Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has plans to update the Commissioning Excellent Nutrition and Hydration 2015-2018 NHS England guidance.

The importance of good quality food for patients, visitor and staff is recognised both in terms of improving health and for their overall experience of services. Patients have the right to receive tasty, nutritious and free food as part of their National Health Service treatment.

Data is not collected centrally on the number of local senior or executive champions to drive local work on nutrition, the number of commissioners that reviewed existing service provision or agreed improvement trajectories as set out in the guidance.

In July 2018 the Healthcare Food Standards and Strategy Group started a review of the national standards for Healthcare Food for patients, staff and visitors. This work is building on the Hospital Food Panel report of 2014 and is focusing on marking out the way in which organisations need to comply with the five core standards and bringing in a wealth of tools, resources and examples of good practice to help them achieve the standards.