Let me do the maths. That’s 30 units of alcohol on sale in the off-trade for less than 17p per unit. To put this into context, those bottles would have to cost at least three times more — £15 — under a 50p per unit minimum price for alcohol.
Here’s another way of looking at it: this deal would allow the average woman to exceed her weekly recommended maximum 14 units of alcohol in one ‘sitting’ for less than £2.50.
It must be galling, to say the least, for licensees who can’t sell a pint of standard, sub-4% ABV lager for £2.50 to see shoppers walking past their doors to their homes, house parties or to the park bench carrying grocery bags bulging with big plastic bottles of strong cider that they have bought for small change.
Publicans provide a supervised and safe environment for responsible drinking, but are nevertheless blamed for alcohol problems in society. Meanwhile, supermarkets and convenience stores seem to be free to sell beer, wines and spirits at pocket-money prices with apparent impunity, and yet avoid the bad publicity of the direct consequences.
I need to be a bit careful about lecturing anyone on societal ethics, especially as I still have ringing in my ears the words of Paul Chase of CPL Training, who, in a recent presentation at one of our conferences, accused editors of manning the moral barricades in a stylised and stereotypical manner.
I think he was talking about the Daily Mail and other such peddlers of panic, rather than the PMA, so it is to these opinion formers that we must address our efforts to prove the off-trade is more culpable than the on-trade when it comes to problem drinking of the kind addressed by Pubwatch.
As I’ve previously written, the PMA has its doubts about the very idea of minimum pricing, not to mention its potential efficacy as a Panacea for society’s ills. But it’s difficult to look at multi-buy deals such as those offered by One Stop (and there are many more in its stores besides the Frosty Jack’s promotion) and not start to have sympathy for those that support some sort of lower limit.
The obvious compromise solution that could — I think — sensibly be supported by the pub trade, and this journal, is for minimum pricing to be introduced to apply only to off-licence venues. This would have the dual effect of outlawing the ‘drunk-on-a-fiver deals’ that can be found in supermarkets and convenience stores, while also closing the considerable price gap that currently exists between shops and pubs.
I would challenge any legislator to experience the retail excellence and customer service shown by the finalists and winners in this year’s Publican Awards — as well as thousands of other responsible UK pubs — and then conclude that they deserve to be treated in the same way as cynical supermarkets that abdicate any duty of care to their shoppers after they have lured them into their stores with cut-price deals on strong alcoholic drinks and relieved them of their money.