Healthy Start

Debate between Helen Whately and Emma Lewell-Buck

Wednesday 22nd May 2024 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Social Care (Helen Whately)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd, and to respond to the debate on behalf of the Under-Secretary of State for Public Health, Start for Life and Primary Care, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom). I am grateful to the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) for raising this important debate about the Healthy Start scheme, and to other hon. Members who have contributed.

The Government are committed to supporting the next generation of children, who are, of course, our future, and their own will obviously depend on this as well. A child’s early life is critical to their health later in life. We want every family to receive the right support to care for their children. Growing up with a healthy diet and weight is strongly protective against ill health in childhood and adulthood. Eating a healthier diet, as set out in “The Eatwell Guide”, could increase population life expectancy by up to eight years.

We know that fruit and vegetable consumption is lower among more deprived children, and that those children may be at risk of not getting enough micronutrients. More than one in five children start primary school overweight or obese, and the numbers are higher in more deprived areas. That is a major risk factor for long-term diseases including heart disease, type 2 diabetes and many types of cancer.

Against that backdrop, the support for children to eat healthily through the Healthy Start scheme and our provision of free school meals is crucial. The Healthy Start scheme benefits hundreds of thousands of families across the country. The statutory scheme encourages a healthy diet for pregnant women, babies and young children under four from low-income households. Eligibility criteria for the scheme ensure that we target nutritional support on families who need it most.

In April 2021, we increased the value of Healthy Start by 37%, from £3.10 to £4.25 a week, therefore helping families with the increased cost of living. I welcome the support demonstrated by colleagues today for this important scheme and the emphasis placed on its uptake. I fully agree that we need to ensure that eligible families are aware of and able to access Healthy Start. I now turn to how we are doing that.

Healthy Start is delivered by the NHS Business Services Authority, on behalf of the Department. Following user research and testing by both the Department and the NHSBSA, the scheme switched from being paper based to a digitised service in 2021. An online application and prepaid card replaced the previous paper form and vouchers. The number of families being supported by Healthy Start has grown following the introduction of the prepaid card. Since September 2021, of the more than 600,000 successful applications, 45% have come from new families and the scheme now supports more than 360,000 beneficiaries on lower incomes. The uptake is 62% of people who are eligible, which is higher than in the previous paper scheme and shows the benefits of the transition to a digital scheme.

Hon. Members have raised the question of auto-enrolling eligible families on Healthy Start. Moving to auto-enrolment would require a substantial redesign of the scheme. In contrast to what I heard the hon. Member for South Shields say, such a move, unfortunately, is not a simple thing to do. I am told that the prepaid card would need to be removed because it is a financial product that, under financial services legislation, requires applicants to accept the terms and conditions on an opt-in basis, so we cannot have it as an opt-out. Creating a new delivery method and process is therefore far from straightforward and would come at an additional cost to Government, with disruption for the beneficiaries.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

As the Minister heard in my opening comments, Mastercard completely refutes that argument. It and Allpay, which administers the scheme, have been clear that it is entirely possible to do auto-enrolment; they just need the Department for Health and the DWP to talk to them about it. It is not a difficult thing to do. They have outlined it to me in a letter, and I am happy to share that with her Department, yet again.

[Helen Whately]

I hear the hon. Member’s point, but as I set out clearly, I understand that this is not a simple thing to do, and not straightforward. As she has offered, however, I suggest that she writes to the Under-Secretary of State for Public Health, Start for Life and Primary Care with that suggestion and the proposal from Mastercard. I have no doubt that my right hon. Friend will look into it and respond to the hon. Member.

I have been saying that it is complicated to shift to an auto-enrolment scheme under existing legislation. By contrast, the current scheme has seen increased take-up, with the switch to the prepayment card. We would not want to jeopardise that progress of increasing numbers of families enrolling on what is an important scheme. That is why the Government’s focus is on increasing the uptake and effectiveness of the existing scheme, so that more children can benefit from Healthy Start. I also assure the hon. Member for South Shields that the substantial level of investment in the scheme is in the order of £78 million per annum.

I was sorry to hear about the problems in getting access and responses to phone calls for people calling up for help with access to the scheme. It is clearly important for people to be able to get help, if needed, to access Healthy Start. I understand that the average speed of answer for calls between 1 April and 10 May was 19 seconds, but I have asked officials to look further into the problems raised by the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western) regarding accessing the phoneline and accessing help.

Multiple channels of communication are used to raise awareness and encourage take-up of Healthy Start. NHSBSA actively promotes Healthy Start through its digital channels and has created free toolkits for use by healthcare professionals, local authorities and public health teams. NHSBSA uses a range of communications to raise awareness among parents and pregnant women. For example, it has attended maternity and midwifery forum events and placed advertisements in You and Your Pregnancy magazine, which is given to pregnant women in the first trimester, and the Bounty and Badger Notes apps. As officials confirmed to the House of Lords Food, Diet and Obesity Committee on 7 May, we also have plans to write to everyone eligible for Healthy Start to ensure they are aware of the scheme and to encourage them to apply.

