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6.43 pm
Sir Anthony Grant (South-West Cambridgeshire): Over 32 years I have despairingly endeavoured to introduce private Members' Bills of one sort or another, so I am especially gratified that one of them--the Treasure Act 1996, as it now is--reached the statute book successfully.
The motion before the House is the final act and deed to put that excellent measure into effect. I hope that the House will pass it. I believe that if it does, we shall have put on to the statute book a measure that will contribute greatly to the heritage of our nation, and in which everybody can participate, whether they be detectorists, archaeologists or anyone else.
Mr. Mark Fisher (Stoke-on-Trent, Central):
We welcome the code of practice, and I am grateful to the Minister for laying out the detail. Many people have battled for years, both inside and outside the House, to bring the measure about, and I congratulate the hon. Member for South-West Cambridgeshire (Sir A. Grant) on his perseverance, and also Lord Perth on his work in another place.
I hear what the Minister says--that it makes sense to wait until September for the instrument to come into force. Indeed, we have been patient so long that I suspect that all the interested parties outside the House will understand that argument. They will also understand the part of the code that says that, because we shall be in new territory, in spite of the availability of the best expert advice--I might mention Dr. Roger Bland and others--nobody quite knows how the legislation will work in practice.
We appreciate the Government's caution in scheduling a review to take place in three years' time, so that we can see how the Act and the code are working. We welcome that, and I congratulate the Minister and the hon. Member for South-West Cambridgeshire on the new legislation. We look forward to its contributing to our cultural life and to a more orderly organisation of such matters.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
Mrs. Helen Jackson (Sheffield, Hillsborough):
The petition is signed by 12,000 electors who live in the area served by North West Water, and arises out of their concern about the health and safety aspects of the company's plans to introduce prepayment devices that cut off households' water supply when the money runs out.
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Carrington.]
Miss Joan Lestor (Eccles):
I have served as a Member of Parliament for 26 years, having entered the House 30 years ago, been rejected for four years by Slough but then been embraced in a love affair with Eccles. During that time I have done many things and had many interests as a parliamentarian, but the issue that has dominated my life has been that of children both here and abroad, and I wanted to go out on a note that highlighted that interest.
Next month, the Save the Children Fund will launch a national campaign concerning child poverty and nutrition. Later this week, the Child Poverty Action Group and the King's Fund will publish a report documenting for the first time the wide range of health problems associated with poverty among young people, including accidents, depression, drug abuse and suicide. The report also reveals that poorer young people run a four times higher risk of early death than those who are better off.
Those facts cannot be ignored; they describe our society today. Many Conservative Members might prefer to deny them, but there are appalling levels of poverty and inequality in this country.
I am sure that many people must have been shocked when Oxfam announced that it was to extend its poverty work to the United Kingdom, a full five years after the Conservative Government signed the United Nations convention on the rights of the child, which specifically called on states to take appropriate measures to combat disease and malnutrition through the provision of adequate nutritious foods, and to ensure that all segments of society were informed, had access to education and were supported in the use of basic knowledge of child health and nutrition.
What is the Government's record on these issues? The Prime Minister, in what I thought was a breathtakingly complacent written answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Smith) last October, claimed:
If the Government are unwilling to acknowledge the existence of poverty, it follows that they will not be too keen to acknowledge the link between poverty and poor health. I pay tribute to health visitors: the professionals in the front line of defence against disease, ignorance and social inequalities. They are well equipped to report back on the nation's changing health profile. They are
concerned about the mounting problems associated with poverty and poor nutrition among our children, and yet the health visitor service is being cut again.
Cambridge and Huntingdon district health authorities agreed on 26 February to cut the funding of health visiting and the school nursing service by £300,000. Buckinghamshire health authority and South Buckinghamshire NHS trust are proposing a 60 per cent. cut in school nursing. South and West Devon health authority is planning to reduce the number of school nurses by up to 50. I could go on. At least one national health service trust, the Mid-Anglia NHS trust in Bury St. Edmunds, has tried to take a do-it-yourself approach to health care by advising parents of rising two-year-olds to carry out their own developmental assessment of their children.
