Nudge smudge: UK Government misrepresents “nudge”

Abstract

The recent public health White Paper, Healthy lives, healthy people: our strategy for public health in England, 1 Department of HealthHealthy lives, healthy people: our strategy for public health in England. http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_121941Date: Nov 30, 2010 Google Scholar makes several references to the so-called nudge approach to behavioural change popularised in a book of that name by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. 2 Thaler R Sunstein C Nudge: improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT2009 Google Scholar We argue that the government has misrepresented nudging as being in opposition to their use of regulation and legislation to promote health, and that this misrepresentation serves to obscure the government's failure to propose realistic actions to address the upstream socioeconomic and environmental determinants of disease. The UK Public Health White Paper: “just words”Andrew Lansley, the UK Coalition Government's Secretary of State for Health, presented his White Paper , Healthy Lives, Healthy People: Our Strategy for Public Health in England, to Parliament on Nov 30. After 6 months in power, the government's plans are long on rhetoric but disappointingly short on detail. Who, for example, could be against reducing child poverty, targeting mental health, and addressing “the root causes of ill-health”? But although the White Paper offers an uncontroversial list of promises, most of which were already in pre-election party manifestos, Lansley has failed to back them up with credible policies. Full-Text PDF