Childhood Obesity Strategy

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Sharon Hodgson

Thursday 21st January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) on proposing and securing this important debate, and she will be pleased to hear that I agreed with almost everything she said. Many here in the Chamber will be aware of my strongly held passion to provide all children with a hot and healthy school meal, especially one that is free. The debate around the Government’s impending childhood obesity strategy, both here in Parliament and in the outside world, has focused on the reformulation of foods that are high in sugar and salt and the introduction of a sugar tax. Although I support those measures, I want quickly to discuss how school food can play a significant role in addressing the obesity crisis facing our children today.

I want to say at the outset—I am sure people are thinking this, if not here then definitely on social media—that I am rather overweight myself and that some may say I should practise what I preach. I do try. But that is why I am so passionate about this agenda: I know how much harder this becomes as you get older. I was allowed to adopt bad habits that are hard to break, and that shows why we need to educate the next generation to do much better.

School food has played a role in public policy for more than 100 years. It was first discussed in this place in 1906 when Fred Jowett, former Member of Parliament for Bradford West, used his maiden speech in the Chamber to launch his campaign to introduce free school meals when compulsory education was being rolled out. That led to the passing of the Education (Provision of Meals) Act 1906, which was originally Jowett’s private Member’s Bill.

Jowett’s campaign was driven by his experience as a member of the Bradford school board, where he witnessed the malnourishment of children who then fell behind their more affluent peers. Here we are, more than 100 years later, and those arguments are still being made today.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

I was just thinking the same as my hon. Friend about how far we have come in some respects but not in others. She will be aware of the private Member’s Bill of my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field). Does she support it?

[Mrs Hodgson]

Yes, that private Member’s Bill is an excellent initiative, and should be adopted by the Government and local authorities. It is very simple to share the data that we already have on families who are entitled to benefits, to ensure that the entitlement of their children to the pupil premium is not lost when universal free school meals are rolled out. That is a very important point.

Although we do not always think about obesity in this way, it is a form of malnourishment. What we are seeing today is very similar to what we saw more than 100 years ago, with children lacking the right nutrients to see them living a healthy childhood and growing into healthy adults. That is especially concerning given that today more than one third of children are leaving school overweight or obese.

The school setting is one of the most important interventions in a child’s life; it is where we nurture and educate future generations. Why should we not feed these children so that they are fuelled to receive the best education and life chances possible? That notion was strongly supported by the previous Labour Government, who introduced a raft of measures that addressed the food eaten by children in our schools. They included nutrition-based school food standards that provide children with the proper nutrition to learn, fully costed plans to extend our universal free school meal pilots, and the introduction of healthy, practical cooking on the national curriculum.

Although much, or all, of those measures were scrapped when the coalition Government were formed in 2010, it was very welcome when, in 2013, the school food plan was published, calling for the reinstatement of lots of those measures as well as new and improved measures in our schools to address the health of our children. Those included introducing food-based standards for all schools, training head teachers in the benefits of food and nutrition, improving Ofsted inspections on school food, and the roll-out of universal free school meals for primary school children, when funding was found.

As we know, that funding was found, thanks to David Laws and the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg). Fortunately, universal infant free school meals were secured by the Chancellor in the comprehensive spending review. All those measures came out of concerns for the health of our children and the growing obesity crisis, especially given that 57% of children were not eating school lunches. Some were opting to take in packed lunches, only 1% of which met the nutritional standards of a hot lunch, while others were opting to go off site to eat junk food at local takeaways.

As research has found, health problems associated with being overweight or obese cost the NHS more than £5 billion a year, and, with obesity rates continuing to rise for 11 to 15-year-olds, especially in deprived areas, it is now clearer than ever that we need seriously to address childhood obesity.

Giving children a healthy and balanced diet during the school day can only be a positive intervention in helping to address obesity. I cannot stress how strongly I believe that one of the most important interventions to help address health issues in childhood is universal free school meals.

School Food

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Sharon Hodgson

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dobbin.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) on securing this important debate and on the clear and concise way in which he addressed a number of issues that are relevant to the wide topic of school food. It is no surprise that he has been so well supported by so many hon. Friends, even though, until yesterday, today was to be the last day of term.

I also congratulate and commend my hon. Friends the Members for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) and for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) on their excellent speeches. They are two of the most knowledgeable Members in the House on this issue, and their contributions should be given the weight that they deserve. I thank them for their contributions.

The consensus among Opposition Members is clear: the Tory-led Government are in real danger of undoing all the good work that has gone into improving the quality and uptake of school meals. Not only do the Government not value children having healthy meals in schools, but they think children should not be given the skills to make healthy choices at home.

The craziest thing is that the Government, who are so clearly focused on dealing with the country’s balance sheet at the expense of almost everything else, do not realise that these policies will, in all likelihood, end up costing the country more in the long run in terms of unfulfilled potential and the treatment of obesity-related illnesses. It is estimated that the cost to the NHS of treating obesity-related conditions could reach £10 billion a year by 2050, when those starting school this year will be in their mid-40s and probably parents of school-age children themselves. It is estimated that the wider social and economic cost will be three or four times that amount. Surely, spending a little now to reduce that bill by even a fraction would be money well spent.

The Government, and the Minister’s Department in particular, are nothing if not consistent in their approach to long-term issues in their “cut now, pay later” approach. For example, the Minister yesterday published her thoughts on the future of early-years provision and early intervention without mentioning the fact that she has taken huge chunks out of the budget for those services.

As with nutritional standards in free schools and academies—let us not forget that that would mean every school if the Education Secretary gets his way—Ministers are taking a “let’s cross our fingers and hope for the best” approach. In a letter to the Local Authority Caterers Association last month, the Minister typified that attitude. When challenged about real concerns in the sector about the lack of a duty on free schools and academies to abide by the standards that other schools strive to work to, which were not always popular in the sector, as many of us know, the Minister said that

“schools converting to Academies will already have been providing healthy, balanced meals that meet the current standards. We have no reason to believe that they will stop doing so on conversion, or that new Free Schools will not do so either.”

Does the Minister have reason to believe that such schools will provide food that is up to standard, or does the Department not really care either way? Is consideration of catering arrangements part of the review process for applications to set up a free school? If not, is that not completely inconsistent with all the warm words that we will undoubtedly hear from the Minister about the value of a nutritious lunch?

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is making exactly the right point about the Government’s answer in respect of any changes. Is it not a concern that the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris), said:

“Free schools and academies, established since September 2010, are not required to comply with the school food standards, and are free to promote healthy eating and good nutrition as they see fit.”—[Official Report, 7 June 2011; Vol. 529, c. 50W.]

Is the concern not the words “as they see fit”, because many schools might not see fit to promote such things?

[Mrs Hodgson]

That is exactly the point. There are plenty of switched-on head teachers who will understand the value of healthy meals. I met one at Hall Mead school in Upminster at the launch of national school meals week last year, and there are many like him. Many of them work at primary and secondary schools in my constituency in Sunderland, where I have had the opportunity to try some of the great healthy food on offer to children there, but not every school has that culture or a leadership team that sees the benefits of healthy lunches.