Cost of Living: Healthy Start Scheme

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Neil O'Brien)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western) for securing this debate and to the other Members who have participated. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made a typically compassionate speech.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has had a global impact. We have seen a rise in inflation, with increased food costs and higher energy prices, and that has impacted on the cost of living. The challenge of the increase in the cost of living is felt by everyone across the country. The Government understand and recognise the challenges that many face as a result of the huge increase in inflation.

The Government have taken, and will continue to take, decisive action to support people with the cost of living. In response to higher food costs, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs continues to work with food retailers and producers on ways to ensure the availability of affordable food—for example, by maintaining value ranges, price matching and price freezing measures.

In response to higher energy prices, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy put in place the energy price guarantee to shield households from the unprecedented rises in energy prices. The guarantee will run until April 2024, and the Government are working with consumer groups and industry to explore the best approach to consumer protections from April 2024 onwards, as part of wider retail market reforms. As set out in the energy security plan, we intend to consult on those options this summer.

In response to the higher cost of living more generally, the Department for Work and Pensions is providing up to £900 in three lump sums for households on eligible means-tested benefits, a separate £300 payment for pensioner households and a £150 payment for individuals in receipt of eligible disability benefits. From this April, the Government have uprated benefit rates and state pensions by 10.1%. In order to increase the number of households who can benefit from those uprating decisions, the benefit cap levels were also increased by the same amount.

Also from this April, the national living wage that this Government introduced increased by 9.7% to £10.42 an hour for workers aged 23 and over. That is the largest ever cash increase for the national living wage. For those who require extra support, the Government are providing an additional £1 billion of funding, including Barnett impact, to enable the extension of the household support fund in England this financial year. That is on top of what we have provided since October 2021, bringing the total funding up to £2.6 billion. This is used by local authorities to help households with the cost of essentials.

[Alison Thewliss]

It is interesting to hear about all the things that were uprated with inflation. Will the Minister explain why Healthy Start was excluded from that?

[Neil O'Brien]

If I can just complete the thought, the total cost of living support that the Government have provided is worth more than £94 billion across 2022-23 and 2023-24. That is, on average, more than £3,300 per UK household. It is one of the most generous support packages for the cost of living anywhere in Europe.

I turn to the critical role that the Healthy Start scheme plays in supporting hundreds of thousands of lower-income families across the country. Eating a healthy, balanced diet, in line with “The Eatwell Guide”, can help to prevent diet-related disease. It ensures that we get the right energy and nutrients needed for good health and to maintain a healthy weight throughout life. The Healthy Start scheme is one way that the Government continue to target nutritional support at the families who need it most, which is increasingly important in view of the cost of living.

Healthy Start is a passported benefit, one of a range of additional sources of help and support that the Government provide to families on benefits and tax credits. It is a statutory scheme that helps to encourage a healthy diet for pregnant women, babies and young children under four from lower-income households. Women who are at least 10 weeks pregnant and families with a child under four years old are eligible for the scheme if they claim: income support; income-based jobseeker’s allowance; child tax credit, if they have an annual family income of £16,190 or less; universal credit, if they have a family take-home pay of £408 or less a month; or pension credit. Pregnant women on income-related employment and support allowance are also eligible for the scheme.

Anyone under 18 who is pregnant is eligible for Healthy Start, regardless of whether they receive benefits. Following the birth of their child, they must meet the benefit criteria to continue receiving Healthy Start. The scheme offers financial support towards buying fresh, frozen or tinned fruit and vegetables, fresh, dried and tinned pulses, plain cow’s milk and infant formula. Beneficiaries are also eligible for free Healthy Start vitamins.

In April 2021, as has been mentioned, we increased the value of Healthy Start by 37%, from £3.10 per week to £4.25 per week. Unlike the Scottish Government’s scheme, which is for the under-threes, Healthy Start is for the under-fours. Pregnant women and children aged over one and under four each receive £4.25 a week, and children aged under one each receive £8.50 a week—twice as much. For a family with a six-month-old and a three-year-old, that is £12.75 a week to help towards buying nutritious foods. That comes on top of the benefits and all the other measures, such as the increase in the national living wage, that I mentioned.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I am grateful to the Minister for rattling off the sums. To go back to the point that the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) made about the Healthy Start grant and why the Government chose not to uprate it, will he share with the House what the cost to the Exchequer would have been to uprate it? That must have been part of their deliberations as to why not to do it. What is the cost?

