Increasing alcohol tax may just backfire

Last weekend I gave the lawn its first cut of the year. It was hot so when I finished I cooled down and relaxed with a nice glass of Morrison's Medium Dry Cider.

To be honest, the cider was a bit flat. It's probably been sitting in the fridge untouched since the final grass-cutting of 2011.

Even so, it was a well-deserved reward for all my hard work.

For some reason, I really only ever drink cider when I have been working in the garden.

It may have something to do with the fact that we have a couple of apple trees and my attempts to create home-made cider have all turned rather sour.

Anyway, as I was sitting in the sun enjoying a glass of flat cider, it occurred to me I must be one of those binge drinkers David Cameron is so keen to price out of the market.

I am a victim of his crackdown on drunken louts who – to use an expression I had never heard before our Home Secretary Theresa May started using it in every other sentence – "pre-load" with cheap booze.

Pre-loading, it seems, refers to the habit of getting half-drunk at home on inexpensive booze before going out for a night on the town.

This is, supposedly, one of the main causes of drunken, loutish behaviour on our streets every Friday and Saturday night.

And it is the desperate quest to quell the desire of young people to get half-cut, or worse, as quickly and cheaply as possible that has prompted the Government's attack on cheap booze. Or at least, that's the main reason, though cynics may think the idea was launched on an unsuspecting public to divert attention away from Chancellor George Osborne's "granny tax".

And I bet they don't serve Morrison's cheapest cider when it comes to dinners-for-dosh with Dave Cameron in his flat above 10 Downing Street.

Yet if the aim is to reduce the number of girls staggering into the road blind drunk or youths attacking each other outside night clubs, how come I am a victim of the crackdown?

My pre-loading days are long gone, assuming they ever existed in the first place.

And I find it hard to believe the innocent pleasure of enjoying a refreshing glass of cider after a hard day in the garden is quite what our Government is aiming to outlaw.

Yet their plan for a minimum price per unit of alcohol means my next three-litre bottle of Morrison's Medium Dry Cider will increase in price from a modest £3.49 to an extortionate £6.36, a rise of 82 per cent.

It seems the Morrison's booze is likely to be one of the hardest-hit by Dave's binge tax but other popular tipples will also soar in price. Asda's Hawksridge cider will increase by 119.6 per cent.

There's always a certain amount of collateral damage when a Government uses the tax system to change people's behaviour.

This sort of social engineering probably won't work because policies introduced for the best of reasons have a habit of backfiring.

For instance, nobody wants to admit it but the constantly-rising price of cigarettes has led to massive increase in smuggling.

About 20 per cent of the fags now sold in this country are handled illegally, costing the Treasury about £3 billion a year in lost revenue.

Of course smoking is bad for us and the Government is right to discourage people from taking it up.

But there is a tipping point where its policies become counter-productive and, with tobacco at least, we have already gone way past that point.

The campaign against alcohol is in danger of going the same way. We haven't reached the stage where a new breed of 1920s-style Al Capones import booze illegally to avoid the Government's prohibition – but it's heading in that direction.

If you tax something too heavily, people will find ways around it. Not only will the Government miss out on revenue, a whole new field of criminal activity opens up which has to be policed. Often at great expense.

And when does a legal "booze cruise" to France become an illegal smuggling operation?

The Government, under orders from the British Medical Association, has decreed alcohol is bad for us and we must not be allowed to enjoy it.

It's doubtful, though, whether minimum prices for cheap lagers and ciders will have the desired effect on young bingers.

If they've got enough money to pay for drink in pubs and clubs, they may well have sufficient to "pre-load" at home if they really want to. Even if it does cost them an extra 92p a pint.

But what about the nation's hard-working gardeners? Is it fair we should have to pay for the sins of other people's kids?

Or is the crackdown just another sneaky way of raising more tax revenue while pretending to be socially-responsible.

Ironically, there is a danger the Government's cheap-booze tax will be declared illegal under European law. Much as I would rather we made our own laws in our own way, I'll drink to that.