Asked by: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley Central)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to ensure that the school milk subsidy scheme includes milk alternatives in the event that children have dairy allergies.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
Only milk and relevant dairy products are currently eligible for subsidy in the School Milk Scheme and there are no plans to subsidise plant-based beverages.
However, the Government recognises that some children with clinical and dietary needs are unable to consume milk and expects schools to make reasonable adjustments for those with particular needs. The School Food Standards only require milk to be available, but they also enable schools in England to provide a variety of other products to meet pupils’ particular dietary needs, including plain soya, rice or oat drinks enriched with calcium and combination and flavoured variations of these drinks. Further information is available on gov.uk at the following link:
The independent Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (COT) also recently assessed the potential risks posed by these products in the diets of infants and young children. It concluded that, from a toxicological perspective, neither the safety of these products, nor the suitability of current guidance, could be confirmed. The Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) has also raised concerns that substituting these products for milk could lead to an increased risk of insufficient nutrient intake in young children. It highlighted the high level of uncertainty on nutritional composition of these products and limited data on their consumption by young children. A joint COT/SACN Working Group has been established to conduct a risk benefit analysis and the government will continue to closely monitor developments.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
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 to encourage the consumption of (a) milk and (b) calcium for (i) children under the age of 8 and (ii) other young people.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Change4Life and Start4Life include information to parents of young and primary school aged children on consumption of milk as part of a healthy balanced diet.
The Government’s dietary advice, as depicted by the Eatwell Guide, encourages the consumption of milk and dairy products or dairy alternatives as part of a healthy balanced diet. The Eatwell Guide principles, including consumption of milk and dairy products, underpin the School Food Standards and Public Health England’s example menus and guidance for early years settings, which are available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/example-menus-for-early-years-settings-in-england
Children and young people should be able to get all the calcium they need from a healthy balanced diet. Milk and dairy products or dairy alternatives are an important source of calcium. When choosing dairy alternatives, such as soya drinks, we advise selecting calcium-fortified versions.
Asked by: Daniel Zeichner (Labour - Cambridge)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he has plans to publish a domestic replacement for the EU School Milk Scheme for the academic year 2021-22.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
The School Milk Scheme will continue to run in the 2021-22 academic year.
Asked by: Laurence Robertson (Conservative - Tewkesbury)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to promote the Nursery Milk Scheme to eligible recipients to increase uptake of that scheme.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Nursery Milk Scheme is operated by the Nursery Milk Reimbursement Unit on behalf of the Department. The scheme is promoted through the Nursery Milk website at the following link:
https://www.nurserymilk.co.uk/
Asked by: Mick Whitley (Labour - Birkenhead)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department made an assessment of the potential merits of incorporating the £15 voucher scheme for local shops and supermarkets into the Healthy Start voucher scheme prior to the recent re-opening of schools during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Vicky Ford
During the period of school opening restrictions, schools continued to provide free school meal support to pupils eligible for benefits related free school meals and who were learning at home. Extra funding was provided to support schools to provide lunch parcels or meals to eligible children. Schools were free to decide the best approach for their free school meal pupils. They could provide lunch parcels, locally arranged vouchers for local shops or supermarkets, or they could use the national voucher scheme.
The Healthy Start scheme helps to encourage a healthy diet for pregnant women, babies and young children from low income households. Vouchers are available for pregnant women and mothers with young children that meet the eligibility criteria, with further information available here: https://www.gov.uk/healthy-start/eligibility. In contrast, free school meals are available for eligible school age children. Further information on this is available here: https://www.gov.uk/apply-free-school-meals.
At the time, Healthy Start vouchers could be used to purchase fruit, vegetables, milk and infant formula, in order to support a healthy diet, but not the full range of foods needed to provide a balanced meal for a child at lunch time.
A range of options were considered, including using the Department of Health and Social Care’s Healthy Start vouchers. However, these are aimed at different eligibility groups and were not designed to offer the full range of foods necessary to support a healthy, nutritious meal to learn, concentrate and achieve.
Given the pace required to set up support for free school meal pupils learning at home, this would not be considered a feasible option for delivery.
