Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the planned timescale is for the Healthy Start consultation which his Department committed to in June 2018 in Chapter 2 of Childhood Obesity: a plan for action.

The consultation was postponed until after European Union exit. The Department is working to review the operation of the Healthy Start scheme and is considering opportunities to improve the scheme. This includes developing a digital approach, which will make it easier for families to apply for, receive and use Healthy Start benefits.

Healthy Start vouchers can be used to buy, or be put towards the cost of:

- Plain fresh or frozen, fruit and vegetables with no added ingredients such as fat (oil), salt, sugar or flavourings. They can be whole, chopped, packaged or loose;

- Plain whole, semi-skimmed & skimmed cow’s milk, that is pasteurised, sterilized long-life or UHT; and

- Cow’s milk-based infant formula labelled as suitable from use from birth

The Healthy Start scheme is kept under continuous review. Frozen fruit and vegetables were added to the scheme in 2011 and the Government has recently amended the Healthy Start Scheme and Welfare Food Regulations to introduce pulses and canned fruit and vegetables into the Scheme from 1 October 2020.