FOR those disillusioned with New Labour - a not-infinitesimal band - it's rub-your-eyes time. Tony Blair and his team are expected to push through a strong package of measures to protect the consumer - who might be you or me. Gosh.

Fines of up to £5,000 will await firms that market their products or goods with misleading words or pictures. Terms like "traditional", "farmhouse", "fresh", "pure" and "natural", will be carefully defined, and therefore used much more sparingly.

Of course, the food industry is resisting the change. A spokeswoman for the Food and Drink Federation says: "Nobody thinks when they see "homemade" on a jar of jam in a supermarket that there's someone out the back making it." Then why use the term, which at present can be applied to factory-made products?

But, as important as this particular issue is the very fact that New Labour intends acting on it. For the new rules represent exactly the kind of social legislation that many looked to New Labour to introduce. Hamstrung with their belief in the sanctity of "free enterprise", the Tories can never be relied upon to move social matters forward. They even opposed the compulsory wearing of seat belts, which has saved the lives of tens of thousands.

Now that it is about to dip its toes into the pool of social improvement, perhaps New Labour will take a deeper plunge. The outlawing of bull bars and use of mobile phones while driving, limits on light-blocking hedges, and stricter control of noise, perhaps banning domestic fireworks (as in the US) or adopting time-zones for power tools (as in Germany) are a few reforms that would enjoy, or soon win, wide support.

BUT for the moment it's back to normal. Example 1: arthritis and rheumatism are recognised as among the most disabling and painful of conditions. Each year, they claim the lives of between 3,000 and 8,000 sufferers. Now a new drug, a class known as COX-2, offers superior pain killing treatment without the side effects of many existing drugs.

But though the drug is prescribed generally to patients in the US and in most of Europe, here its use is likely to be limited to a handful of patients at high risk of stomach bleeding. Regarded by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, the Government's advisory body on drugs, as "prohibitive", the cost of prescribing the drug for every patient over 65 is put at £25m. In the foot-and-mouth crisis, the vets' bill alone now tops £79m.

Example 2: Home Secretary David Blunkett has come up with a great answer to public worries about the lack of police officers. If all CID members routinely wear uniforms except when on an undercover job, 20,000 more uniformed officers will suddenly appear around Britain. Isn't this what Labour, when in Opposition, would have dubbed a smoke-and-mirrors act?

Example 3: "MPs attack Camelot for huge pay rises." A typical newspaper headline over the doubling of the pay of Camelot's chief executive Dianne Thompson, coupled with similar six-figure rises for the Lottery operator's other five executive directors. How often have we read such headlines? No doubt it is too much to hope that one day the bark of critical MPs - of all parties, incidentally - will be accompanied by a little Government bite.

l Foot-and-mouth. The Government insists it has never ruled out vaccination. Well, if a cull of 3.5m animals, the vast majority disease-free, over a period approaching six months, rising to a crescendo in which 4,000 mostly healthy Welsh hill sheep and 9,000 Vale of York pigs, none suffering foot-and-mouth, are being slaughtered in a single go, is not ruling out vaccination, this column has been written by Margaret Beckett. Or perhaps Ben Gill.

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