Name and shame binge drinkers, says Widdecombe

ANN Widdecombe wants police to crack down hard on binge drinking by prosecuting every drunk they pick up.

The 64-year- old former Home Office minister said the law needed to be used to ‘ bring a sense of shame’ to stop people drinking excessively and behaving badly.

She also warned that the situation that blights town centres across Britain would continue to deteriorate while binge drinking was regarded as a reasonable way of letting off steam at the weekend.

She said: ‘If the police carried out the occasional big blitz on a Friday night, pursuing every single person who was drunk in A&E or incapable on the streets, then people going out specifically to get drunk would risk finding themselves in court on the Monday with their names and photographs in the papers.

‘That might be a deterrent to the wilder stages of excess.’

Miss Widdecombe has taken part in a documentary, Drunk Again, for BBC Radio 5 Live in which she followed a group of young women on a night out and spoke to members of the emergency services who have to deal with the results of binge drinking.

The ex-minister admitted that while it was a problem that alcohol is more freely available and cheaper than ever before, British attitudes to drinking are also a concern. ‘Drinking to excess in public has to become socially unacceptable in the way that smoking is now,’ she said.

Earlier this year, David Cameron confirmed plans to introduce a minimum price per unit for alcohol.