Children’s Future Food Inquiry

Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Wednesday 8th May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Rosindell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) for securing this important debate, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) for all the work she does. I want to acknowledge at the outset that she is a real champion of this issue.

Here we are again in this Chamber, talking about school food. However, this time it is wonderful that we have the children’s future food inquiry report. I thank Dame Emma Thompson and Lindsay Graham for the huge work they did on the inquiry, but I pay most tribute to the young people who talked to us and gave us the evidence. It was a hard listen for all of us—even for those of us who have worked on school food and children’s hunger for many years. We heard about their life experiences and about how, in many respects, the school system made things worse in terms of school food, when it could have offered a wonderful, nutritious experience for those young people. What they said was powerful; we are lucky to have those ambassadors.

School food has been an issue for me all my life because my mother was a school cook. Interestingly, I think we understood more about the importance of nutrition for learning 60 or 70 years ago than we appear to now as a society, which is dreadful. The issue was brought home to me when my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West and I visited Sweden in 2006. We were newly elected MPs and keen to get this issue on the agenda, and we were staggered by the way those in Sweden thought about school food. Young people came along in the morning. They got breakfast and lunch; it was provided free to them all. Their teachers sat down with them so that they learned social skills as well as having a nutritious meal.

Obviously, we were a bit shocked and said, “Oh, this is amazing.” They said, “How is it amazing? Children can’t learn when they are hungry.” Having a nutritious school meal in the middle of the day is just as important as having a desk, chair or anything else that we provide as part of the education system. We must take that on board—I hope the Minister is listening—because 13 years later we are still having to make the same arguments about the importance of a nutritious school meal, including breakfast and something later in the school day.

What is different at the moment is the context in which we are making this argument, because we know that hunger is rising in this country. Between 1 April 2018 and 31 March 2019, Durham County Council allocated almost 20,000 emergency food supplies from food banks, including almost 7,000 to children. That was just in Durham—it is a huge number. I raised the matter with the Prime Minister some weeks ago, because teachers in my constituency are reporting children coming to school who have had nothing to eat since they were at school the day before. Teachers are providing breakfast themselves, and the situation cannot continue. In the north-east, almost a quarter of families are living in poverty, which for a lot of them means poor housing conditions and poor health, including mental health. They might not live in an area where it is easy to access shops or affordable, good-quality food, so we must consider the whole picture.

Some things that came out of the children’s future food inquiry are worth emphasising, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East did a good job of that. For example, school lunch may be the only proper meal that a child receives, but what children eat during the day affects their concentration and performance at school. Entitlement to free school meals varies hugely across the UK, and thousands of extremely vulnerable children are excluded from accessing them because of their immigration status. I hope the Minister will consider that point.

As others have said, the free school meal allocation, at around £2.30, is not enough to enable children to buy a hot lunch, particularly if they have to buy water as well. I am glad that issue has been well aired this morning, because it is a disgrace that children at school in this country have to spend up to £1 to buy water at lunchtime. Private water companies must take that on board. The money might add to their profits, but what it is doing to children is outrageous. We also found that free school meals still carry a stigma, often because of the way they are organised. We have the technology for that not to be the case, so why do schools still do it? Perhaps we should think about how to rename free school meals.

Meal times are not valued as part of the school day, and they should be. We heard story after story of young people who simply do not have enough time to purchase a proper school meal at lunchtime, or time to eat it, as that often competes with other things they need to do. Young people also want a say in what type of food is delivered at school—that was more about cultural preferences than them wanting pizza and chips all the time, and they recognised the importance of having a proper meal.

One reason we are still here making the argument again and again for universal free school meals is the naysayers, and we will have to take them on if we want to make progress—Amanda Platell’s recent article in the Daily Mail is a good example. People say we have high levels of childhood obesity in this country, so we cannot have hungry children. As my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West said, however, those are two sides of the same coin. A lot of children from poorer backgrounds are not able to access good-quality food, and we therefore have a huge obesity crisis.

The last time we debated this issue in Westminster Hall, I and others were told that it was an abrogation of parental responsibility, because it is the responsibility of parents to feed their children properly at school. Practically, it is quite difficult for parents to give children a hot meal during the day, and we should think about education more generally as a societal responsibility.

[Mrs Hodgson]

People might say, “They can send children in with a packed lunch,” but as my hon. Friend knows, only 1% of packed lunches were found by a report on school food to be as healthy as the food provided within schools. It is almost impossible for parents to send in that healthy food.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point.

