HC Deb 01 March 2004 vol 418 cc727-36

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Ms Bridget Prentice.]

10.22 pm
Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)

My debate is about the despicable and callous decision made just before Christmas by Conservative councillors on Essex county council to scrap, with little more than three months' notice, the county's school meals service from 1 April. This is a deplorable act against children, many of whom are from disadvantaged families. Even "milk-snatcher" Thatcher, infamous for doing away with school milk—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst)

Order. It is a courtesy that we practise in the House when referring to Members of the upper House to refer to them in the proper way, and not in a manner such as that used by the hon. Gentleman.

Bob Russell

I am grateful to you for correcting me, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Even Baroness Thatcher, the milk-snatcher, never attacked some of the most vulnerable people in our society, depriving children as young as four or five of wholesome, nutritional hot dinners which are so important for their development and well-being.

For many children, the school dinner is their main meal of the day. For some, it is their only hot meal of the day. That is particularly important at this time of year.

I urge the Minister tonight, as I urged the Prime Minister on 28 January, to intervene to ensure that Essex county council continues to provide a proper school meals service, as it has done for decades, and ideally to return to what it was prior to the Education Act 1980, which was the first move to undermine the ideals enshrined in the Education Act 1944.

Unfortunately, the Essex Tories are hiding behind a Government 1999 education order to carry out their dastardly deed to rid themselves of the moral responsibility to maintain a countywide school meals service. Governors of 356 junior, primary and infant schools—all of them volunteers, many of them parents—now find themselves faced with the organisational duties and legal consequences that hitherto were undertaken by paid and professionally qualified full-time officials.

Mrs. Jan Blackwell, chair of the governors of North primary school in Colchester, tells me: Governors and Headteachers are angry at this sudden extra responsibility in an impossible time-frame. We have little knowledge of Food Hygiene Standards, Nutritional Guidelines and Health and Safety Regulations in the kitchen. Immediate revocation of the Government's 1999 order is called for because I cannot that believe it was ever intended that it be used as it is now.

We also need an explanation from Essex county council as to why it has acted as it has. We need to do whatever is necessary to restore matters to the way they were previously, the objective being to ensure that all parents who require their children to have a hot midday meal—either paid or free, as applicable—can do so.

If Essex county council is saying that it cannot oversee the school meals service of 27,000 meals each day with its purchasing power as the second-largest local education authority in the country, how does it expect individual schools, or perhaps a few schools banding together, to achieve a better deal at very short notice? Some might, and good luck to them, but for those schools that do not have the capacity to do so, the moral responsibility ought to remain with the LEA. Perhaps Essex feels that it is not getting a fair financial deal from the Government to keep the meals service. Whatever the truth—it is academic for parents and the schools—either county hall or Whitehall must find the resources.

This is not a reckless demand for greater public spending, but rather a plea for joined-up government—at all levels—so the world's fourth-richest economy ensures that no child goes hungry or is deprived of a hot meal for what, in terms of Essex's massive budget and what the national economy generates, is petty cash in comparison.

Bob Spink (Castle Point) (Con)

Does the hon. Gentleman think that full consultation prior to taking a decision constitutes joined-up government? Will he ask the Minister to get Essex county council to have such consultation, something for which I called at column 1783 in an Adjournment debate on 18 December?

Bob Russell

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that helpful intervention and I sincerely hope that that will be taken on board. Lack of consultation is one of the major issues that we need to discuss.

The alternative is the real risk of some children—not just those from backgrounds which are already disadvantaged, but more widely—having their whole development damaged, with consequences for their health sooner or later. With national health service budgets always under pressure, the cost to the public purse ultimately will be greater than if children grow up healthy with a proper diet, of which a school dinner is often the main ingredient.

Young bodies damaged by lack of proper nourishment throughout their growing years may never recover. With obesity increasing all the time, often through poor diet, doing away with the carefully structured diets that hot school meals should provide will do nothing to help the situation. Essex LEA is setting the scene where, alongside obese children, we could also witness the return of rickets in others. That is irresponsible behaviour by the county hall administration.

The Government must act. The principles of the national healthy schools standard must be upheld; ditto the children's national service framework to promote healthy diets. It is not good enough to commission such worthy reports as "Securing Good Health for the Whole Population" from Derek Wanless, published only last week, and "Every Child Matters", published last September, and then do nothing when Essex county council undermines the good intentions in those reports by scrapping the school meals service. That service is vital to so many of the county's children, particularly those from disadvantaged families or from families where parents are at work and where the school meal is an important feature of that family's lifestyle.

