Comment: Queen's speech no concern for responsible licensees

Should the content concerning the drinks industry in the Queen's Speech cause us concern?

As debate continues following the Policing and Crime Bill unveiled by Her Majesty, the majority of opinions I've heard are based on this being the thin end of a wedge - the beginnings of a major crackdown on pub drinks promotions that ignores the real guilty parties in the off-trade. However, I can see little to justify licensees' fury - little that will damage the drinks offers of responsibly-run pubs.

Restricting all-you-can-drink promotions and offers targeting particular groups, such as women, has long been a recommendation of the pub trade's own bodies. They are listed as big no-no's in the British Beer & Pub Association's existing code of conduct, yet the fact that they still exist shows how effective that is.

The consultation on whether to allow councils to ban happy hours and organised pub crawls is a potential problem. These can be legitimate promotional tactics without driving irresponsible drinking, and they should be allowed to stay.

But pubs having to offer smaller measures such as 125ml wine glasses and advertising the unit content of drinks? Where's the harm in that? Most quality pubs already do it.

Supermarkets didn't escape scrutiny. Among the proposals was ensuring their customers are "not required to buy very large amounts of a product to take advantage of price discounts", which should herald an end to 'three-for-two' case deals at least.

There are plenty of government policies concerning pubs that licensees can justifiably complain about. The plan laid out in the Queen's Speech is not one of them.