Asked by: Baroness Redfern (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are considering taking steps to reduce differences in levels of obesity between more and less deprived areas; and if so, what steps.
Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
In Childhood obesity: a plan for action, chapter 2, published in June 2018, we have set a bold ambition to halve childhood obesity by 2030 and significantly reduce the gap in obesity between children from the most and least deprived areas by 2030. We want to achieve this by ensuring that we are supporting parents, particularly in the most deprived families, to help their children have the best start in life. We have reiterated this ambition in our vision document Prevention is better than cure, published on 5 November 2018, and in the NHS Long Term Plan published on 8 January 2019.
The childhood obesity plan delivers school based interventions including revenue from the soft drinks industry levy being invested in programmes targeted at disadvantaged children including up to £26 million to fund a breakfast club programme between 2017-18 and 2019-20 and £22 million in an Essential Life Skills programme in 12 Opportunity Areas to enable disadvantaged children aged 5-18 to participate in regular extra-curricular activities, including sporting activities, to develop essential life skills.
Through the Healthy Food Schemes, the Government provides a nutritional safety net to those who need it the most. The three schemes that make up this programme, Healthy Start, Nursery Milk and School Fruit and Vegetables, help to support children, babies and women through pregnancy, when they are at home, in childcare and in early years at school.
Asked by: Helen Jones (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential effect on the (a) health of under five year olds and (b) rate of childhood obesity of a reduction in the Nursery Milk Scheme.
Answered by Matt Hancock
The Government has no plans to make any changes to the eligibility for the Nursery Milk Scheme.
Asked by: Helen Jones (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the potential effect on the ability of dairy farmers to withstand market fluctuations of not replacing the school fruit, vegetables and milk scheme after the UK leaves the EU.
Answered by George Eustice
The future application of the EU School Milk Scheme is under consideration and no decisions have been taken. However, provisions included in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act will support any future decisions.
The EU Scheme sits alongside other initiatives such as the much larger national Nursery Milk Scheme for children under the age of five in daycare, Free School Milk for those children entitled to Free School Meals and the requirement for schools to make milk available for children under the School Food Standards. The key aim of these initiatives is to make a contribution towards ensuring that children are healthy and well-nourished. In addition, supporting dairy consumption from a young age also makes a useful contribution towards the success of our dairy sector.
Asked by: Helen Jones (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the potential effect on the ability of dairy farmers to withstand market fluctuations of not replacing the school fruit, vegetables and milk scheme after the UK leaves the EU.
Answered by George Eustice
The future application of the EU School Milk Scheme is under consideration and no decisions have been taken. However, provisions included in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act will support any future decisions.
The EU Scheme sits alongside other initiatives such as the much larger national Nursery Milk Scheme for children under the age of five in daycare, Free School Milk for those children entitled to Free School Meals and the requirement for schools to make milk available for children under the School Food Standards. The key aim of these initiatives is to make a contribution towards ensuring that children are healthy and well-nourished. In addition, supporting dairy consumption from a young age also makes a useful contribution towards the success of our dairy sector.
Asked by: Helen Jones (Labour - Warrington North)
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 replace the EU school fruit, vegetables and milk scheme; and for what reason such steps were not included in the Agriculture Bill.
Answered by David Rutley - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The existing legal framework for the EU’s School Scheme is being rolled over into UK law under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. This provides a suitable basis to support future decisions on the longer term approach to school milk rather than include the arrangements in the Agriculture Bill.
We want children to be healthy and well-nourished and regular dairy consumption makes an important contribution to this. The Government is also promoting children’s dairy consumption through, for example, the national free Nursery Milk Scheme, and by ensuring the availability of milk for pupils under the School Food Standards, including free milk for disadvantaged pupils.
Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department plans to introduce free school milk for all children in (a) Early Years Foundation Stage and (b) Key Stage 1; and what steps the Government is taking to increase the use of plastic-free packaging for milk provided to schools.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
The government wants to give children the best possible start in the early years of their life. The Nursery Milk Scheme allows early years settings and schools to claim back the cost of providing one drink of milk per day to all children under the age of five. It is important that we target our funding as effectively as possible towards children that are most in need. From the age of five upwards, free milk is therefore available to all children who are eligible for free school meals. We have no current plans to extend free school milk eligibility. Schools are able to take part in the EU School Milk Subsidy Scheme to assist with the cost of providing milk.
Schools are responsible for their day-to-day routine and we know that they are concerned about wider issues like reducing wastage. Numerous schools are actively trying to reduce plastic waste with schemes that work with suppliers and involve pupils looking after their environment, both inside and outside of school and we encourage schools to do as much as they can.
Asked by: Lord Bassam of Brighton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their latest assessment of the impact of the changes to free school meals entitlement following the Free School Lunches and Milk, and School and Early Years Finance (Amendments Relating to Universal Credit) (England) Regulations 2018 (SI 2018/148) coming into force.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
The department is working closely with local authorities and schools to support them in implementing the changes to free school meal eligibility that were introduced in April. This has included the provision of guidance, webinar sessions, regular communications and responding to queries received via the department’s Eligibility Checking Service. The latest government statistics on free school meal rates are based on data collected before this change was introduced (January 2018 census). The next publication will be in June 2019 (based on the January 2019 census). The government is committed to reviewing the threshold level at the end of the Universal Credit rollout period.
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, what plans his Department has to encourage people to include fruit and vegetables in their diets using (a) subsidisation and (b) other new methods.
Answered by Steve Brine
The Government actively promotes a healthy diet through the Change 4 Life campaign, One You campaign, the 5-a-day campaign and the Eatwell Guide.
The Department is committed to ensuring a healthy diet for children. The Healthy Food Schemes, which include the Healthy Start scheme and the School Fruit and Vegetable scheme, have been designed to help achieve this.
The School Fruit and Vegetable scheme gives children in Key Stage 1 who attend participating, fully state-funded schools, a portion of fruit or vegetable every day.
The Healthy Start scheme is a targeted scheme which allows for pregnant women and children aged over one and under four from lower income families to receive one £3.10 voucher every week. Children aged under one receive two vouchers, worth £6.20 in total, every week. These vouchers can be used to buy, or be put towards the cost of, fruit, vegetables, milk and infant formula. The Government re-affirmed its commitment to Healthy Start in the Childhood Obesity Plan, published in August 2016.
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, how many children (a) were eligible to receive free milk under the Free Nursery Milk scheme and (b) received free milk under the Free Nursery Milk scheme in each year since 2010.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The information is not available in the format requested. The Department does not collect information about the number of children under the age of five who attend childcare settings and who may therefore be eligible for the Nursery Milk Scheme.
The Department also does not collect information about the number of children who receive milk under the Nursery Milk Scheme. Reimbursement is made for approximately 235 million portions, or 78.3 million pints of milk per year, and approximately 47,000 settings are registered with the Nursery Milk Reimbursement Unit.
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 138039 on Healthy Start Scheme: Food, how much funding his Department allocated to (a) the Health Start scheme and (b) the Nursery Milk Scheme in each year since 2012-13.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
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. The funding allocated to the schemes is accounted for through a single cost centre with total costs shown below. A split by individual scheme is not available in the format requested.
| Total |
2012 - 13 | £141,366,339 |
2013 - 14 | £137,790,212 |
2014 - 15 | £128,904,379 |
2015 - 16 | £124,890,649 |
2016 - 17 | £112,556,870 |