There was a universal free school meals pilot for two years in County Durham, and it transformed behaviour in school. It was incredibly important for the children to learn those social skills, and attainment levels across the school were improved in a short time. The evidence is there. I hope the Minister will look at it and think about providing universal free school meals. It is great that additional money is going to address holiday hunger, but none of that is coming to County Durham, which is the poorest county in the country. Will the Minister consider that issue?

What children have asked for in the charter is modest, and I hope not only that the Minister will consider implementing it, but that he will have higher ambitions in terms of properly serving the needs of our young people.

Durham Free School

Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Tuesday 27th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

It is important that the chief executive of Ofsted establishes very clearly that the inspections were carried out in a suitable way and following the correct guidance, and therefore that there should be public confidence in their outcomes, because I know that a number of colleagues have received letters from a variety of people calling into question the veracity of the Ofsted inspection.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

As my hon. Friend will know, Grindon Hall Christian school is in my constituency. Following on from the intervention by our hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), I would like to ask her, on behalf of the hundreds of parents who have written to me, whether she agrees that Ofsted has questions to answer about the inspection, to ensure that the public can have confidence in Ofsted, which is something that the parents who have written to me do not have.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

It is important that we maintain confidence in Ofsted, which I hope will get—as I am sure it will—challenging questions from the Select Committee tomorrow. Again, I hope that Ofsted is able robustly to defend the way in which it carried out these inspections.

Clearly a number of parents are very upset and want the school to stay open. I genuinely sympathise with them, but given the inadequate rating, I am not clear on what grounds it can do so.

Student Visas

Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Thursday 6th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) on opening this important debate, and I congratulate him and others on securing it.

The wording of the motion says it all. Five parliamentary Committees—the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills, the Select Committee on Home Affairs and the Public Accounts Committee in the Commons, as well as the Science and Technology Committee and the EU Sub-Committee on Home Affairs, Health and Education in the other place—have all arrived at the same conclusion and the same recommendation. They are united in their belief—it is a considered belief, based on the vast amount of evidence they have taken—that including students in net migration numbers is the wrong thing to do, for a number of reasons, and that the Government should reverse that decision. The reason for that belief is obvious. The students we are talking about are not migrant workers. They have paid to come to the UK to study. They have chosen to invest in the UK and are sponsored to remain only for the period of their studies.

I speak as an MP for a constituency that benefits from the positive contribution that overseas students can make to university life and the wider community. According to the University of Sunderland’s annual review, more than 2,600 overseas students were enrolled in taught undergraduate or postgraduate courses last year. What does that mean for the university and the wider city? Those students are paying their fees, which are crucial to the university as a means of investing in the facilities and opportunities they can provide to all students, particularly as grants are repeatedly cut, but there are wider benefits too. Those students need places to live and therefore pay rent to local private landlords, usually through local letting agents. Those students need to eat and therefore spend money in local shops and restaurants. They probably need coats and gloves—they have probably also needed wellies over the last couple of years—to deal with the harsh north-east weather, and they will obviously buy those in local shops. Those students will also want to have a good time, as do students the world over, spending money in local cinemas, bars and clubs, and going to gigs, football matches and so on. They might even need books and stationery, which they will buy from local bookshops and stationers.

According to evidence that the university submitted to the Home Affairs Committee when it considered this issue in 2011, overseas students bring an income to the university of £15 million in tuition fees and £1.5 million in accommodation fees. The university estimated the additional income to the city to be around £10 million a year. That figure is probably a conservative estimate, given that it amounts to only £385 a month or so for each student, and we know that many international students who come to the UK are from pretty wealthy families—after all, how else would they afford the large up-front fees that they have to pay? That is probably reflected in the revised estimate that I recently received from the university, of £37 million of total benefit.

When international students come to the University of Sunderland, they do not just bring their wallets; they bring a wealth of culture, which adds to the diversity of the university’s campus. That can be seen in the development of the various student societies—they include the Hong Kong and Malaysian society, the Nigerian society, and the middle east and north Africa group, to name but a few—but it is a two-way street. The university encourages international students to experience the culture that the north-east has to offer, such as Washington old hall in my constituency, which has an obvious attraction for students from the United States, and the various other cultural and historical activities that the city of Sunderland and the whole region have to offer.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend is making an important point about students in the north-east adding to diversity—a diversity that would not necessarily exist without them. Figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency show that the number of new entrants—particularly new international student entrants—is reducing. Does she agree that the Government are being a bit complacent and are not factoring in the positive contributions that students make to areas such as ours?

