Hospitals face doubling in drink cases

The number of cases of alcoholrelated illnesses being treated in hospital has almost doubled in one area in just three years and has rocketed in many other districts.

In the primary care trust areas for City and Hackney they leapt 87 per cent from 634 in 2004/05 to 1,186 in 2006/07. In Barking and Dagenham they were up 65 per cent, in Haringey 63 per cent and Enfield 58 per cent, NHS figures showed. The Tories claimed the 29 per cent increase across London - from 19,875 to 25,577 - was in part caused by Labour's 24-hour licensing law reforms in 2005. Shadow home affairs minister James Brokenshire said: "Rather than the promised 'cafe culture' we have a late-night violent crime culture with the health service picking up the pieces."

But ministers said the reforms mean people leave venues in a "more orderly fashion" rather than in a post-11pm surge. A spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said there was "no evidence" the reforms led to the recent increases.

Nationally, hospital admissions from drinking doubled in just over a decade to more than 200,000 a year. The number of cases involving children rose by more than 50 per cent to 8,500.