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The recommendation by the Chief Medical Officer, Liam Donaldson, of a
minimum price of 50p per unit of alcohol has sparked quite a debate. The
Prime Minister, clearly sensing lost votes, quickly came out against the idea
but many other, including CAMRA, have welcomed the proposals. As well as
addressing alcohol-related health and crime problems, minimum pricing would
help get more people back into pubs. The proposals would have little or no
effect on pub prices which are generally above 50p per unit; what would be
rightly hit are the loss-leader sales in supermarkets which lead to people
drinking, sometimes at binge levels, at home or in the street. Well-run
community pubs are undermined by this unfair competition and the proposals
would help level the playing a field a bit.
Both Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire District Councils have opted
into the Sustainable Communities Act. This legislation allows Councils to
make proposals to the Government for action on encouraging the economic
and social well-being of their area - promoting such "sustainability" involves
providing local services and pubs are specifically included in the definition of
services. The new law could, for instance, be used to persuade Government
to allow every pub (tied or not) to source a beer from a local brewer or to
require planning permission before a pub can be demolished or converted to
a restaurant or shop. At the time of writing, we've had less success in getting
our other local Council, East Cambridgeshire, to sign up. Their initial response
was that the Act provides no official process of opting in. We've pointed out
that it absolutely does and that around 70 councils have done so. Given the
Council's excellent planning policies around pub protection we very much
hope they will get on board.
A recent independent report by Nielsen shows that cask ale is outperforming
the rest of the beer market. Real ale now has 44% of the on-trade beer
market compared with 39% three years ago. All goes to show that drinkers
increasingly demand beers of character and distinction not just stuff to swill
down the throat. Meantime the Why Handpull? Marketing Group, a new
alliance of regional brewers, has been set up to raise the profile of real ale still
further. Their preference is to use the term "cask beer" and to talk in terms of
"taste", "flavour", "Britishness" and "freshness" - which sounds about right.