Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help ensure (a) babies and (b) children are (i) well nourished and (ii) warm in all homes; and if he will introduce a screening process to help ensure children in hospitals are not discharged to settings where those conditions cannot be met.

Through the Healthy Food Schemes, the Government provides a nutritional safety net to those families who need it the most. Healthy Start, the Nursery Milk Scheme and the School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme together help more than three million children.

The Government is investing £12 billion in Help to Heat schemes to help make people’s homes warmer and less costly to heat. This includes £1.1 billion to the Home Upgrade Grant until 2025, of which £500 million has already been granted to local authorities as part of the Sustainable Warmth Competition to provide energy-efficiency upgrades to lower-income, energy inefficient homes.

Children are discharged to their parent or carer when they are medically fit to leave the hospital. If a health practitioner has cause to suspect that the child was at risk of neglect, they would follow the child safeguarding processes. We do not intend to introduce a new screening process at present.