ABSTRACT
In 1999 the New Labour government in Britain declared its commitment to the promotion of health and the prevention of disease in the White Paper Saving Lives: Our Healthier Nation (DoH 1999). The government set targets by which progress could be measured in reducing rates of heart disease and strokes, accidents, cancers and suicides. The public health White Paper put forward a strategy to link national targets to local initiatives, and it outlined plans to pursue health goals in schools, workplaces and neighbourhoods. It aimed to replace exhortations to behave virtuously (stop smoking, curtail drinking, take exercise, eat healthily, etc., etc.) with an effective system for regulating personal behaviour. In this way the government offered the prospect of a longer life-but at the cost of
an even more extensive and intrusive system of state regulation of individual behaviour.