[Mrs Hodgson]

That is exactly the nub of the matter. We have to factor in those extra elements, including the contribution that such students make to the local economy, as well as—I will come to this point—the long-term benefits from those relationships and links in the years to come.

Another great project at Sunderland university is the international buddying programme, in which students at the university pair up with international students to provide them with advice on what they can experience in the region. The programme enriches the experiences not only of the international students but of their buddies from this country. When the students are visiting regional tourist attractions such as Washington old hall or Durham cathedral, they inevitably spend money in the local and regional economy.

I understand that some programmes run by the student union have involved international students volunteering with local community organisations such as Age UK. This all contributes to giving students a great experience while they are over here, which means that they will develop an affinity with the UK, and with the city and region in which they stay. We have to remember that many of these students come from well-connected families, and that among them will be the political leaders and captains of industry of tomorrow. It is therefore crucial to our long-term diplomatic and economic relationships with their home countries that we warmly welcome these young people, rather than making them feel unwanted, as this Government are undoubtedly doing at the moment.

That is particularly important in the north-east, where international links and trade and exports are fundamental parts of the economy. The independent “North-east Economic Review” recently commissioned by the local enterprise partnership and authored by my noble colleague Lord Adonis reported that the north-east is one of the leading exporting areas of the UK, with over 1,500 companies exporting goods. In 2011 and 2012, it was the only region in England to achieve a positive balance of trade in goods, with figures of £2.5 billion in 2011 and £4.8 billion in 2012. So we do well, but we are reliant in many ways on orders and investment from overseas companies. The role that our universities play in keeping and creating those relationships is crucial.

One country that often comes up when we talk about the need to get more people over to the UK is China. The University of Sunderland works hard to attract Chinese students, as do other higher education institutions. I was lucky enough to visit China in September 2011. I visited the offices of the University of Sunderland in Beijing, where I was able to talk to the local staff there about the work they do. Their biggest concerns by far were the new visa requirements, coupled with the way in which some Chinese students they had recruited were treated at customs when they arrived here in the UK.

Both those factors are a source of humiliation to students. What will happen when word gets out that the UK does not want them and that it will put them through that kind of experience? Students who would have come to the UK, and who might well have come to Sunderland, will go elsewhere in the world. They want to learn and develop their English, and they will go to the USA, Australia, New Zealand or Canada, all of which exclude students from their migrant figures and are currently welcoming them with open arms. Those countries are benefiting from our loss.

While I was in China I also visited Suzhou, where the University of Liverpool has established a joint campus with a local university, with the aim of providing opportunities for UK students to visit an economically and culturally significant area of China as well as providing a form of embassy or advert for its UK institution. I met a young man from Suzhou who had been studying computer science at Liverpool and is now doing his postgraduate qualification at University College London. That shows that the process definitely works. The development of more such partnerships and recruitment drives in a country with which we desperately need to build links is surely at risk, given the way in which this Government’s attitude towards overseas students is now seen in that country, and undoubtedly in others.

The University of Sunderland posed two questions to me, which I believe cut to the heart of this debate. I would be grateful if the Minister could address them in his response—if indeed he is listening to what I am saying. First, can the Government meet their net migration targets without reducing the number of international students coming to study at British universities? My suspicion is that they probably cannot, and are therefore knowingly and willingly accepting the devastating economic impact that this policy will have on localities and regions, particularly those with a track record of success in global enterprise.

Secondly, what is more important to this Government: economic growth and sustainability or a falsely painted picture of immigration and immigrants that includes those who choose to come and invest in the UK and bring substantial short and long-term economic and social advantage to our country? I am sure the Minister will say that it is the former, but actions speak louder than words, and the actions of this Government firmly suggest that their priority is political headlines, rather than what is right for our higher education sector and for the country.

Of course we must tackle bogus colleges and bogus students. Everyone agrees on that. I am afraid, however, that such action is being used as a smokescreen to justify this damaging and short-sighted policy. Well, the Government are fooling nobody. We all know that this is about using overseas students to reduce the net migration figures in order to fulfil a promise made by the Prime Minister that he would otherwise be unable to fulfil. That is a disgrace, and it must stop. I hope that this debate will spur a change in policy and a more grown-up and thought-through approach. This Government are well-practised in the art of the U-turn, and I hope that we will see one being performed on this issue sooner rather than later, before too much more damage is done to our universities and our international reputation.