As I said before, the Government are committed to promoting a healthy diet for our children. Healthy Start is an important part of the support provided by Government but it is only one aspect of how we are doing that. For our youngest children, the Government are investing £50 million in infant feeding support as part of the family hubs and the Start for Life programme. We support childcare providers with the cost of milk through the nursery milk scheme. We are also working with industry to improve the healthiness, marketing and labelling of commercially available baby food and drink aimed at those aged up to 36 months. Children of all ages also benefit from restrictions on the placement of less healthy products in key selling locations, calorie labelling on menus and upcoming landmark restrictions on multi-buy offers and the advertising of less healthy products on TV and online.

For school-aged children, we have the school fruit and vegetable scheme and free school meals. The Government have expanded free school meals to more groups of children than any Government over the past 50 years. We have introduced universal infant free school meals for all children in reception, year 1 and year 2. Under the benefits-based criteria, more than 2 million of the most disadvantaged pupils are provided with free school meals; in fact, the greatest ever proportion of children are receiving free school meals, with more than a third receiving free lunches compared with one in six in 2010. Furthermore, a crucial backdrop to this debate is the latest fall in inflation—because we know that the best way to help people with the cost of living is to bring inflation down.

Infancy and early childhood is a crucial time for establishing food preferences and dietary patterns. Giving children a healthy start in life is critical to health outcomes throughout childhood and adulthood. The Healthy Start scheme is one of the essential ways in which the Government support our most vulnerable families to give their children the best start for a healthy life. I welcome colleagues’ interest in the Healthy Start scheme and assure them that although our approach may be different from the one that the hon. Member for South Shields argues for, we are committed to making sure that the children who most need help get it.

Covid Pandemic: Testing of Care Home Residents

Debate between Helen Whately and Emma Lewell-Buck

Wednesday 1st March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to point out the extraordinary things that were done during the pandemic. I do not think that the Government should seek to take credit for that; so many people worked incredibly hard, whether in local authorities, social care or the NHS, or through their involvement in supply chains and the huge efforts to secure personal protective equipment when that was incredibly hard to get hold of across the world. I am glad that he draws attention to some of those things. He is absolutely right that, in the context of the public inquiry, we should reflect overall.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

In April 2020, now-disappeared Government guidance in relation to hospital discharges stated:

“Negative tests are not required prior to transfers/admissions into the care home.”

It was later reported that the Minister then leaned on Public Health England to alter its proposed advice to care homes from ensuring that those discharged from hospitals tested negative to not requiring any testing at all. Why, at every stage, were the Government content to send people to their deaths in our care homes?

[Helen Whately]

I do not recognise the hon. Lady’s account at all. If she looks back at one of the legal cases that has looked into this question, she may find more accurate information about some of the conversations that went on behind the scenes. I can assure her that, as she would expect, in my capacity as social care Minister, I fought the corner for people receiving care—both home care and in care homes—throughout the pandemic.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Whately and Emma Lewell-Buck

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

My constituent Margaret Cramman is a full-time carer for her daughter. Throughout the pandemic, she was denied respite care. Now the care setting insists on testing for visitors and mask wearing for staff, which causes distress to some of the young people being cared for, who rely on vital facial recognition. Nearly all the other covid guidance has been reviewed, but the guidance for respite care remains the same. Why are carers and those they care for always an afterthought for the Government?

[Helen Whately]

I point the hon. Member to the answer that I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Anna Firth) a moment ago specifically about face masks. I have asked for updated guidance for the social care sector on the use of face masks. I recognise the difficulties they cause—for instance, in communication—and I am looking forward to being able to give an update to hon. Members and the sector on that shortly.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Whately and Emma Lewell-Buck

Tuesday 15th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

My hon. Friend has made an extremely good point. Now is the moment for us to go full steam ahead with our transition away from fossil fuels. We are investing in nuclear, we are accelerating our progress on renewables, and we are boosting energy efficiency in homes across the country. This is how we will bring bills down, improve our energy security and tackle climate change.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

When the Government set up the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme, they recklessly failed to agree any guidance on early repayments. As a result, businesses are now being charged extortionate fees and are facing bankruptcy. Why is the Chancellor putting the profits of unscrupulous lenders above the recovery of our small businesses?

Social Care Reform

Debate between Helen Whately and Emma Lewell-Buck

Wednesday 23rd June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

I thank my hon. Friend very much for his birthday wishes. I was not particularly planning to spend my birthday in this way, but it is a pleasure to talk about social care reform because I feel strongly about it and am clearly spending a great deal of time working on it. What really matters is making sure that the outcomes and the experience of care are better for people. What really matters is that people get to live their lives to the full, whether they are of working age or older, and get to live as independently as possible, as part of a community and with their own front door for as long as they can. It is the outcomes of care that really matter.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

The Minister’s responses today further confirm that social care and the millions who rely on it are simply not a priority for her or this Government. It was recently reported that the Minister leaned on Public Health England to alter its proposed advice to care homes in the pandemic, from ensuring that those discharged from hospital tested negative for covid to not requiring any testing of patients at all. That led to more than 30,000 deaths. Will she take this opportunity to apologise to those who lost loved ones?

[Helen Whately]

Actually what the hon. Member has just read out is completely untrue, completely misleading and does not reflect for a moment what has happened. I am very disappointed to hear her read it out.