Underage double standards

The debate about consumption of alcohol in pubs by 16-year-olds, so ably covered last week by my colleague Phil Dixon and the MA editor, highlights the strange double standards on the issue that already exist.

Prior to 24 November 2005, and for a considerable number of decades before that, it was quite legal for a 16-year-old to walk into a pub, order a meal and a pint and consume both, unaccompanied, in a part of the premises reserved for meals which was not a bar.

I can confirm that over the years when I monitored this, I only came across one example of a challenge to this practice, which was a licensee who wrote to me about the police saying that his back room, where the apprentices sat, was part of the bar. I never heard of any example of bad behaviour or charges being laid. It seemed to work perfectly well.

Cue the House of Lords. They found out that unaccompanied "children" could be in bars. Shock, horror. So the law in several respects was changed.

Now, a 16-year-old can actually drink alcohol in the bar itself - but he cannot buy it, he must be accompanied by an adult and he must be drinking beer, cider or even wine with a table meal.

So, no need even now for the 16-year-olds to be separated in a special room. They can drink with their mates in the bar, as long as they are having a meal. And, of course, that is the problem. It is normal, vertical drinking that the debate is really all about, not actually drinking alcohol.

I am not clear how many licensees actually allow 16-year-olds to consume drinks in the bar, even under these conditions. There is so much nervousness around that I wonder if, like several licensees I met in Suffolk recently, they have a general ban on underage drinking of any kind. That is, of course, their right, whatever the law says.

But it all smacks of double standards. If it is the actual consumption of drink as a teenager that is troubling the Government, why allow any consumption under 18? If it is consumption in a covert, unsupervised way, in alleys and parks, why put a block on properly supervised introduction to alcohol in the pub?

Prohibition itself has never worked, but a civilised approach to reasonable consumption, rather than this teenage obsession with getting plastered, seems to have the best chance of success.