If the current logic of the Home Affairs Select Committee of MPs is to be followed, it would not be a good idea for people to consider visiting either Greece or France for their summer holiday next year.

With the price of half-decent supermarket wine in France dropping as low as three euros a bottle, or retsina – even in posh Greek tourist shops – being sold as cheaply as a euro for a half-litre, town and city centres are bound to be full of violent Greek and French drunks. The fiery raki spirit in Greece, at 40 per cent proof, can be had for as little as two or three euros a litre.

The same can be said of Spain, Portugal or any other European country where the local plonk retails at next to nothing – yet the locals can seem to enjoy it without running amok every weekend – which isn’t the case, sadly, for British holidaymakers.

Pubs in Wharfedale are struggling as much as they are anywhere else and the idea that they should be stopped from promoting themselves by offering their wares at slightly cheaper rates for part of the day would be another nail in the coffin lid for their business.

MP Philip Davies is right that the logic behind the call by some MPs for supermarkets to increase the price of booze is simplistic and flawed. Thugs are not produced by cheap booze, and the fact that thugs take advantage of cheap booze offers before behaving like animals in town and city centres cannot be blamed on pubs and supermarkets.

We need to look at why there seems to be an increasing number of mainly young people who not only want to get drunk but also want to damage other people and destroy property before going home to sleep it off.

Fortunately, Wharfedale does not suffer greatly from the kind of alarming behaviour the centres of Leeds, Keighley and Bradford have to suffer each weekend.

But the idea that only the affluent should be allowed to consume as much alcohol as they want seems to go against Mrs Cryer’s principles, which makes it all the more likely that the proposal has not really been deeply considered.