Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of extending free school milk provision until the end of the Reception year on (a) demand for British dairy produce, (b) farm incomes and (c) the Government's objectives for strengthening domestic food production.

The Nursery Milk Scheme is a statutory scheme which allows early years childcare settings to reclaim the cost of providing one-third of a pint of milk per day to children under the age of five who attend a setting for two or more hours per day. It is led by DHSC rather than Defra. DHSC have not asked for any assessment of the scheme’s impact on demand, farm incomes or food production, and accordingly no such assessment has been carried out.