Drinking laws review to target alcohol sales

Retailers caught selling alcohol to underage drinkers more than once will be closed under a review of licensing laws to be published on Tuesday.

But the new 24-hour drinking laws are expected to remain in place even though council leaders have attacked them as a failure.

Ahead of the review's publication, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said there would be a "two strikes and you're out" policy for any retailer caught twice in three months. Currently the threshold is three times in three months.

But Brown made clear the laws would not be reversed.

"We have to tighten up the penalties," he told the Daily Mirror. "Binge drinking is not acceptable in any society."

Brown said the government would launch advertising campaigns warning against excessive drinking.

"If someone is selling to under-18s they are allowing these problems of binge drinking to grow - and they are giving young people the worst possible start in life," he added.

Some newspapers have reported that the review of the drinking laws introduced in November 2005 will judge them a partial success and play down any adverse consequences.

Despite violent crime between the hours of 3 and 6 a.m. rising by more than a quarter, the government will say the total amount of alcohol-related offences has fallen by three percent, the Daily Mail reported.

But Sir Simon Milton, the chairman of the Local Government Association (LGA) and leader of Westminster council, has labelled the new laws a "mistake".

In its official submission to the review, the LGA said it believed they have indeed fuelled alcohol-related violence.

"It was sold on a clear bill that this act was intended to change Britain's drinking culture by turning us from a nation of binge drinkers into a continental café culture," Milton told The Daily Telegraph.

"On its own terms it has failed miserably."