Asked by: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government, following a survey by the School and Public Health Nurses Association and the British Dental Association in June which showed that 65 per cent of health practitioners reported that children’s health had got worse over the last year as a result of hunger, what plans they have to address hunger and poor nutrition in children.
Answered by Lord Markham
The Government understands concerns regarding food inflation and its impact on the current cost of living, and as such is providing support of over £94 billion over 2022/23 and 2023/24 to help households and individuals.
Data from the Office for National Statistics shows prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages rose by 13.6% in the year to August 2023. This was down from 14.9% in July and a recent high of 19.2% in March 2023, which was the highest rate seen for over 45 years. This means that food prices are still increasing but at a slower rate than before.
Through the Healthy Food Schemes, the Government provides a nutritional safety net to those who need it the most. The three Healthy Food Schemes, namely Healthy Start, Nursery Milk and the School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme, together help more than three million children. They support wider Government priorities on obesity and levelling up. The schemes help to support children and babies when they are at home, in childcare and in early years at school, and pregnant women. From April 2021, the value of the Healthy Start increased from £3.10 to £4.25, providing additional support to pregnant women and families on lower incomes to make healthy food choices.
The School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme provides approximately 2.2 million children in Key Stage 1 with a portion of fresh fruit or vegetables each day at school. Around 419 million pieces of fruit and vegetables were distributed to children in 2022/2023. In addition, the Nursery Milk Scheme provides a reimbursement to childcare providers for a daily 1/3 pint portion of milk to children and babies.
Free school meals are provided to over one third of school children. This includes two million pupils who are eligible for benefits-related free school meals, making up 23.8% of all pupils, which is an increase from January 2021 when 1.7 million or 20.8% pupils were eligible. In addition, almost 1.3 million more infants enjoy a free and nutritious meal at lunchtime following the introduction of universal infant free school meals in 2014. A further 90,000 disadvantaged pupils in further education also receive a free meal at lunch time. Overall, we spend over £1 billion per annum delivering free lunches to a large proportion of school children.
The Government’s wider programme of work to create a healthier environment to help people achieve and maintain a healthy weight includes:
- regulations which restrict the placement of products high in saturated fat, salt or sugar in store and online;
- efforts to reformulate products high in calories, sugar and salt;
- the Soft Drinks Industry Levy; and
- calorie labelling regulations for food sold in large out of home businesses.
Written Evidence May. 22 2024
Inquiry: Food, Diet and ObesityFound: This money has been used to establish the National School Breakfast Programme, support the Holiday
May. 31 2023
Source Page: School milk subsidy schemeFound: School milk subsidy scheme
May. 31 2023
Source Page: School milk subsidy schemeFound: School milk subsidy scheme
May. 31 2023
Source Page: School milk subsidy schemeFound: School milk subsidy scheme
May. 31 2023
Source Page: School milk subsidy schemeFound: School milk subsidy scheme
Written Evidence May. 23 2024
Inquiry: Food, Diet and ObesityFound: to mark 75 years of the series shows key trends since 1940 e.g. the decline in purchase of whole milk
Found: School Milk 23 September 2022 | UIN 49667 Asked by: Dan Jarvis To ask the Secretary of State
Jun. 30 2023
Source Page: Claim for the school milk subsidy schemeFound: Claim for the school milk subsidy scheme
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of trends in the level of obesity; and what steps her Department is taking to help tackle obesity.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
The Government is delivering a wide range of measures to reduce the numbers of both adults and children who are overweight, or living with obesity. To date this includes legislative measures to limit the advertising, and location and price promotion, of less healthy products, and to ensure calorie levels are provided on menus when eating out of the home. Impact assessments for the legislated measures suggest there will be substantial health benefits, as well as savings to the National Health Service, accrued.
We have seen important successes through the Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL), which between 2015 and 2020 has seen sugar levels reduced by 46% in, and over 46,000 tonnes of sugar removed from, products in scope of the levy. Data from the National Diet and Nutrition Survey from 2019 shows that sugar intakes have fallen for some age groups. In older children and adolescents, this appears to be partly driven by soft drinks contributing less to sugar intakes, likely as a result of the changes made to drinks included in the SDIL. Further information from the survey is available at the following link:
A paper on the association of obesity in primary school children and the SDIL suggests that the reduction in the sugar content of soft drinks delivered by the SDIL could have prevented up to 5,000 cases of obesity in girls in the last year of primary school. Reductions were greatest in girls who attended schools in the 40% of the most deprived areas. Further information from the paper is available at the following link:
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1004160
The voluntary reformulation programme requires businesses reduce levels of sugar, salt, and calories in everyday food and drink. Levels of sugar have reduced in breakfast cereals, yogurts, and pre-packed milk-based drinks by 15%, 13.5%, and 29.7% respectively, between 2015 and 2020. Levels of salt have reduced in some products by 20%.