Britain's political opposition said on Sunday that the government had admitted round-the-clock drinking laws had failed after a minister said Britons liked getting drunk too much to adopt European habits.
Hazel Blears, who chairs the governing Labour Party and is a former Home Office minister who tackled binge drinking, told the Sunday Times that Britons were more interested in "pushing the limits of danger" than drinking moderately.
Blears' comments appeared to contradict government claims, made prior to the introduction of round-the-clock pub opening hours last year, that the longer hours would promote more responsible drinking habits.
"I don't know whether we'll ever get to be in a European drinking culture, where you go out and have a single glass of wine," Blears told the Sunday Times.
"Maybe it's our Anglo-Saxon mentality. We actually enjoy getting drunk. I think there is a bit about risk-taking -- people want to push the limits of danger," she said.
"So as a politician I don't think there are any easy answers," she said.
Shadow Home Secretary David Davis, the Conservative Party's point man on home affairs, accused the government of disregarding public safety.
"This admission of failure shows why the government should have listened to our call to pilot 24-hour drinking, so that this impact could be properly assessed," Davis said.
"The fact that the government simply chose to unleash 24-hour drinking on all our communities betrays a total disregard for the safety and well-being of the British public," he said.
Don Foster, who is the culture spokesman with the smaller Liberal Democrat opposition party, called for new measures to combat binge drinking.
"We need the industry to take a responsible approach to happy hours and super-strength alcoholic drinks and to ensure that best practice at local level in controlling binge drinking is promoted and shared," he said.
"Simply lamenting our heavy drinking culture will achieve nothing; we need concrete measures to tackle this problem," he said.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport said that the government also acknowledged that there was no simple solution to binge drinking, even though the new licensing laws "have been more of a success than many expected."
According to figures published in November, the introduction of round-the-clock pub opening in Britain has not led to a feared surge in alcohol-fueled crime.
The government welcomed the findings while warning that it was premature to say if drinking habits will change for good.
Critics of the old system had long argued that it encouraged so-called binge-drinking, as revelers downed as many pints as possible before the pubs closed their doors.
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