Milburn calls for ban on foods that fail to meet dietary targets

Food companies should be forced by law to cut the fat, sugar and salt in their products to tackle Britain's obesity crisis, Alan Milburn, the former secretary of state for health, said yesterday.

He urged the Government to order the Food Standards Agency toban products unless the industry reduced such ingredients.

In his first speech on health since resigning from the Cabinet in June, Mr Milburn told a conference in Oxford that the Government should call a summit of the NHS, consumer groups, retailers and the food industry to improve the nation's diet.

Mr Milburn, who is advising Tony Blair on Labour's general election manifesto, called for a "new deal" between citizens and the Government on health. He said: "We cannot force people to be healthy or to give up smoking or to take exercise. Individuals have to want to do that themselves. What we can do is to provide the opportunities for them to do so." He said local authorities should be allowed to conduct local referendums on whether smoking should be banned in public places. The Government needed to move "further faster" in tackling health inequalities, he added.

Mr Milburn saidthe main health challenge facing the world was not Aids but the spread of chronic disease. "What has happened in the developed world is happening in the developing world."

Child obesity in China, for example, has increased eightfold in 10 years, and the consumption of tobacco, high-calorie food and drink, fat and sugar is rising fast in the developing nations.

"Of course the fight against Aids and malaria and TB must be deepened, Mr Milburn said. "But the front on which the battle against ill health is fought must be broadened. And the developed world must do more to help the developing world."