Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether her Department has plans to take steps to help lower the price of healthy food.

Steps to improve the affordability, availability, and accessibility of healthy foods are being considered as part of both the Child Poverty Strategy, due to be published in spring, as well as the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs-led Food Strategy, for which further updates will be released in due course.

The Government is committed to increasing access to healthy foods for vulnerable populations by rolling out free breakfast clubs at all primary schools. This also supports free school meals, where under current programmes, 2.1 million of the most disadvantaged school pupils are registered to receive benefits-related free school meals, and a further 90,000 students in further education receive free lunches on the basis of low family income. Also, approximately 1.3 million infant pupils in reception, year one and year two, receive free lunches as part of the universal infant free school meals policy.

We also have schemes to support those on low incomes such as Healthy Start, which reached over 354,000 vulnerable people in December 2024. Healthy Start supports a healthy diet for pregnant women, babies, and young children under four years old from very low-income households by providing vouchers for fresh, frozen, or tinned fruit and vegetables, fresh, dried, and tinned pulses, milk, and infant formula. Healthy Start beneficiaries also have access to free Healthy Start vitamins for pregnant and breastfeeding women, and children aged under four years old.