DAILY POST YOUR VOICE IN WALES: War on junk food is best news in ages.

T HIS, surely, is what government is for: not for nannying, not for interference, not for control and repressive legislation but enabling people to live better, safer, healthier and therefore happier lives by taking a strong moral line in favour of the individual and society and choice - and enforcing it if necessary.

It has taken long enough to get here but let's recognise and applaud common sense when we see it. Namely what is to be the government's new take on the health of the nation and its own role in helping to achieve it, as laid out in yesterday's keynote speech by the Prime Minister.

Curbs on the advertising of junk food. Legislation, if necessary, to enforce the clear labelling of potentially harmful food additives.

And tougher measures to combat under-age drinking. All under a banner which states equally clearly that people will be expected to take responsibility for their own health.

If the government is truly serious and committed in this it could really make a difference.

As this newspaper pointed out only recently, enormous savings could be made in the NHS if the government were prepared to take-on big business interests on behalf of the consumer.

The junk many of us we eat today, peddled to us on the back of advertising often aimed at children and crucially lacking the information which might otherwise persuade us to "junk" it is, quite literally, sickening. Our food has made at least a full generation of us seriously unfit and ill and is in danger of poisoning our children and shortening their lives.

And there is no need, save for commercial profits. We do not need mountains of salt and fat manufactured into our breakfast cereals which are then sold to us under the guise of "healthy" eating.

And yet the cost to the nation is astronomic - we are paying for it three times: at the till, with our health and through our taxes.

Mr Blair is right: health care is not just about treating the sick but helping us to live healthily. The government should be pointing the way and informing but, if necessary, legislating on our behalf.

And it is true that individual actions lead to "collective costs". But the individual and society at large is powerless to take on big business on its own. If this new-look New Labour now picks up the cudgel as governments should have done long ago then maybe we will still see a new dawn after all. But the proof of the pudding...