Prime Minister Tony Blair has urged the public to take responsibility for their own health.

In a speech at the Albert Hall in Nottingham today, Blair said he wanted to “abandon explicitly the paternalistic state of the post-war years” but said that if people took individual responsibility for their own health, then the burden on the NHS – obesity alone costs the Health Service £2.6bn per year – could be relieved.

He said: “Our public health problems are not, strictly speaking, public health questions at all. They are the results of millions of individual decisions, at millions of points in time.

“For example, 20 per cent of all children in the UK eat no fruit and vegetables in a week. 65 per cent of adults and half of all children do not take the recommended amount of exercise.”

The PM also said that the government would introduce a voluntary code for the food industry concerning the advertising of junk food to children and that, if by 2007, it didn’t work, it would be made mandatory.

He conceded however, that weight is a “combination of calories in and calories out” and that the government needed to ensure that it is doing all it can to enable people to take enough exercise. He said: “There is surely a partnership to be arranged between voluntary, private and public sectors to encourage mass sporting participation, like the 400,000 people who take part in a Great Run event each year.

“We can join up all the activities that are going on at the moment, engage the private leisure sector, get schools and sports clubs involved. 400,000 could become two million. 400,000 should become two million.”

Blair also highlighted the effects of excessive drinking and smoking and outlined steps to cut down the public’s intake using measures such as the smoking ban and the formation of the Drink Aware Trust. Details: www.number10.gov.uk