Mo Mowlam: Fat is more than just a feminist issue these days

Should the Government be targeting fat people as though they are enemies of society?

When Michelle McManus won Pop Idol recently there seemed to be more comment about her weight than her voice. There were even some suggestions that the general public had voted for her because she was fat, the voters being motivated by sympathy or perversity rather than thinking she was the best.

Of course I know that a person's weight has always been an issue which people feel they have a right to comment on. I remember the newspaper columnist Lynda Lee-Potter comparing me to a Geordie trucker when I put on weight (it was because I was on a course of steroids, which she did not realise). Society likes everyone to conform. It seems now that the Government too seems to think it should get in on the act.

Recently I was amused to see two different stories in the media which demonstrates our confused attitudes towards the issue. On the one hand there was a story about soaps, EastEnders and Coronation Street, that are going to have more characters taking up healthy pursuits such as walking and garden ing rather than standing in the pub having a pint and nibbling on pork scratchings.

This, supposedly, being part of a government initiative to make the nation healthier.

The other story was about life expectancy. The Government's Actuary's Department has just published predictions about how this is going to increase over the next few decades. Thus while a boy born in 2002 could expect to live to about 76 and a girl might reasonably think she'd see her 80th birthday, for those born in 2031 life expectancy is forecast to rise to 81 years and 85 years respectively.

The reasons given for this are improved diets, better working and living conditions and better health care. This is good news. Except, we are sometimes told, for the impact it has on the economic life of the nation - how we pay for more and more older people's pensions and health care.

Is living longer a good thing or a bad thing from the point of view of an individual citizen? Are inexorably rising life expectancies always desirable for society?

I do wonder what the Government thinks it is doing interfering in our soaps? Surely the dramas that we watch should be decided by the TV companies and the viewers?

If I prefer to see the characters in the pub, or eating burgers, surely I should be allowed to watch this.

I don't suddenly want to see the cast of EastEnders jogging round the Hackney Marshes rather than having a drink and a chat in the Queen Vic or pruning their roses rather than sitting in the local greasy spoon. Their panting would only interfere with the delivery of the lines, and I have always thought of gardening as a rather solitary activity, not well-suited to good drama. I do not, of course, object to people wanting to lead healthier lives, but I do object to the Government telling us what is the best life to live. Such questions should be for us to decide privately. Education is fine when it sets out the options, and the better educated we are the better.

But too much prescription infringes our liberties. We may need care from the Government, but we don't need nannying. And who says we all want to live as long as possible, and that this is a good thing for society? I don't think either of these ideas is necessarily true.

The rise in life expectancy between now and 2031 is dramatic and I believe it will have implications beyond just pensions. It is going to put huge extra costs on to the health and social services. A smaller and relatively young workforce is going to have to pay for an increasingly aged population.

And although some may argue that people will have to work longer to ensure financial security in later life, I am not sure that either employers or in many cases employees wish to see such a change.

Employers - with the trend towards greater globalisation and with a soon-to-be-enlarged EU - will be able to transfer jobs to countries with younger and cheaper workforces, further reducing the tax base available to meet these spiralling costs. Why then should the Government interfere in our lives to such an extent as to exacerbate these problems?

The idea that we all want to have longer lives is not necessarily true when we look at the individual making the decision, and when we look at it collectively it becomes even more dubious. These are very difficult and profound issues, because they concern death, a subject that we find hard to address.

But unless we do start thinking about it we are going to have to face some much harder questions about that other inevitability, taxes.

For it is an unpalatable truth that the longer we live the more tax will have to be paid, because the things that old people need are more likely to be provided by the state than the private sector. The demand for healthcare is much greater for the old than for the young.

So should the Government be targeting fat people as though they are enemies of society? Shouldn't they be making sure that we are all free to live our lives as we like, as long as we don't harm others?

I would even go so far as to say we should look at voluntary euthanasia. Making an increase in longevity of life a government priority is not necessarily in the nation's interest, particularly if it means that the state has to dictate the sorts of stories we are allowed to enjoy on television.