Leading article: Café society will have to wait

When the law to liberalise drinking hours came into effect two and a half years ago, this newspaper described the campaign against it as a form of displacement activity. So it was. Yet it must be admitted that many of the arguments in favour of the change were overstated.

In particular, the idea that relaxing the licensing hours would lead to the growth here of a Continental-style café culture was fanciful. Merely allowing some bars to stay open later was never going to convert the deadline-racers to the delights of slow drinking. Some ministers might have fallen for the delusion that, if bar staff were not calling last orders at 10.50pm, they would be discussing Jean-Paul Sartre with the regulars. Or that Wetherspoons would be renaming some of its pubs The Goose and Existentialist. But that was never likely to happen, and it is one of the least surprising findings of the new Home Office research, which we report today, that it has not.

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Something else that has not happened, however, is the collapse of Britain into a Hogarthian hell of round-the-clock drunken violence that was predicted by the "end of civilisation as we know it" brigade. Despite lurid headlines last week attempting to link an increase in alcohol-related disorder to the change in the licensing law, the Home Office review finds no evidence of a such a connection.

What is striking about the change is what a small effect it has had. In a way, this is not surprising, because the number of applications for extended hours has been smaller than expected. The main effect has been to move some of the alcohol-related trouble from the "unhappy hour" after 11pm to the early hours of the morning. This is precisely what some police chiefs wanted when they supported the legislation, as the concentration of chaos in a synchronised moment of fighting and puking presented them with a logistical challenge. But it is hardly a great step forward in the social health of the nation that some of our misery is a little more thinly spread.

The rationale behind the change in the law was never very strong. The best that could be said was that it allowed the responsible majority to decide where and when to drink. As such, a Conservative party that supports personal responsibility against the nanny state ought to be in favour of it – as indeed it was when the law was passed and before the hell-in-a-handcart press provided a bandwagon (or handcart) on which to jump.

That said, was it really wise to liberalise the law on drinking without addressing the reasons why so many people in Britain have such a troubled relationship with alcohol? That is why Gordon Brown was right, as one of his first acts as Prime Minister, to order the review of the law that will be published this week.

The review must go deeper than focusing on one of the least important issues, that of the hours in which alcohol may be sold. Indeed, it must go deeper than another second-order issue, namely the price of alcohol. It is questionable whether below-cost supermarket promotions contribute to problem drinking, or whether they simply make it easier for people who are already alcoholics to get hold of drink. Price is more of an issue where it intersects with culture, as in so-called happy hours, which support the assumption that the purpose of drinking is to get drunk quickly. Such promotions are discouraged by voluntary guidelines agreed with what is now known as the hospitality industry, but they still happen. That "happy hour culture" is the very antithesis of the cafe culture and more needs to be done to break it down.

Here we come up against the argument that there is little the Government can or should do to change a culture that celebrates drinking to get drunk. This is a defeatist argument. There are several examples of state action successfully changing behaviour that was damaging to individuals or to society as a whole. The shift in attitudes towards drink-driving was the work of a generation, but it has succeeded. The ban on smoking in public places has been imposed with barely a wheeze of complaint. In both cases, the infringement of personal liberty was justified by the danger posed to others and the costs imposed on the NHS.

Excessive drinking is a harder case to crack. There are specific subsidiary issues that can be addressed by education. Few people are aware of how easily alcohol causes irreversible liver damage. However, the core issue is not one of physical but of spiritual health. We have to question why contemporary social culture places such a high value on seeking chemical oblivion.

It is a question that goes far beyond licensing hours. But it is worth trying to change that culture – and we believe that it can be done.