ACS

The Conservative leader David Cameron has dismissed claims that raising the price of alcohol would reduce binge drinking. Speaking during an interview with Sky News, he said that the root of the problem lay with parents and schools, and that more needed to be done to tackle the culture of drinking. He also called for the bureaucratic burden placed on police officers to be reduced, to allow them to enforce the existing laws.

David Cameron said: "It is difficult because if you [increase prices] you are automatically penalising the hard working family that wants to have a beer with a meal and are buying it in the shops. It is difficult, and we should look at all these things, but let's start off with enforcing the existing law, closing premises that are serving people that are drunk, taking away licences for those who are selling drink to the underaged."

He added: "We are endlessly passing new criminal justice acts through parliament and we are not actually looking at enforcing the existing law, and we are not looking at what we also need to do which is empowering the police, and take the paperwork off them.

"If they stop someone to find out what is happening, they have got to fill in a form. No wonder they don't feel they can intervene. If we are to take back the streets inch by inch, you have got to take the paperwork off the police so they can do it."

Mr Cameron concluded: "Then you have to get back into the schools and homes and recognise that is where it all starts."