The price of alcohol is "obscenely low" and heavy drinkers are being subsidised by ordinary shoppers in supermarkets, according to medical experts. Speaking at the British Science Festival in Bradford on Tuesday, they called for more government action on the rising consumption of alcohol and its negative health consequences.

In study published earlier this year in the Lancet, Gilmore showed that if the UK reduced its overall consumption of alcohol to match European counterparts in France, Spain and Italy, the country could prevent more than 250,000 deaths from liver disease in the next 20 years.