The government has reached agreement with the food industry over further salt reductions and better information for consumers about food, but has yet to reveal whether it plans to press ahead with the tobacco display ban.

Unveiling the government’s much-anticipated public health White Paper, dubbed ‘Healthy Lives, Healthy People’, health secretary Andrew Lansley said he wanted to “nudge wherever possible and nanny only where necessary”.

As part of the White Paper, the government announced a new Public Health Responsibility Deal, through which it will work collaboratively with business and the voluntary sector.

The deal, to be launched early next year, will be spread over five networks covering food; alcohol; physical activity; health at work; and behaviour change.

Through this deal it said it would be able to announce the agreements on salt, food information and the promotion of more socially responsible retailing and consumption of alcohol.

The current Change4Life campaign will be expanded, though initiatives such as the ‘Great Swapathon', a £250m partner-funded voucher scheme to make healthy choice easier.

It was also confirmed that the government was considering moving tobacco products into plain packaging.

But there was no further clarity on whether it supported the removal of tobacco display, which takes effect in October 2011. An announcement on this would follow shortly it said.

Health secretary Andrew Lansley will speak at The Grocer's food & health debate on 2 February.

Read more
Are Lansley’s plain fag pack proposals fake, feint or sop? (analysis; 27 November 2010)
New approach to public health hailed by industry (10 July 2010)