The UK Government has been saying it plans to set a minimum price per unit of alcohol in England and Wales since early this year. Those plans are now firming up, and a figure of 45 pence was announced last Wednesday. Moreover, supermarket deals such as multi-buy deals and similar discounts will also be banned.
The Prime Minister, David Cameron, explained to the BBC in March that the plan was to make cheap booze more expensive, so that ‘binge drinkers’, who are responsible for one-million alcohol-related crimes and 1.2 million hospital admissions, would be deterred from the habit.
The long-awaited report by Lord Justice Leveson into the culture, practices and ethics of the press was published yesterday, and almost immediately a division emerged between the main political parties over his core recommendation – a statutory ‘underpinning’ for a new system of press regulation that is entirely independent of newspaper editors and proprietors.
Lord Leveson, an Appeal Court judge, was thoroughly critical of press behaviour in recent years. He cited the cases of people caught up in tragic news stories through no fault of their own who were treated merely as grist to the mill by several newspapers. For example, two families that lost a child in terrible circumstances, the Dowlers and the McCanns.
The case of 37-year-old SAS sergeant, Danny Nightingale, recently given an 18-month jail sentence for illegally possessing a firearm, has sparked a media debate, questions in the Commons and a public exchange of views between the Defence secretary and the Attorney General.
The situation has occasioned concern from commentators and politicians because the sentence, handed to Nightingale just before Remembrance Sunday, appears harsh – given the complex circumstances of the matter.
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