Caroline Nodder: Christmas time at the supermarkets
Christmas seems to start earlier every year. It was barely the beginning of November when the festive supermarket TV ads began in earnest this year and the lines were drawn in the war over alcohol prices. Supermarkets see alcohol as a driver of other sales. They don't care about it as a product per se, but they know that your average Brit will choose to do their weekly shop in one supermarket over another if they know that they can get a good deal on booze there.
They are using alcohol as a carrot to tempt shoppers, just as they did with 3p cans of beans during the last recession. The difference is that consuming an excess of cheap beans is unlikely to lead to an outbreak of anti-social behaviour… well… not the sort we're talking about anyway!
Supermarkets have thus far failed to acknowledge there is any connection between the price of alcohol in their stores and the level of irresponsible drinking. This goes against the government's own thinking for the on-trade where pubs have been asked to stop price-related promotions altogether.
Supermarkets would argue that the alcohol they sell is "part of the weekly shop" and meant for consumption over time, but why, then, do their town and city stores offer single chilled bottles and cans by the tills? And what is the likelihood that most households will bulk-buy and then drink most of their alcohol on a Friday or Saturday night before they go out to the pub?
The new government came in on a wave of promises, including the promise of a ban on below-cost selling of alcohol in the off-trade. But, as we all knew, such a ban turned out to be too complex to implement and has seemingly been placed firmly on the backburner, letting the supermarkets off the hook yet again.
Even the health lobby, once so set in its focus on pubs as being the root of all irresponsible drinking, is now changing its tune, with Dr Nick Sheron, a co-founder of the Alcohol Health Alliance, recently coming out in favour of a VAT cut for pubs to help cut irresponsible drinking.
And this week saw one of our own regional brewers, McMullen, build on this idea with a proposal to cut the on-trade VAT rate to five per cent, and place a direct tax on the off-trade, to help shrink the gap between on and off-trade prices and encourage more people into pubs where they can drink in a safe and regulated environment.
The supermarkets are sticking to their mantra that there is no evidence that cheaper deals are causing any problems. But you only have to look in any park, or on any street corner, to see empty bottles and cans bought in the off-trade.
I hear from publicans day in, day out, who are having to turn away customers that are already too drunk to come in thanks to cheap supermarket booze, and from police too, who are in many cases now finding people falling out of taxis drunk on their way IN to town for a night out.
The supermarkets are powerful, influential and have many friends in high places, but surely the government can't continue to ignore this problem for much longer?
