Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the nutritional value of hospital meals.

The Department recognises the importance of good quality food for patients, both in terms of improving health and for their overall experience of services, and believes that it is a patient’s right to receive tasty, nutritious and free food as part of their National Health Service treatment.

NHS Improvement commissioned a Healthcare Food Standards and Strategy Group in July 2018 whose first task is to produce national standards for healthcare food for patients, staff and visitors. The standards will incorporate current targets and future aspirational targets around sugar, salt and fat as well as looking at quality and the whole patient experience. The new standards are due to be published in September 2019 and following on from this a spin off group will begin work on a national menu and recipe bank using chefs from within the NHS which will be a tool to help organisations achieve high standards of nutritional excellence.