§ Mr. David Kidney (Stafford)I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require all schools in England to have a food policy; to provide support for schools in drawing up, implementing and developing food policies; to make permanent the scheme for free fruit in schools and to extend it; to extend entitlement to free school meals, including to breakfasts; to amend the law relating to the nutritional values of school meals; and for connected purposes.I expect that, before the mass production of motor cars and television sets, most people took regular exercise, and those who could afford to do so enjoyed a balanced diet. Today, cars and TV, whatever their benefits, play their part in stoking up obesity on a scale that has not been seen before. According to news reports, the Health Committee, the Consumers Association and the chief medical officer, we are witnessing a mass outbreak of obesity.
Populating our streets with overweight individuals is not only an aesthetic disaster; obesity is a major risk factor for serious, life-threatening conditions such as diabetes and heart disease. Individuals will die younger and society will pay more for the extra demands on our national health service. The antidote to that threat, which the CMO has described as a "health time bomb", remains the same prescription as before—regular exercise and a balanced diet.
My Bill focuses on diet. If we can instil healthy eating habits in young people while they are young, there is a good chance that those good habits will stay with them for life. Better still, if schools involve their students' parents in the enterprise, schools and parents in partnership will mutually reinforce the same messages on diet.
Many positive initiatives have been taken in schools in recent years. Labour has reintroduced compulsory nutritional standards for school lunches—a previous Government abolished such standards in 1980. All pupils aged five, six and seven now get free fruit in school, a wonderful development that makes fruit a popular choice among children. The Department for Education and Skills and the Department of Health have worked together on trialling a new national healthy schools standard. I want to go further, not towards a nanny state where the Government know best and tell people what they can and cannot eat, but towards empowering people to make the right choices for themselves. For that, we all need relevant information and the understanding to make our own judgments.
My Bill has five components. First, every school should have a food policy. For example, I want schools to decide the extent of formal teaching about balanced diets and safe levels of salt, fat and sugar. I should like students to learn from their experiences that a healthy diet can be fun. Food consumed in schools includes school lunches, the contents of lunchboxes brought from home and commercial products purchased from vending machines—schools should examine the contents of those vending machines. Some products are fine, but others are junk food and fizzy drinks. School governors should decide whether the extra income for the school is worth the possible harm to our children's 1203 health. My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley) is taking on the related issue of food and drink advertising that aims a hard sell at our children.
Children should be equipped with basic food skills, so that they can prepare healthy, safe meals, know how food is produced and marketed, and understand what labels mean. I saw a good example of a whole-school approach to learning about food at Silkmore primary school in Stafford, which held a week of lessons and activities on the theme of food. Students themselves think that those matters are important. When I met the members of the school council at Stafford's Weston Road high school last Friday, they told me, unprompted, of their plan to reduce sales outlets for fizzy drinks and increase access to drinking water.
Of course, school communities including unpaid school governors, are already very busy, and I do not want to add new burdens. My second provision is that the Government and local education authorities must support schools in developing food policies and making them effective. I discussed that point with Melanie Swanwick, the head of Staffordshire's successful school meals service. She has sufficient confidence in the quality of meals in Staffordshire's schools to suggest that Ofsted inspections should extend to schools food policies. That is why I asked at the last Education Question Time for Ofsted to be involved in policing minimum nutritional standards set by the Government.
My third proposal concerns the entitlement to free school meals. According to the Local Authority Caterers Association, school meals are big business. In England alone, 3.25 million meals are served to pupils every day, 100,000 people are employed in the industry, and total expenditure by parents and LEAs is nearly £1 billion a year. In secondary schools in England, one in seven pupils is eligible for free school meals, but one quarter of those pupils do not receive their entitlement. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, North (Helen Jones) made constructive suggestions to improve that situation in her Adjournment debate on 4 February 2004.
My suggestion in this Bill is to extend the eligibility for free school lunches to include free school breakfasts. Just less than half of secondary schools now offer school breakfasts, and I argue that it is equitable that the existing free school meals scheme should cover school breakfasts in the same way in which it covers school lunches. In Hull, the LEA plans to pilot a scheme to offer all primary school pupils free school lunches in an effort to link education and health. That experiment is interesting, and the future evaluation of its effects on health and learning should be studied closely.
My fourth idea highlights the success of the free fruit scheme for all five, six and seven-year-old pupils, which is already popular in primary schools. Last Friday, I visited St. Patrick's Roman Catholic primary school in Stafford, where the school meals staff told me that the scheme is changing attitudes, because pupils 1204 increasingly choose fresh fruit and raw vegetables with their school lunches. The current scheme excludes LEAs' stand-alone nurseries, and I would rectify that omission.
My fifth and final proposal is to raise the nutritional standards of school meals. The Government have restored minimum nutritional standards, but many children's meals still read like fast food menus and include few fruits and vegetables. Children should have a choice of healthy meals in an environment that makes healthy choices enjoyable. We should adopt the nutrient-based standards, which experts still recommend, in the 1999 Education and Employment Committee report. I also hope that a greater emphasis on fresh foods will benefit local farmers, who can best supply freshness while keeping food miles low.
My Bill is well timed. Last month, the Government closed their consultation, "Choosing Health?", on action to improve people's health. As part of that consultation, the public were asked what key actions are needed to help people maintain a healthy weight. What better place to start than in schools? Let us educate young people about food quality, a balanced diet and health consequences. We must act to get young people into the habit of eating a balanced diet and finding out that it is enjoyable. Through schools, we can also engage pupils' parents in that aspect of their children's education. By doing so, we may encourage more families to reinforce at home the positive messages given in school.
Shakespeare scholars may recall Julius Caesar's line:
Let me have men about me that are fat".Today, I call for the opposite: with apologies to the Bard's fans for my poor imitation of his prose, let me have people about me whose bellies hang not over their waistbands; exercise and balanced diet will keep them more years from grim reaper's hands. I commend the Bill to the House.Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Kidney, Mrs. Janet Dean, Ms Julia Drown, Dr. Ian Gibson, Helen Jones, Mr. Stephen McCabe, Laura Moffatt, Mr. Kevin McNamara, Linda Perham, Bob Russell, Ms Joan Walley and David Wright.