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The Prosser Perspective.... a weekly column from Dover and Deal MP Gwyn Prosser

14 February 2008

I know that anti-social behaviour is still a real problem for some people in Dover and Deal and the outlying villages and it’s common knowledge that a lot of this is caused by teenage drinking.

Constituents bring these kinds of problems to my advice surgeries or raise them at my street stalls and they often feel powerless in trying to deal with issues like this which sometimes have been going on for far too long. As your MP I will always do what I can to help people feel safe in their homes and communities and I maintain a close liaison with the community police teams that are assigned to your areas and I meet regularly with the Area Police Commander.

An important role of every MP is to act as a conduit between the people in their constituencies and Ministers in Westminster and I’ve had many conversations with Home Secretaries – past and present – about anti-social behaviour and teenage drinking. So, with that background, I was really pleased that Labour's Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, this week outlined tougher police powers and called for parents and the drinks industry to play their part in preventing young people drinking in public. I had a chat with her after she made the policy announcement and it’s clear that she’s determined to give the Police in my constituency and across the country all the powers they need to make unruly groups of young people drinking in public a thing of the past. She highlighted the new campaign she was launching to confiscate alcohol from underage drinkers which begins this month and she says the lessons learned from it will be used to inform future policy.

At the same time there is a need to continue cracking down and punishing those few irresponsible retailers who flout the law by persistently selling alcohol to children. It’s Government’s role to lead the way and I am determined that they should use all the powers at their disposal to bring about change and improvements in the hot spots of my constituency.

But in order to do this they also need the support of industry, enforcement authorities and communities. Everyone needs to meet their responsibilities to make a difference and parents must play their part too. We will give parents whose children are drinking the support they need to change their damaging behaviour.

In short, we embarked upon a major new national crackdown by police to confiscate alcohol from all under-18s drinking in public; extra powers for police to emphasise that children drinking in public will not be tolerated; wider use of parenting contracts when poor parenting is identified and an independent review of the performance of the retail industry in meeting the alcohol sale standards.

There is a lot of good work already being done to tackle the damage that alcohol misuse can do but the Home Secretary should not flinch from tougher action if that’s what’s needed to rid our streets of the lager louts.