Parents face £1,000 fines for giving children drink

Parental support: Jacqui Smith

Parents will face fines of up to £1,000 for giving their children alcohol.

They could also be sent on residential courses to be taught how they are harming their children by giving them beer, wine and spirits.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith today announced plans for parenting contracts and orders to be used against parents whose drunken children, aged under 18, behave anti-socially.

"If a young person is being picked up night after night for drinking, there's clearly a problem with their parents as well," she said. "Those parents need support ... but they need to be expected to take that support." As part of moves to tackle Britain's binge-drinking culture, police, town halls or youth-offendingteams will be able to ask adults to sign voluntary parenting contracts demanding that they stop supplying their children with alcoholic drinks.

If the contract is breached, the authorities can then apply to a court for a parenting order to enforce the actions outlined in the contract. Adults who fail to obey the parenting order risk a £1,000 fine or a community sentence.

In her first major speech on alcohol, at the Business Design Centre in Islington, Ms Smith was also set to moot plans for a ban on teenagers drinking alcohol in public. Those under 18 are banned from buying alcohol but not from consuming it.

The Government is concerned that some parents are fuelling under-age drinking by allowing too much alcohol at home and is launching a £750,000 campaign to confiscate cans, bottles and glasses of alcohol being drunk from by teenagers in public.

The campaign also extends police powers by enabling them to confiscate alcohol from under-18s even if the teenagers insist they are not planning to drink it themselves. This aims to confine any under-age drinking to the home.

However, ministers are not just concerned about young drinkers but also older, often middle-class, men and women consuming harmful levels of wine and other alcoholic beverages.

A new £10 million advertising campaign will be launched in the summer to raise awareness of the effects of drink. Ministers, though, believe they have made progress in tackling pubs and off-licences selling alcohol to under-age drinkers.

Only one in six licensed premises now breaks the law by selling drink to teenagers instead of half of them three years ago.

HOW THE LAW STANDS NOW

Under five years old: It is illegal to give alcohol to a child under five except under medical supervision in an emergency.
Under-16s: Can go anywhere in a pub as long as they are supervised by an adult, but cannot have alcohol. Some premises' licensing conditions may bar them.
16 or 17 years old: Can drink beer, wine or cider with a meal if it is bought by an adult and they are accompanied by an adult. It is illegal for this age group to drink spirits in pubs even with a meal.
Under 18 years old: Illegal to buy alcohol in a pub, off-licence, supermarket or other outlet, or for anyone to buy alcohol for someone under 18 to consume in a pub or a public place.
source: www.direct.gov.uk

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