I draw the Minister's attention to page 156 of the Wanless report, box 7.3, which states: The issues of food promotion to children and school meals illustrate the importance of the involvement and engagement of stakeholders in public health issues—as awareness, consensus for action and support for future public health measures can all be gained. I remind the House that the Prime Minister, in answer to my question to him just over a month ago, said that we believe that the provision of school meals for pupils, especially from the poorest backgrounds, has a beneficial effect on their education. Unfortunately, some of our youngsters go to school without having had a proper meal. It means that they do not learn or pay attention in their lessons as well as they should, and it is for that reason that we are deeply committed to ensuring that the funding is there for local authorities to provide that service. I will look into the point that the hon. Gentleman raises."—[Official Report, 28 January 2004; Vol. 417, c. 307.] Will the Minister tonight match the Prime Minister's encouraging response?

I am deeply concerned that, with the ending of hot school dinners and their replacement with packed lunches, those children who currently have free meals will be the only ones served with a packed lunch, provided by bulk delivery or whatever. These will be identical little packages, making it obvious to everybody who is in receipt of a free lunch. Currently, all children having a school dinner sit together; there is no segregation or obvious difference as to who is in receipt of a free dinner and those whose parents can afford to pay. Only people in the office know. Children whose family circumstances qualify them for a free meal—there are around 7,000 in Essex—will in future be exposed, with all the unhappiness that can so often happen as a result of such singling out.

Although, of course, I recognise that ultimately it is the responsibility of each individual to look after his or her own body, and those of their children, the Government cannot ignore situations such as that to which I have drawn to Parliament's attention. Only last week, the Consumers Association warned: Obesity and diet-related diseases are now seen as Britain's biggest killers. The association's call for a nutrition council is welcome. I am sure that such a council would want school meals promoted, not scrapped. Incidentally, getting rid of school meals will not help the Government in their aim of providing better opportunities for working families. School dinners are a great help where one or both parents are working.

A roll call of schools in my constituency where the reluctant decision has been taken to provide only packed lunches from next month includes the Montgomery infant and junior, the St. Michael's primary, and the King's Ford infant and junior schools. There are others, but I deliberately highlight those five because they are the ones attended by the bulk of children aged under 11 whose parents are members of Her Majesty's armed forces based at the Colchester garrison.

About 3,000 soldiers from Colchester served in the Iraq war less than a year ago. Currently 600 other soldiers from the town are on peacekeeping duties in Iraq. That is how Conservative councillors reward our troops who put their lives on the line—they deprive their children of hot school dinners.

I shall be drawing the attention of the Secretary of State for Defence to that scandalous situation. The House needs to know that it is not good for the morale of our troops, and does nothing to help the retention of our professional soldiers, for their children to be going without a hot school dinner because of penny-pinching by those who control the public purse.

As an aside, I am told that the food allowance per meal that the Home Office makes available for each prisoner is greater than the cost of a school dinner. Is it asking too much for equivalent funding to be provided for the school meals service in Essex, so that the health of our children is given the same consideration as that of prisoners?

The scrapping of the school meals service in Essex has led to a major outcry right across the county. The only people who seem to be in favour of it are Tory county councillors. Schools are outraged at the short notice they were given—just days before Christmas—that the service would be terminated at the end of March. Heads, teachers, parents, governors have all protested, but all to no avail.

