Mark Daniels: NICE is the new Nasty
No sooner has our new coalition government announced that it's going to take all the money away from Nu-Labour's quangos, than one strolls along and gives them a piece of advice on the alcohol trade.
NICE - the National Institude for Health and Clinical Excellence - has decided that minimum pricing should be introduced forthwith, all adverts depicting alcohol should be banned and we, the hard working publican, should be held legally responsible for the health of our customers...
I had really, really hoped that with the advent of our "new politics" the Orwellian approach to our daily lives might be relaxed a bit, but the recommendation that I could potentially be sued for making my customers ill through drink is getting a little ridiculous.
After all, we already have legislation heaped upon us that states that we cannot do promotions around sporting events, must provide free drinking water, can't let anybody smoke in our premises and we're not allowed to sell to a person who is already drunk. And now you want me to make sure they're not ill?
I can see it now: "Mr Daniels, you knew that person had gall stones and yet you willfully sold him a Bacardi Breezer. I sentence you to twenty years..."
As well as bouncers on a Saturday night, are we now going to have to employ medical examiners to check the health of each person as they walk in, and at random points throughout the night, to ensure we are not in breach of their right to good health?
And what about McDonalds, or Burger King, or my local fish and chip shop that sells deep-fried pizza? Do they have to put a sign up that says "If our batter makes you ill we'll take full responsibility?"
It's not that I don't care. Like the majority of publicans trading today, I do so responsibly and make decisions that aren't always popular with my customers in the interests of their health - and my already burgeoning legal responsibilities - but there is only so much more this industry can take before it buckles under the pressure being mounted on it by people who really haven't thought through the wider ramifications of their suggestions.
And I'm sorry, Sir Terry Leahy, I really don't want to sound like a corrupted MP3 and pick on you and your brethren yet again, but what about the supermarkets' responsibilities in all of this?
When I attended the consulting meetings on the Mandatory Code last year, and when the first part was implemented on April 1st, one thing was extremely clear: it didn't administer much responsibility on the off-trade at all. It's true that once people have got their alcohol home there's very little we can do to stop them pickling their liver on it, but allowing this 'out of sight out of mind' approach to continue is a little unfair on those of us already doing the best we can with limited resources to meet the demands of legislation.
If we, as publicans, were suddenly to be held legally liable for our customers health our insurance premiums would rise, our prices would rise and more and more of the general public would simply buy cheap alcohol in abundance from the supermarkets to guzzle at their leisure at home.
I'm not sure how many more nails our coffin can actually take, but this is one that really shouldn't even have seen the light of day.
What I'd love to see, rather than reports from quangos worried about who should be held accountable, is somebody in our new government standing up and saying: "you know what, our constituents are actually grown up people who can make their own decisions on what is good for them..."
