Hospital Food (Animal Welfare Standards)

Debate between Dan Poulter and Neil Parish

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) for securing the debate and for his ongoing keen interest in ensuring the highest standards of animal welfare in farming and food production. We know how important that is because we both represent rural parts of the country, although I have a slightly more mixed constituency than he does, with a strong urban component. It is always in consumers’ interests for the quality of production to be high, and we do what we can to protect and support our food producers and farmers. We know that to be true, and it is something the Government take seriously.

My hon. Friend will be pleased to hear that, earlier this week, I met and discussed this matter with James Martin, a fairly well known—I recognised him—television chef. I am encouraged by the fantastic work that he is doing to raise the quality of food in hospitals throughout the United Kingdom, but particularly in parts of the north of our country. As a doctor as well as a Minister, I know how important it is that we always provide patients with high-quality nutritious food; it is especially important when looking after older patients, who need to receive high-quality nutrition as part of their recovery. That is precisely why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health has been so keen, early in his tenure, to support both high quality and dignity in care for older people, and to make sure that as a Government we actively promote greater consistency among hospitals in the provision of high-quality nutritious food and good buying standards.

It is worth outlining what the improving hospital food project is about. Good food is an essential part of hospital care, improving both patients’ health and their overall experience of their stay. Clinicians have a duty to ensure that patients get the right treatment for their condition, but it is also important that patients receive the right supportive care to enable a good recovery, and nutritious food is essential. Catering to everyone’s taste can be a challenge, and there are many ways to produce good food in hospital. It is right that local hospitals have the flexibility to decide which method is best for them in the context of the needs and preferences of their local population. People in Bradford or Liverpool will obviously have different preferences from people in more rural areas—demographic mixes and tastes differ. I am sure that my hon. Friend agrees.

Our improving hospital food project highlights eight fundamental principles that patients should expect hospital food to meet. One is that Government buying standards for food and catering services should be adopted where practical and supported by procurement practices. The standards cover nutrition, sustainability and animal welfare—the issue my hon. Friend rightly raised in today’s debate. They apply to all food procured by Departments and their agencies and came into force for all new catering contracts from September 2011. They are not mandatory for the NHS, as he said, but via the improving hospital food project, we are strongly encouraging hospitals to adopt them.

[Neil Parish]

I can understand that the Government are slightly reticent to bring in mandatory controls, but are they going to monitor the provision of good food in hospitals? Will they keep an active eye on whether the situation is improving with contracts and whether the higher welfare standards for meat and eggs are being used? They need to monitor the situation, not just bring in a system.

[Dr Poulter]

Indeed. We are looking into that at the moment, with a committee and working party looking at how to roll out good practice.

If we have a mandatory system, we may stifle the potential of what we are seeing locally under the current system. My hon. Friend has highlighted many examples of good practice, and I could add to them: in Sussex, there is a good programme, from plough to plate, which is managed by the head of catering there, William McCartney; and there are other good examples in Nottingham and Scarborough. Local innovation is driving up standards, and that happens in different ways in different parts of the NHS. One of the fundamental principles in which we believe, and it has always been thus, is that hospitals are able to determine how they respond to local conditions. Only this Government have taken seriously the need to support and encourage local innovation better. Through the approach that we have adopted and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s interest in promoting good food in hospitals, we are now seeing many examples of local innovation driving up standards in local hospitals, and through such innovation we can identify and spread across the NHS better and good practice. The problem with a rigid framework or set of criteria is that it might stifle local innovation that can improve standards, as we have seen elsewhere in the NHS.

Our approach is for central Government to take an active interest in good hospital food for the benefit of patients, working through commissioning for quality and innovation payments. To promote good practice, the project is developing an exemplar pay framework within the CQUIN scheme, which enables health care commissioners to reward excellence by linking a proportion of providers’ income to the achievement of local quality improvement gains. We are developing two new CQUIN exemplars related directly to hospital food, one linked to the adoption of Government buying standards for food and one to excellence in food service. I hope that my hon. Friend is reassured by the fact that animal welfare is part of those standards. We are looking at linking CQUIN payments in the NHS to good, ethical Government procurement. We recognise and value the local innovation of various hospital food schemes, which have benefited patients from Scarborough to Sussex. That is better than a rigid framework and enables the NHS to learn from examples of good practice.