It’s an amusing bit of Schadenfreude to see different sections of the government at each others’ throats over the issue of minimum pricing. Outlawing below-cost selling is fair enough, but imposing minimum pricing would be a profoundly anti-competitive measure. In effect, it would be legitimising price-fixing by retailers. And supporters of the on-trade are deluding themselves if they think it would do anything to help pubs, as even with a 50p/unit minimum price, drink in the pub would still be considerably more expensive. The only people it would benefit are cross-border smugglers and the manufacturers of home-brew kits.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments, especially on older posts, may require prior approval by the blog owner. See here for details of my comment policy.
Please register an account to comment. Unregistered comments will generally be rejected unless I recognise the author. If you want to comment using an unregistered ID, you will need to tell me something about yourself.