Asked by: Paul Holmes (Conservative - Eastleigh)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of expanding the range of milks covered by the Nursery Milk Scheme to include plant-based and other non-dairy milks.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
At present the legislation governing the Nursery Milk Scheme allows for the reimbursement of the cost of cow’s milk and infant formula based on cow’s milk. The Department is currently considering this position.
Asked by: Robert Halfon (Conservative - Harlow)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate his Department has made of the number of children living in food insecure households in England.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department’s Healthy Start scheme provides a nutritional safety net to hundreds of thousands of pregnant women and families with children under four in lower-income families. Healthy Start encourages a healthy diet by providing vouchers that can only be spent on fresh or frozen fruit and vegetables, plain cow’s milk and infant formula.
Free school meals, led by the Department for Education, play an important role in ensuring disadvantaged children receive a healthy, nutritious meal each day. They are aimed at families who are out of work or on low incomes.
Under the benefits-related criteria, there are currently around 1.4 million pupils eligible for and claiming a free school meal, saving families around £400 a year for each child.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of reports that there has been an increase in the number of food banks set up in UK schools.
Answered by Baroness Stedman-Scott
There is no official data or record of the number of foodbanks in the UK. However, the Government wants to develop a better understanding of household food needs to help ensure that support is targeted at those who need it most. This is why the Government has worked with food insecurity experts, the Office for National Statistics and the Scottish Government to introduce a new set of food security questions in the Family Resources Survey starting from April 2019. This means that we will in future be able to able to monitor the prevalence and severity of household food insecurity across the UK and for specific groups, to better understand the drivers of food insecurity and identify which groups are most at risk.
To help families on low incomes we are supporting 1.3 million children with free school meals, investing up to £26 million in school breakfast clubs, providing approximately 2.3 million children aged 4-6 with a portion of fresh fruit or vegetables each day at school, and, through the Healthy Start Programme, hundreds of thousands of low income families benefit from vouchers which can be redeemed against fruit, vegetables, milk and infant formula.
Asked by: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley Central)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the Food Foundation's Children’s Future Food Inquiry report published on 24 April 2019, what steps the Government is taking to support children who live in food insecure households.
Answered by Will Quince
This Government is committed to helping families into work, as the best route out of poverty. We are also supporting over 1 million children with free school meals, investing up to £26 million in school breakfast clubs, providing approximately 2.3 million children aged 4-6 with a portion of fresh fruit or vegetables each day at school, and, through the Healthy Start Programme, hundreds of thousands of low income families benefit from vouchers which can be redeemed against fruit, vegetables, milk and infant formula. In 2019/20, the government will be spending more than £95 billion a year on working-age benefits. The new set of food insecurity questions introduced into the existing Family Resources Survey from April will build a better understanding of household food needs, to help ensure we’re targeting support to those most in need.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 30 April 2018 to Question 140109 on Healthy Start and Nursery Milk schemes, how much funding his Department allocated to the (a) Healthy Start scheme and (b) Nursery Milk Scheme in (i) 2010-11, (ii) 2011-12, (iii) 2017-18 and (iv) 2018-19.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The Healthy Start and Nursery Milk schemes are demand led statutory schemes. This means that the Department must meet expenditure arising from legitimate claims made in line with the legislation. Funding is allocated to the schemes to meet the actual demand, rising or falling in line with the overall uptake for each scheme, and the Government works to ensure that eligible people are aware of the schemes and how they can benefit from them.
The funding allocated to the schemes is accounted for through a single cost centre with total costs is shown in the following table. A split by individual scheme is not available in the format requested.
| Total |
2010 - 2011 | £133,996,866 |
2011 - 2012 | £139,569,214 |
2012 - 2013 | £141,366,339 |
2013 - 2014 | £137,790,212 |
2014 - 2015 | £128,904,379 |
2015 - 2016 | £124,890,649 |
2016 - 2017 | £112,556,870 |
2017 - 2018 | £104,709,791 |
Audited spend data for the 2018-19 financial year is not yet available.