Healthy Start

Sarah Dyke Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2024 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Dyke (Somerton and Frome) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I thank the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) for securing this important debate. By the time children start school, one in five is living with obesity. Recent research has shown that children who are severely obese by the age of four have their life expectancy cut by nearly half if they do not lose weight. Type 2 diabetes is being diagnosed in children, while a national NHS survey found that nearly 30% of children under the age of five are experiencing enamel and dental decay.

All the while, one in four UK households with children under four experiences food insecurity. That is defined as when households reduce the quality, variety and desirability in their diets. It is concerning that demand for emergency food parcels distributed by the Trussell Trust food bank network has nearly doubled over the past 12 months, and 65% of that support went to families with children. In Somerset, 18,000 food parcels have been distributed in the past year. When the household support fund closes in September, we could see pressures increase even further. In addition, Food Foundation polling from January 2024 found that food-insecure households were more likely to cut back on purchasing healthy foods such as fruit, veg, fish, dairy and eggs by up to 60%.

The Healthy Start scheme provides pregnant women or pre-school-age children from low-income households with a weekly payment to be spent on healthy food. That is welcome, but the Government have failed to roll out the scheme effectively or give it the attention that it deserves. The Government set an uptake target of 75% by March 2023, yet the latest figures for April 2024 show that only 62% have taken it up and we do not know the uptake data between July 2023 and February 2024, due to a major data error. That just amplifies how neglected the scheme is.

The scheme needs to move faster to reach more people and must not be left to stagnate against the backdrop of considerable food price rises. The scheme does not give people enough money to afford healthy foods in the light of inflation and the increased cost of food. The poorest 10% of UK households would need to spend between 34% and 52% of one person’s weekly food budget to afford one week’s worth of a five-a-day diet.

If the scheme is to be used as a tool to fight food insecurity, it must not be used in isolation. However, I do not believe that the Government are willing to take the necessary measures to change our food system for the better. They should accept the national food strategy’s recommendations by extending the scheme’s eligibility criteria and committing to a properly funded promotional campaign. The Government must also focus on the lack of access to healthy, nutritious food by incorporating household food security, including people’s ability to access healthy food, into a yearly assessment of UK food security.

At last week’s Farm to Fork summit, the Prime Minister had the chance to focus on primary food producers being squeezed by tight retailer-supplier contracts, but he did not, leaving potentially more farmers on the brink of closing their farm gates for the final time because of the associated financial pressures and anxiety. The Government have failed to grasp that we have a broken food system, which leaves farmers on a cliff edge and families reliant on unhealthy, ultra-processed foods and unable to afford the food necessary for their children’s healthy development. It should be a national embarrassment that so many children under five are beginning their lives with serious health issues because of poor nutrition, but the neglect that the Healthy Start scheme has experienced from this Government is symptomatic of the neglect that they have paid to our food system.

I do not believe it is too late. The Government should urgently revisit the national food strategy recommendations set out by Henry Dimbleby and act on them. The Liberal Democrats would fight to ensure that our children’s health is treated as a priority by guaranteeing free school meals for all primary-aged children and all those whose families are in receipt of universal credit. We would also boost the farming budget by £1 billion to help our farmers thrive, and to help them produce more home-grown, healthy food to improve the health of the nation’s children.