[Neil O'Brien]

We have chosen to spend over £3,300 per UK household, on average, on the cost of living support. Putting that into the schemes that are available and targeted at people with low incomes, and indeed at the entire population, is the choice that we have made. To reiterate my earlier point, and since the hon. Member says that I am rattling off the figures, it is worth stressing that we have invested £3,300 per household—a colossal sum of money. That is unprecedented. There has never been a cost of living intervention anywhere of that magnitude, so that must be an important part of the discussion about Healthy Start.

[Alison Thewliss]

Will the Minister give way?

[Neil O'Brien]

I will continue with my points and perhaps come back to the hon. Lady in a moment.

Healthy Start is delivered by the NHS Business Services Authority on behalf of the Department. Following user research and testing by the Department and NHSBSA, the scheme, as various Members have mentioned, was switched from being paper-based to a digitised service to increase uptake and usability. We have introduced an online application to replace the previous paper-based application form and a prepaid card to replace paper vouchers. The digitised scheme opened to the public for the first time in September 2021. The online application provides an instant decision for many families. The prepaid card can be used in any retailer that sells Healthy Start foods and accepts Mastercard.

I am pleased to see that the number of new families joining the scheme continues to grow following the introduction of the prepaid card. Since September 2021, there have been more than 500,000 successful applications, with 48% coming from new families. The scheme now supports more than 375,000 families on lower incomes, and that continues to grow month on month. The current uptake is 64.6%, which is higher than the paper scheme, which had a 59.9% uptake in August 2021.

The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston asked whether we published the figures on eligibility. Yes, the total number of eligible and entitled beneficiaries are published on the NHS Healthy Start website and are broken down by local authority.

[Alison Thewliss]

Will the Minister give way?

[Neil O'Brien]

If this is on the point about data.

[Alison Thewliss]

The Minister is making an interesting point about the uptake, but can he account for why things are so much better in Scotland, where the uptake of Best Start Foods sits at 88%?

[Neil O'Brien]

The schemes are not completely comparable because the Healthy Start scheme covers a wider base of people, as I mentioned. It goes up to age four rather than age three, so it has a wider field of benefit than the Scottish scheme. That may be part of the story, but there could be other reasons, and there may be important things that we can learn from the Scottish scheme. I am always keen to have those discussions.

To increase take-up, NHSBSA actively promotes Healthy Start through its digital channels and has created free toolkits to support stakeholders to do so. NHSBSA uses a range of communications activities to engage parents, pregnant women and healthcare professionals to help to raise awareness of the scheme. NHSBSA has attended Maternity & Midwifery Forum events and placed advertisements in the Bounty packs, which many people receive when they have children, and the “You and your pregnancy” magazine, which is given to pregnant women in the first trimester.

We constantly review the materials produced for the Healthy Start scheme to ensure that communications reach those who need support the most. That is why, following user research by NHSBSA, promotional material was translated into the top five languages spoken by Healthy Start families, to reach a wider demographic. NHSBSA continues to engage with national and local stakeholders to improve the delivery of the scheme and increase the uptake.

Healthy Start is an important part of the support provided by the Government, but it is only one aspect of the support available for families. We are funding 75 English local authorities with high levels of deprivation to ensure that parents and carers can access Start for Life services locally. The healthy child programme is a universal offer across all 150 local authority areas—led by health visitors and school nurses—that supports families from the antenatal period up to school entry. The nursery milk scheme provides reimbursement to childcare providers for a daily third of a pint portion of milk to children and babies. The school fruit and vegetable scheme provides around 2.2 million children in key stage 1 with a portion of fresh fruit or vegetables each day at school, and 419 million pieces of fruit and vegetables were distributed to children in 2022-23.

The Government have extended free school meals eligibility several times and to more groups of children than any other Government over the past half a century, including the introduction of universal infant free school meals and further education free meals. Under the benefits-based criteria, 1.9 million of the most disadvantaged pupils are eligible for and are claiming a free school meal. That saves families around £400 per year. To make it easier for families to find support, the Government also created an online resource so that families can easily check what help is available to them.

At a time when families need support, and with the cost of living increasing, the Government are committed to helping as many families as possible to access the Healthy Start scheme, as well as all those other schemes, to help those most in need.