Alistair Campbell Sees Saving The Pub as Positive Alcohol/ Health Strategy

Alistair Campbell Sees Saving The Pub as Positive Alcohol/ Health Strategy

Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, a leading expert on liver disease, says he “regrets” the decline of the British pub because they might help prevent binge-drinking, reports the Express on Sunday.

With pubs closing at the rate of 16 a week, Professor Gilmore tells Alastair Campbell in the Panorama documentary: “They do provide a social milieu, particularly in rural areas, and drinking is controlled to some extent and those controls aren’t there at home.”

Sir Ian is chairman of the UK Alcohol Health Alliance, a union of more than 30 medical bodies, charities and health campaigners set up to tackle alcohol misuse.

Publicans have attacked the way drink is sold in supermarkets, claiming they sometimes sell booze as a “loss leader” to lure customers in to other parts of the store. They suggest cutting the duty on real ale sold in pubs and raising the duty on supermarket alcohol, which, they say, would tempt people back to pubs where drinking can be regulated.

Mr Campbell said: “The Government has to work out its alcohol strategy and objectives. If you lament the loss of the pub, one objective would be to help the rural pub, and maybe the inner-city pub, do better. A lot of that will be down to how they run their own business but there will be issues such as the cost of televisions and televising sport in pubs.I don’t know but saving the pub could be in the context of framing an overall alcohol/health strategy

via pubs-for-sale.biz

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