Two weeks ago, Ms Ruth Brock, chair of the Essex primary heads association, told a packed meeting at Colchester town hall: We did not know that we were going to be left in this situation. Most heads are feeling incredibly dumped upon because we did not know this was going to happen. Mrs. Fran Wagstaff, secretary of the local branch of the National Union of Teachers, said: The NUT is concerned about the welfare of many of the pupils who rely on this one hot meal in the middle of the day. This may seem like a saving in the short term, but the long term effect of unhealthy eating will have a greater cost to the nation's health. There has been massive media coverage of something that appears more to echo life in Charles Dickens's Victorian Britain than the supposedly more enlightened times of 21st-century Britain. The Colchester Evening Gazette has been running an excellent "Save Our School Dinners" campaign from which I would like to quote extracts. For example, last Wednesday, 25 February, the main headline on its front page stated: "Schools End Hot Dinners". A sub-headline added: Proper meals will be off the menu". Chief reporter Laurence Cawley wrote: Hot meals are to be dropped from many school menus in Colchester. Schools across the county have struggled to arrange their own dinners after Essex County Council decided not to renew a central contract with meal providers. It left schools having to try to hammer out their own deals with dinner providers within just a few weeks. Some have managed to keep their hot dinner service, but many have not. It means hundreds of schoolchildren in and around Colchester will only be offered sandwiches for lunch. The head teacher of King's Ford junior school, Mr. Lawrence Garside, told the Gazette: We didn't have the time to get something else sorted out. Budgets are tight and we just cannot afford to lose money on it. We are going to have to offer packed lunches. We hope this will just be a stop-gap measure and we will be trying to offer hot dinners as soon as possible. It might be back from September but it is too early to say. Over at Montgomery junior school, head teacher Mr. Graham Eskell said that it was likely that the school's kitchens would be decommissioned and added: We feel deep regret about losing a hot meals service. We have not been given enough time to sort this out. Meanwhile, at North primary school two cooks, Mrs. Carol Tralau and Mrs. Evie Drummond, who between them have prepared dinners there for a combined total of 40 years, are to lose their jobs. They are typical of the dedicated dinner staff at many schools across Essex who are to be made redundant because of the disgraceful behaviour of the county hall Tories.

On Thursday, the Evening Gazette carried a full-page article with the comments of pupils at King's Ford junior school, stating that their message came through loud and clear: we love our dinners, please keep them on the menu". Seven-year-old Rose Chandler feels so strongly that she has written to the leader of Essex county council, Lord Hanningfield, begging him to rethink the council's decision. She said: I enjoy my hot dinners especially when it is cold outside. Ten-year-old Louis Woods said: I don't really like having packed lunches. I have been here four years and I've only missed having a school dinner five times. When the hot dinners go, I think it will be odd … And what will happen to our Christmas dinners? We all sit down and have a Christmas dinner and the teachers bring us our food. It is a special time. And all the dinner ladies here are really nice and good cooks. It is worth quoting what the chairman of governors of King's Ford junior school says. Referring to the short time scale given to individual schools to make alternative arrangements, Richard Bourne told the Evening Gazette: It is simply impossible for schools to go through a proper process of decision-making in order to find a new provider in the time they have been given. As a consequence, some children will no longer get a hot dinner. This is a disgrace and shames the politicians and bureaucrats at County Hall whose own lavish facilities mean they never go without. Mr. Bourne speaks with authority and personal knowledge. He is a Labour county councillor.

Parents are deeply angered. Their views are summed up by Ms Paula Chandler, of Monkwick, who has organised a petition urging the county council to rethink its position. She said: When parents work shifts, they often have to make children sandwiches at night. They don't want their children having two packed lunches a day. And then there's single parents such as myself. It is nice to know they've had a hot meal at school because we lead such busy lives and it takes the pressure off to know they have had a hot meal. The decision to scrap the county-run school meals service was sudden. The first that schools knew was just before Christmas when Essex county council said it would no longer be awarding group contracts for dinners—the schools were handed the legal responsibility for providing a school meal, whether hot or cold.

Mrs. Blackwell, chairman of the governors of North primary school, described matters from her perspective, saying: The LEA decided, after 15 months of negotiation on a group contract for meals as requested by over 340 schools in the county, to abandon and devolve meals to individual schools. I am not entirely sure of the legality of this decision. It breaches the contract with the schools. Lord Hanningfield failed to comment when I asked him in a letter. Schools effectively had three months to arrange a new contract. Business plans were provided. Most schools were predicted to make a loss—minimum £2,800 for North School. This does not take into consideration the age of the kitchen; replacement, maintenance and repair at North could potentially be very costly. Losses would have to be covered from individual school budgets, which are already very tight and predicted to remain at a standstill for the coming year in Essex. This takes money away from the teaching and learning provision of every child in that school. How can this raise standards? There is no longer equity for children in Essex, and this decision does not sit comfortably with the Government's Every Child Matters. It also makes a mockery of the Teachers Work Load Agreement. No consideration has been given to staff involved, namely Headteachers, Governors and the cooks. They were not included in the discussion nor decision to end the group contract. Many cooks now face redundancy after many years of service. Those comments from Mrs. Blackwell will be echoed by chairs of other school governing bodies across Essex. She demonstrates the shabby, shoddy way in which schools in Essex have been treated by the Conservative-controlled county council. Schools are looking to Government to step in to save the school meals service in Essex. The well-being of children, their good health, and the need to ensure that no child is left hungry or under-nourished, demand that urgent action be taken to prevent the service ending at the end of this month.

