Geoff,
Elements does not appear to have this option under Preferences\Saving Files (or anywhere else I can find) - there is a check box for 'Ignore Camera Data (EXIF) profiles' however this is unchecked by default and only ignores the colour profile attached to the original file
After a bit more research I found this comparison http://www.impulseadventure.com/photo/save-as-save-for-web.html

I also tried saving a test 1400x1050 psd file using both methods - using 'save for web' at maximum quality (100%) the file size is 967 kB and if you use 'save as' at maximum quality (12,largest file) it is 950 kB i.e. no difference. However if you choose the preset level of 'maximum' it gives quality level of 10 and the file size is only 389 kB which is what I was alluding to in my first post as I didn't realise you could bump up the quality from 10 to 12 using the slider. I can't see any difference in quality at a pixel level between the three files.

After all this detailed technical discussion my conclusion is that when saving for the BLP website we only need to use quality level 10 for 'save as' and around 80% quality if using 'save for web', realising that when using this method the EXIF data is stripped off. Using a higher quality setting than 10 and producing files approaching the 1000 kB limit is of no benefit and only fills up our storage space on the server