Social Care (Local Sufficiency) and Identification of Carers Bill

Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Friday 7th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I am pleased to have to opportunity to speak in the debate and proud to be a co-sponsor of the excellent Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley). Quite simply, regardless of whether it proceeds today—it was sad to hear from the Minister that it will not—the Bill is about recognising the huge contribution that carers make to our society, the billions of pounds they save the Exchequer and, most importantly, the human cost that incurs: poverty, isolation, mental and physical exhaustion—the list is endless.

Provision for carers is patchy, but the most frustrating thing for me is the fact that, where there is support out there, in many cases carers are unable to access it. Perhaps they do not know about it, or perhaps they fear reaching out for help in case they are taken away from the person they are caring for. For far too many carers help comes only when they reach a crisis point, which can ultimately end in tragedy, as we know. That is what the Bill seeks to address and why it is so important.

In my constituency there is a fantastic organisation called Sunderland Carers, which provides the kind of support that all carers need, and I have met the group on a number of occasions to discuss what needs to be done to support the hidden army of carers. They completely support the Bill, and I am grateful to them, and in particular to Kevin Devine, for providing me with two case studies that I will use to illustrate the impact that the Bill could have.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

I, too, do a lot of work with a carers’ support group in my constituency, Durham and Chester-le-Street Carers Support. Does my hon. Friend agree that such organisations would be greatly assisted by the measures set out in the Bill, because they would help them develop the range of support services that they and we want to see provided in their communities, and they really need additional help to give the support they want to give?

[Mrs Hodgson]

I totally agree. Those organisations are out there doing good work, but often they still need guidance, and legislation can often be at the root of that and can really help to ensure that they are funded, rather than having to scrabble around for money left, right and centre.

[Mrs Hodgson]

That is exactly the point. We know that provision is patchy across the country. Where it is good, it is very good; but where there are gaps, that can lead to tragedy, which none of us wants to see ever again.

The first of the two cases I want to highlight is that of a middle-aged male carer who gave up his full-time job to look after his wife, who has multiple sclerosis. He encountered many health professionals because of his wife’s illness, but his caring role was never acknowledged; it was always about her needs, and rightly so. Because of the lack of recognition from professionals, he struggled on his own for three years without any real support, never realising that he should have had it. By chance he saw an advert inviting people to take part in Sunderland Carers’ “Caring with Confidence” programme, which was a major turning point in his life. He was able to access practical support such as getting adaptations for his home to make the physical aspect of caring for his wife easier. Lifting and carrying someone can have serious implications for a carer’s own health. People have to be trained in how to lift people in a caring environment; it cannot be done automatically without potentially causing injuries. He could access short break services that gave him brief respite from his 24/7 caring role. This allowed him to take a holiday with his wife, with the extra support regarding the physical aspect of caring for her that made it a genuine holiday for both of them as a couple. He also gained a lot of support from meeting other carers, combating the isolation that he was feeling.

Finding Sunderland Carers changed that man’s life in almost as dramatic a way as becoming a carer had in the first place. However, we should be concerned about the fact that he could still be struggling out there on his own had he not seen the advert. All the professionals he saw could have signposted him towards that support but, for whatever reason, they did not. Whether it was because they did not know about the support available or did not think it was their job to tell him about it, I do not know. They could have helped him before he was forced to quit his job, which as well as cutting his social ties meant that the couple were in effect living on the breadline. That is why this Bill is so important.

A vital part of the Bill is about the identification of school-age and young adult carers. Caring can be tough at any stage of life, but for a child or a young person it not only impacts on their ability to enjoy the same kind of childhood as their peers but can define how the rest of their life will pan out. The figures are stark. Research by the BBC in 2010 suggested that there were as many as 700,000 young carers in the UK—about one in 12 of secondary school pupils. Further research says that there are almost 300,000 aged between 16 and 24, more than 61,000 of whom are 16 or 17, with one in five providing more than 20 hours a week of care. As I mentioned earlier, one of those 16-year-olds is my daughter’s best friend, so I have first-hand knowledge of the impact that this can have on a young person’s life. There are more than 220,000 young people aged between 18 and 24, and carers make up more than one in 20 people in that age group. That means that one in 20 of the 18 to 24-year-olds we come across is a young carer.

