Doctors are concerned that children as young as eight are being brought into hospitals unconscious after getting drunk on cheap cider, spirits and alcopops.

The British Medical Association’s annual conference heard that the problem of binge-drinking is now so serious that some hospitals which used to treat one intoxicated child a month are now treating several under-age drinkers every Friday and Saturday night.

The doctors warnings are supported by figures which suggest that a child under 12 is admitted to Accident and Emergency departments through alcohol misuse roughly every forty eight hours.

More than  4,500 hospital admissions of children under the age of 16 were caused by alcohol consumption last year, 181 involving under-12s.

Doctors have noted that drink-related problems have become “much, much greater” over the last ten years, and have called for a minimum price for each unit of alcohol, clearer labelling of alcoholic content and a ban on the advertising of beers, wines and spirits.

The latest Accident and Emergency figures, obtained by the Liberal Democrats, show that 1,426 admissions for children under 12 were caused by alcohol consumption since 2002.  Last year there were 4,441 emergency hospital admissions of young people aged 12 to 15 and 7,766 admissions of 16 and 17-year olds due to alcohol which were increases of 12% and 66% respectively.

Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary, Norman Lamb said the figures were “shocking new evidence of the scale of the alcohol crisis facing this country”.

“The Government cannot continue to ignore the fact that thousands of children are drinking so much that they end up in A&E,”

Norman Lamb said:

“Unless we invest in treatment services, put an end to alcohol being sold at pocket-money prices and start educating our children then these figures are only set to get worse.”