It is not enough to say that the responsibility is one for the local education authority, for the LEA has passed the legal responsibility to school governing bodies, which in most instances would prefer not to have it—as a general rule, they do not have the experience or the qualifications to operate the school meals service, they do not have spare revenue funds to finance it, and they have no capital to pay for replacement kitchen equipment in due course.

Government intervention is the only solution. I urge the Minister to act without delay. Children at schools across Essex, as well as their parents and all involved with the school meals service, will appreciate it. After all, as the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said in his introduction to "Every Child Matters", Since 1997 we have tried to put children first. We have increased the focus on prevention through the child poverty strategy, Sure Start and our work to raise school standards. But there is still more to do. The executive summary of "Every Child Matters" stresses the need for children to have a healthy lifestyle and to enjoy better health—and for the eradication of child poverty.

The end of the school meals service in Essex is against what the Government have been striving to achieve. To me, every child matters. I look to the Minister to demonstrate tonight by a promise of immediate action that every child in Essex matters to the Government.

10.39 pm
Mr. Alan Hurst (Braintree) (Lab)

I am pleased to have the opportunity to support briefly the argument of the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell). I first raised this matter at business questions some weeks ago. There is certainly great concern in my area, as well as in the urban area that he represents, and especially in small village schools, which do not have the budget to deal with such extra costs. In addition, the percentage involved is much greater as an overall part of their budget than it would be for a larger school. The further difficulty that such small schools have is that the head teacher has to deal with this as well as with all the other administrative tasks that they have.

Also, larger schools may often have assistants, which smaller schools do not have.

I am disappointed that the county council on which I served for several years before coming to the House has sought to take this step. It follows fast after its decision to weaken the provision of denominational transport. One had hoped that school meals and transport would be regarded as an integral part of the education service in Essex and that they would continue as hitherto.

10.40 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills (Mr.Stephen Twigg)

I welcome the debate that has been instigated by the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell). The passionate and powerful way in which he sets out his case demonstrates the real concern that exists in his constituency and throughout Essex about the decision. That is also shown by the cross-party presence in the Chamber and the points that were made by my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Hurst) and the lion. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink).

First, I associate myself fully with the emphasis in the speech made by the hon. Member for Colchester on inclusion, the message of "Every Child Matters", the importance of healthy standards in our schools and the use of the school curriculum, including the meals service, as a vehicle to challenge some of the great issues of the day, including obesity. I associate myself with what he said about that and the connection that he made with the "Every Child Matters" Green Paper, forthcoming legislation on children's rights, and the publication of the Wanless report and its connection with the healthy schools standard.

It is important for the House to be clear about the issue. It is not about responsibility for the provision of meals, which has not actually changed, but rather about how schools can reasonably be expected to discharge their responsibilities to ensure that that provision exists.

Mr. Ivan Henderson (Harwich) (Lab)

I recently attended a meeting with the governors and head teacher of All Saints school in my constituency. Does my hon. Friend think that the time scale that was put in place for schools to take on the enormous changes forced on them by Essex county council was reasonable to give them adequate time to prepare, especially given that they had just returned following the Christmas holidays?

Mr. Twigg

I share the concern that my hon. Friend and both Opposition Members in the Chamber have expressed. I shall come on to the timing of the announcements a little later in my speech.

It is important to make it clear that the Government are committed to the principle of devolution and delegation of resources and responsibilities to the local level, in the belief that decisions on spending are best taken at the most local level, including the level of the school. When the new arrangements described by the hon. Member for Colchester were introduced in 1999, we made it clear that funding and responsibility for the provision of school meals would be automatically delegated to secondary schools. In Essex, that took place immediately in 1999.

The situation for primary and special schools is more complex. We recognised at the time of the decision in 1999 that not all schools would want to make their own arrangements. Therefore delegation was not made compulsory—primary schools were given the option of taking it. In Essex, the decision was taken to delegate funding, and thus responsibility, to all primary schools. However, as the hon. Gentleman said, the great majority of those schools were brought back into the local education authority meals service, which was provided on behalf of the LEA by two contractors. Frankly, that mirrored the experience of most other authorities, which normally provide a meals service for schools to buy back into, although they are under no obligation to do so.

Last year, Essex re-tendered its meals service contracts because concerns were expressed about quality. The cost of the new, improved contracts was calculated at around an additional £2.2 million. In the light of that evidence, the LEA decided that it could not afford to delegate sufficient extra funding to enable schools to meet the consequent charges.