The situations that these young people are placed in and the demands that are made on them will vary greatly, but I want to give one example, again given to me by Sunderland Carers, to show the impact of caring on children’s lives and how much receiving the right support can help them. The example is that of two children who went to live with their grandparents at a young age because their mother was unable to care for them. The arrangement worked very well for a number of years. The children were thriving at school, had plenty of friends and took part in a number of other activities. But as time passed their grandparents grew older and their health and mobility suffered. They did not ask for help because they feared losing custody of their grandchildren. The children could not get out and about due to lack of transport, and this left the grandparents struggling to entertain them. As things progressed, the grandparents struggled to get the children to school, especially in poor winter weather conditions, because the grandfather relied on a mobility scooter, and occasionally he could not get them there at all. This affected their attendance, and even when they were at school they were often distracted because they were so worried about their grandparents’ health.

Thankfully, the school eventually recognised the children as being young carers and was able to get the family the support that they needed. A common assessment framework was put in place and a team was developed around the family. The children were then able to take part in activities that allowed them to get out and have a normal childhood and meet other young carers. Also, while they were out, the grandparents were able to get some much-needed rest, which meant they had more energy when the children were at home. The school transport problem was resolved, and now the children have a 100% attendance record. I have no doubt that they will still face challenges as they grow up, but now they have been identified as carers they should get the right support to help them to cope, and eventually to get qualifications and careers and to develop normal, fulfilling adult lives.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

In the case that my hon. Friend describes, it is good that the school managed to identify that there was a problem, but that does not always happen. What is so important about the Bill is that schools, colleges and universities will now have to proactively go out there to find the young carers and then think about how they are going to be supported. That is very much needed.

[Mrs Hodgson]

Exactly. Unfortunately, as my hon. Friend has said, many children are under the radar—some in even worse situations—and they will not be as lucky as those who have been identified. That is true of all school-age children, but it is arguably more true of young adults in further and higher education, who have less time with tutors or teachers who would be able to spot the obvious signs. That is what clauses 5 and 6 seek to address, which is why the Bill is so important and should be considered seriously. I hope the Minister will do that.

Teachers and educational institutions are not alone in their ability to identify young and young adult carers. I served on the Children, Schools and Families Committee in 2008 when we considered the issue of young carers, specifically children who are under the radar. I asked why GPs in particular were not more proactive in identifying such children, because it is a common-sense deduction that a parent with certain health conditions who is not receiving support from professionals or a spouse is probably relying on their children. The answer from Dr Jo Aldridge of Loughborough university was that GPs—and, for that matter, psychiatrists treating those with mental health issues—generally did not see such things as part of their job description. Clause 4 would take the long overdue step of making it part of their job description, which would be of particular benefit to young and young adult carers, as well as to all other unidentified carers. That is why the Bill is so important.

In conclusion, we want and need carers to provide care, because it saves the Government billions. Carers, by and large, want to continue to provide care, because they love the individual they are caring for, but the Government need to support them in doing so. Ignoring the needs of carers is simply not sustainable, because it leads inevitably to crisis; to a loss of expertise from the work force and of income tax for the Treasury; to, most importantly, children and young adults missing out on the opportunities available to them; and to poor educational outcomes, so it harms the life chances of those children who just want to look after their loved ones. That cannot be right, which is why the Bill is so important. I know that it will not progress today—the Minister has said as much—but I hope that he will pick up on the key measures that we have highlighted that are not in the draft Care and Support Bill and incorporate them into it, so that we can help carers of all ages with the best possible legislation.

School Food

Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Hodgson]

Exactly. A school or a local authority spending money on a path to a fast-food joint, rather than on instigating a stay-on-site policy, is almost as baffling as bringing in a fast-food giant to write public health policy, although, as we know, that, too, has happened. However, there is a serious point: despite all the evidence of the benefits, it is clear that not all school leaders or local authorities place the value that the majority of us in this room would like on children eating healthy lunches.

Everything that the Government have done so far means that standards will start to slide. Why? What possible benefit can there be for our children in giving certain schools the power to throw the rulebook out the window? Perhaps the Minister can at least explain that today. Of course, it is not only in new academies and free schools that standards could slide, because Ofsted no longer has to assess a school’s compliance with the regulations, so how do Ministers expect them to be honoured?

