Who will dare serve alcohol!

Do you always know how much your customers have drunk? Do you always tell your staff not to serve someone who's already had, say four pints? Do you always check that customers having drinks bought for them are still sober?

If you don't, then you might find yourself in big trouble soon. Because from November, plain-clothes policemen will be visiting pubs around the country and spying on how you and your staff handle customers who've had a few drinks.

It's a nightmare scenario, and it sounds just too ludicrous to be true​Andrew Pring, MA editor

If the undercover police feel you're serving someone who's "drunk" - and at this stage, only they know how that's defined - then you could find that before you know where you are, you've lost your licence and are looking for a new occupation.

The customer, incidentally, will walk away with a wallet £80 lighter - as long as they've given their correct address to the disguised officer.

It's a nightmare scenario, and it sounds just too ludicrous to be true. How can any licensee be expected to know the exact state of his customers' sobriety unless he keeps asking them to blow into a breathalyser! But this is the briefing Home Office officials have been giving our trade bodies, and which MA broke exclusively last week.

As the night-time entertainment body Beda warned in our story last week, this really would be the death of the pub.

Who would want to leave their living room if there's a chance they'll be pounced on in their local, humiliated into a drinks test and fined for daring to enjoy a night out?

Presumably even the Home Office can see this might not play well with a general election in the offing. So it's probably the case that the police will only be targeting customers who are roaring drunk and making a distinct nuisance of themselves, yet still getting served.

Now we'd all hope that kind of customer would never be served. If some pubs are prepared to help him or her get even more drunk, then they deserve anything that's coming to them.

But when decent licensees doing a responsible job and keeping trouble off our streets are made to feel nervous about what's coming their way, it's a sign that the anti-alcohol brigade are in total control and the gloves are off for a final showdown.

The crackdown threat has been so badly made that the Home Secretary should apologise to the licensed trade for the incompetence of her officials. Because surely she can't mean anyone who's had a few drinks is in the firing line. Can she?