A bid to ban glass in Glasgow pubs was said to be a farce after it emerged bottles of foreign beers will be exempt. It is now believed that Glasgow's plan to outlaw glass in all its pubs could become unworkable. Beers, such as Becks/Bud etc can be sold in glass bottles if they apply for an exemption. Glasgow's licensing board chairman, G Macdiarmid said: "We cannot expect foreign breweries to change their production processes. We have been receiving a number of exemption requests from premises which stock Czech, German & Russian beers. We treat these requests (70 so far) on a case-by-case basis & there is no blanket exemption policy." However, Michael McHugh, president of Scottish Licensed Trade Association said: "What this means is that every licence holder will have to make a list of the bottled beers they want to stock & submit to the board for exemption. This will lead to a real headache for admin staff and produce a mountain of paperwork." He added, it was "unrealistic" to expect a foreign brewery to start producing beer in plastic bottles, just because that is what is needed in Glasgow.
