solution.

Times