As has already been said, just before Christmas the local education authority took its decision not to enter into new contracts, and instead to end its meals service for primary schools from April this year—one month from now. The hon. Member for Colchester and other hon. Members from Essex will have received a copy of Lord Hanningfield's letter of 28 January setting out the LEA's position.

The hon. Gentleman talked about the short notice, my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree reiterated that, and the hon. Member for Castle Point spoke about a lack of consultation. We are clear that Essex is legally entitled to do what it plans to do, but we do not pretend that that is an ideal situation, particularly with regard to the timing. Schools in Essex have had very short notice of the LEA's decision, and have therefore had to devote a significant amount of time and effort to considering alternatives. Those concerns have been well expressed today.

We are particularly concerned about the position of some of the smaller schools, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree referred. To be fair to Essex county council, I must point out that it has sought to put in place a fairly comprehensive package of advice and guidance for schools, including meetings and resources via the internet. However, whatever help is given, that does not detract from the fact that, from April, governing bodies will find themselves with a continued legal responsibility for providing free school meals and paid lunches when requested, while the service from which many of them were buying has disappeared at short notice.

I am pleased that the LEA is doing two concrete things to assist at least some of the schools in Essex. First, it has arranged to extend one of the two existing contracts—that with Initial Catering in south Essex—until the end of the summer term. That at least gives some of the schools more time if they need to make arrangements, and our latest information is that 46 Essex schools are taking advantage of that extension.

Secondly, the LEA has agreed to provide some additional resources, over the passporting requirements, into the schools budget—about £900,000, to be distributed to schools that are in financial difficulty as a result of the changes. Taking on board my hon. Friend's point, I hope that some of the small rural schools for which the situation will be especially challenging will be able to benefit from that additional resource. I welcome those decisions.

It may help if I share with the House some other figures supplied to us by the county council: 70 per cent. of primary schools have said what they intend to do from April. Besides the 46 that I have already mentioned, about 115 are making arrangements with a private contractor, 39 have decided to provide meals for themselves, and 53 will, as the hon. Member for Colchester said, provide a cold meal option, at least initially. Although cold meals can meet the nutritional standards that apply to school lunches, the Department for Education and Skills strongly recommends that at least some hot meal options should be available in all schools, so we share the concern that the hon. Gentleman expressed about that situation. I shall return to that subject briefly at the end of my speech.

Despite the transitional difficulties that will inevitably arise, it is important to remember that the existing service was not universally well thought of. Schools that are embarking on their own provision have an opportunity to build around their own wishes and circumstances in a way that involves the whole school, and I was struck by a notice from a former Essex head teacher posted on the LEA's guidance website pointing out the inspiring effect on his school of making its own meal arrangements. I have also seen that inspirational effect in other schools in other parts of the country, including smaller primary schools.

None the less, there is a real danger that in the summer term, children at some Essex schools may have either no meals provision or an inadequate one. Responsibility in that respect is clear: the governing body of each school has a responsibility, and that will continue to be the case. However, I accept that that alone is not sufficient.

The Department certainly has every expectation that Essex county council's procurement service will make every effort to give specific help to those schools that are still in difficulty in fulfilling the requirements that we all have of them. The Government will monitor the situation closely and seek regular progress reports from the local education authority. I would hope—indeed, I am very confident—that the hon. Member for Colchester and other hon. Members on both sides of the House who represent Essex constituencies will continue to take an active interest in the subject and bring to the attention of the Government and the House any cases in which all is not going well.

Schools have been placed in a position of managing a transition in a very short time. That falls short of the ideal in terms of consultation and school involvement. From the information that I have, most schools in Essex will be able to achieve that and some, for the reason I gave, may even benefit from it. However, it would have been better had Essex county council given schools more time to plan for alternatives. I accept that since it took the decision, the LEA has gone to considerable lengths to assist schools to make other arrangements, despite the fact that it is under no legal duty to do so, and it is giving some financial assistance, as I set out.

Overall, the verdict at this stage must be to wait and see. The DFES will monitor the situation closely, with interest and concern, because we want to ensure that every child in Essex gets access to decent school food. The governors have a responsibility to ensure that that happens, but we want to work with the LEA and, indeed, with colleagues throughout the House to ensure that that aspiration is a reality for all the children of Essex.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at nine minutes to Eleven o'clock.