by business editor Trevor Sturgess

A brewery boss has warned of a tobacco-style assault on alcohol that could accelerate pub closures.

Jonathan Neame, chief executive of Shepherd Neame, the 300-year old Faversham brewery, hit out at 'surreptitious' change to social life in the UK under the guise of a crackdown on binge drinking.

Mr Neame claimed that barely a day went by without a new law affecting the industry. There had been 299 pieces of legislation since 1997 and a 50 per cent tax hike over the same period. Eighty per cent of the price of a pint of beer was tax.

Everyone agreed it was important to cut anti-social behaviour, to get drunken yobs off the street, and to reduce alcohol misuse. "But the agenda which used to be about binge drinking is now shifting to what’s called whole population consumption reduction," he said at the Kent Journalist of the Year Awards ceremony in Faversham.

"What this means in code is - alcohol is the new tobacco. This is not about the yobs we all want to stop, this is about you, how much you drink and how the health industry can make you drink less."

Over the next 10 years, it could mean fewer pub licences, raising the minimum drinking age to 21, higher taxation, and restrictions on sponsorship by the brewing industry. "This is the tobacco strategy that is being enacted before our eyes."

Yet none of this was borne out by the facts. The UK was 17th in the European drinking league, with average consumption falling by 10 per cent since 2006. Consumers had shifted away from lower-alcohol beer to higher-strength wine and vodka.

"We are a beer-drinking nation that has become a wine and vodka drinking nation. The agenda is moving very fast towards a position where pubs and beer in pubs will increasingly be pushed to the margins of our society."