Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if his Department will extend the mandatory food standards to all free schools and academies.

We encourage all schools to promote healthy eating and provide healthy, tasty and nutritious food and drink.

The School Food Standards apply to local authority maintained schools, academies that opened prior to September 2010 and academies and free schools entering into a funding agreement from June 2014, including all new academies. To date, over 1,400 academies founded between those dates are voluntarily following the standards and we encourage the remaining schools to commit to them.