Healthy Start

Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Andrew Western

Wednesday 22nd May 2024 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Western (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) on securing this important debate. She has done a considerable amount of work—some with me and some in her own right—over the past few years and has followed in the footsteps of my predecessor as Member of Parliament for Stretford and Urmston in campaigning on auto-enrolment.

This is a hugely important issue. We know that those families who are eligible to receive the Healthy Start allowance are some of the poorest in our country. We know, too, just what an important component of the benefits system it is. It ensures that youngsters at risk of malnutrition because of a lack of finance and of available cash in the family home are able to access things like healthy foods, fruits and vegetables, as well as milk formula and other important things to help with babies’ early development.

There are a number of aspects to this. My hon. Friend has focused largely on her important campaign to secure auto-enrolment, but I want to take a moment to broaden the debate with some comments about the uplifting of the allowance, given the significant increases in inflation in recent years.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I can see that my hon. Friend is going to make an excellent speech; he has made some important points already. Hon. Members may be aware that an event was held yesterday by Diabetes UK that discussed the shocking rise in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes in young people. They mentioned early years nutrition and the important part that that period plays in establishing the lifelong health of an individual. Does my hon. Friend agree that that very early food system and what food children consume in those very early years is so important, and that schemes such as the Healthy Start scheme should be thought to be central to a good public health mission?

[Andrew Western]

My hon. Friend is correct to make that point and to link diabetes and other negative health experiences that can happen as a result of poor nutrition in early years. She has spent many years campaigning for children and their health in this place, not least during her time as the shadow Minister, and I know that many families up and down the country will be grateful to her for that.

I turn back to the issue of inflationary pressures and the lack of uplift in the Healthy Start allowance since 2021, when it was uplifted for the first and only time since the Government came to power in 2010. We all know the inflationary pressures that we have seen since then; food, in particular, has outstripped other parts of our economy, with an average 30% increase in food prices. That pressure has been especially acute in the price of milk formula.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Shields mentioned our last Westminster Hall debate. I called that debate a year ago yesterday, and things have worsened since then. As my hon. Friend said, uptake has decreased, as prices—although they are not growing as quickly—have continued to rise. Twelve months ago, we were at the point at which there was not a single milk formula product on the market that could be afforded under the Healthy Start allowance. That is a terrible situation to be in, not least because of the other pressures we have seen on family finances in recent years.

I turn to auto-enrolment. Uptake is problematic: it has decreased over the past two months. As I said, these are the poorest families and those in the most need. Families are not deciding that they do not require that money. Families are looking, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields so ably outlined, at an opaque and challenging system to navigate. That, as well as a lack of knowledge that this allowance even exists for families, is one of the primary causes, if not the only cause, of this damagingly low uptake.

I am interested to hear the Government’s thoughts on the thorny issue of auto-enrolment, although I am not sure why it is so thorny. I also wish to broaden out my hon. Friend’s comments about the interim proposal that she and I put forward to Government of writing to those families who are eligible for the Healthy Start allowance but who are not taking it up. We have had a number of excuses from the Government over the past 12 months, similar to those that my hon. Friend outlined on data sharing and a financial agreement through a card system, which have since been quashed by Mastercard.

I have submitted a number of written questions about where we are with the data, given previous undertakings from Ministers that they would draw the data together to write to those families. In September 2023 I was told that that data was being brought forward. In November I asked again, in pursuance of the previous question, and we were told that the data would be available in early 2024. My hon. Friend the Member for South Shields and I seem to dovetail on this issue a lot: she then submitted a question in March this year. There was still no sign, despite previous suggestions that the data would be available in early 2024 for that work to happen.

There is a lack of transparency and accessibility in the application process. The Government are not helping to disavail people of that view when they refuse to let even those who are eligible for the scheme know that that is the case. The impact on our communities is significant. In my constituency of Stretford and Urmston, one child in five lives in poverty. My local food bank in Stretford told me recently that 40% of the people it serves are first-time users, such is the enormous increase in demand that it has seen of late. Most damningly of all, in my community they also tell me that there has been an 80% increase over the past 12 months in the number of families with children that they are supporting.

We are in crisis. Families are struggling. The allowance is targeted at those in the greatest need, yet just this weekend, in Old Trafford in my constituency, residents were having a real-time WhatsApp conversation about the fact that milk formula and milk itself are security-tagged in some—not all—supermarkets up and down this country. There was a debate going on: if they were a retail worker, would they stop somebody who was clearly in need from taking milk or baby formula?

I said 12 months ago that people were watering down formula, and my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields mentioned it today. Worse still, as Sky News covered at the time, in some cases there were suggestions that mothers were adding flour and other such substances into milk formula to pad it out further. The impact that that can have on a baby’s digestion is significant and risks long-term health problems. This is the scale of the challenge that we face.

I would be incredibly grateful for an update on the Government’s thinking about whether they should be uprating the Healthy Start allowance in line with inflation, given the significant pressures on the price of food and especially on milk formula since the allowance was last uprated in 2021. Are the Government serious about the issue of auto-enrolment? If not, why on earth is more not being done to bring together the data that is required? That would at least let families know whether they can embark on this admittedly opaque process to try to bolster their family budgets and try to ensure that their babies, their children under the age of four or they themselves, if they are more than 10 weeks pregnant, can access healthy things such as fruit, vegetables or milk for their baby.

This is a crisis. The need is there. We all see it in our communities. The time to act is now, and I beg the Minister to do it urgently.