According to the Minister’s letter to caterers, which I mentioned earlier, mums and dads will now have to keep an eye on things, although she does not explain quite how they are expected to do that. However, she promises that, if they tell the Secretary of State about a school, he will use one of his ever-increasing number of powers to direct the school to jolly well buck up its ideas. Unless schools literally go back to the bad old days of turkey twizzlers and chips, however, I cannot imagine that many parents would notice any changes—for example, if the spaghetti bolognese, which might have met the standards before, suddenly had more fat or less vegetable content. That is a meaningless thing for the Minister to say. All that I would ask her is what possible benefit there is to schools or pupils in removing that element of an Ofsted inspection—none that I can think of.

It will be little surprise if nutritional standards slip; after all, the cash that subsidises them has effectively gone. Ministers say that it is within the direct schools grant, but again that is meaningless, because many schools are struggling with their budgets. For many of them, subsidising school meals will be far down the list of priorities, behind staff, materials and many services for which they would previously not have had to pay, such as the broadband bill, to take one example. One more service that they will now have to buy on a commercial basis will be advice from the School Food Trust on how to meet the nutritional standards—not really an attractive option if they do not now have to meet those standards anyway.

As we have heard—it was highlighted in the media last week—school meal take-up is on the rise. I congratulate the Minister on using that for some positive media coverage. I cannot really blame her, I suppose, but there is evidence that that spike could be due to pupil premium-chasing, as reported in The Independent on Sunday. The test of her policies will lie in whether we can see the same rise in three years’ time, and unless there is a radical rethink, I do not think we will. If it should become clear that we are spiralling in the wrong direction, I hope that the Minister will rethink her approach.

My colleagues have spoken at length on the merits of free school meals as a way of closing the gaps in health and educational attainment between children living in poverty and those from better-off backgrounds. It was, as has been said, a cruel blow to hundreds of thousands of young children in working poverty when the Minister and her colleagues scrapped the extended eligibility.

In the Westminster Hall debate on free school meals that I led last June, I noted what my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham has pointed out—that the Liberal Democrats were conspicuous by their absence, as were the Conservatives. That was hardly surprising given their part in one of the most regressive decisions that we have seen from the Government. It is noted that the Minister is here today representing her Lib Dem colleagues as well as her Conservative friends and that she is alone in that task. As my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish said in his excellent speech, the universal credit throws the whole system of free school meals into confusion, which will not be cleared up for some time.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend is making a truly excellent speech. Does not the absence of coalition Members demonstrate that they do not understand the link between a healthy school meal in the middle of the day and narrowing the attainment gap? It demonstrates their narrow and blinkered thinking about education.

[Mrs Hodgson]

My hon. Friend will not be surprised that I agree.

The one thing that I ask the Minister is to ensure at least that least no one loses out because of universal credit. We never know; perhaps under the universal credit system the Government may be able to give a little something back to the half a million or so kids who lost out when the extended eligibility was scrapped last year. However, given the Government’s record so far, I do not think that many of us will be holding our breath.

We have a Government who pay lip service to the importance of school meals—both free and paid for—but whose actions are completely incongruous with that rhetoric. If that were not bad enough, they also do not think that cooking healthy meals is sufficient of a life skill to be taught to young teens. Just as a free school meal may be the only proper meal that some children get, there is a similar cohort for whom the only food skills that they get will be the ones that they learn at school. In fact, they are more than likely to be the same children. Given that fact, the Labour Government put together plans to ensure that all children get mandatory cookery lessons, in the hope that those skills would stay with the young people who received them for the rest of their lives and even transfer to their parents, too. There was evidence of that in the excellent work of Jamie Oliver, of which the Minister is no doubt aware. He has shown that children given knowledge of healthy food and how to cook it go home and influence the food choices made by their parents. In a letter to me, the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb) justifies the decision to scrap the commitment by saying that the Labour Government did not take any legislative steps to make it compulsory—a pathetic excuse if ever I heard one. However, that is not surprising: after all, it might be difficult for those setting up free schools in an old pub or office to accommodate first-rate food technology classrooms. The simple fact is that the Tory-led Government’s half-baked policies are a recipe for disaster for our children.

I want in closing to ask the Minister two quick questions. Will she fight her corner for free school meals when decisions are taken following the report of the Social Security Advisory Committee and try to extend at least some help to the families who were short-changed by her Government last year? If it becomes clear that the policies that we have been discussing today are resulting in a fall in nutritional standards and/or the take-up of school meals—whether in free schools, academies or other schools—will she step in and do something, or does the “hope and pray” or, as she calls it, localism approach to government prevent her from doing so?