Alcohol Strategy

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Friday 23rd March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making the point that pubs play a very important role in our communities. Pubs have nothing to fear from the minimum unit price that is being introduced today. That will not have an impact on them. I hope that we will see more people feeling able to go to pubs, particularly those in town centres which until now people have often felt unable to visit because of the brawling that they see in the streets. However, we will be looking very carefully in a number of areas to ensure that what we are doing is very clearly focused on those outlets that are bulk-discounting cheap alcohol, which enables people to get drunk before they go out, not affecting the pubs.

[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

Why has the voluntary agreement that the Government said they had with the supermarkets failed?

[Mrs May]

I referred to it in my statement, but it has also been announced today that, as a result of agreement with industry, we will see something like 35 billion units—