When the Health Visitors Association's report was mentioned in the House in January, the Deputy Prime Minister dismissed it out of hand and said that he did not accept its findings. I have not heard of any other research that has contradicted that report. It was a nationwide survey of social conditions at the end of the 20th century. It uncovered disturbing new evidence of widespread child malnutrition. Families live in overcrowded and inadequate accommodation, and suffer as a result of fuel debt and disconnections.
The Government must have a twinge of conscience about the return of rickets and tuberculosis among the child population. The report's conclusions were not the generalisations of a politician or political party, but based on first-hand information provided by concerned professionals who have had to pick up the pieces after almost 20 years of Tory government and, in the process, have discovered the return of the diseases and social conditions of the 19th century. [Interruption.] The Minister shakes his head, but that was in the report. If it is wrong, I hope that he will explain the position.
Jackie Carnell, director of the Health Visitors Association, said that great strides have been made in public health, due in no small part to the work of health visitors in preventing ill health. It is a tragedy that, as we approach the end of the 20th century, the many improvements in health and welfare are being undermined by the effects of desperate poverty on a national scale. Health visitors are uniquely placed to tackle many of those problems, so the service should be strengthened and expanded, not watered down and dismissed in the cold climate of Scrooge-style economics.
The survey found that almost one third of health visitors had had cases of tuberculosis in the previous 12 months, 61 per cent. had come across iron deficiency and 83 had had cases of failure to thrive. Those findings are more than backed up by an inner-city area report by Wendy Doyle for the British Medical Association. It shows that one third of 12 to 13-year-old girls in Hackney are calcium-deficient, one quarter are deficient in magnesium, and a quarter are deficient in zinc. Two thirds of health visitors have cases of families whose gas or electricity supply has been disconnected. Of the more than 5,600 families in the sample, 5 per cent. had had their water cut off.
Findings from the survey give an insight into the number of families suffering from disease and nutritional defects that are made worse by poor living conditions. Health visitors are frequently asked to help families who
live in unsuitable, overcrowded and inadequate accommodation, with poor facilities for preparing food. Half the health visitors in the United Kingdom deal with families living in unfit buildings with shared kitchen and bathroom facilities, which seriously hampers the hygienic preparation of food.
The "Milk for Schools" campaign produced a report last year called "The Hunger Within", which showed that the Government have given nutritional provision for children a low profile. Poor diet and poverty in childhood have long-term implications. Some of the effects are immediate, such as children falling asleep in their classrooms because they have had no proper food or breakfast. I know one teacher who keeps a supply of biscuits and fruit juice in the cupboard, which he gives to children whom he feels are undernourished.
The Minister may try to dismiss my comments as hearsay, but can he deny the evidence of a ward sister in a hospital in Romford in Essex, who yesterday wrote to me that tonsil operations were being delayed because a significant number of children were too anaemic to take the anaesthetic? A dental clinic in Leeds could not extract children's teeth, for the same reason.
Since the 1980s, the National Heart Forum has been concerned about the poor quality of children's diets, and the diet-related ill health that often begins in childhood. The poorest 20 per cent. of families spend on average £12.82 per person per week on food, and many spend far less. The effect of such low nutritional standards is appalling. Until 1980, school meals had to provide one third of a child's daily intake of energy and nutrients. It was a Tory Government who removed the obligation on local education authorities to meet nutritional standards.
More than 1 million school meals that are served daily are free, but the number of children in need of nutritional support is far greater. For example, children from families who do not qualify for income support but receive other benefits are not currently eligible. According to several surveys, 5 per cent. of children do not have a breakfast, and more than one quarter of them have no cooked meal, often because they are in accommodation that does not provide the wherewithal, so the school lunch is probably their most important meal of the day. We must ensure that it contains the essential nutrients for good health in both the short and the long term.
Several studies show that school meals play an important role for children from low-income families. Children from poorer families receive a significantly higher proportion of the day's nutritional intake from school meals than from any other source. It has been a cause of concern that the only meal provided at lunchtime is a sandwich.
Today's children are physically less active, but they still need a nutritionally dense diet. What they are currently offered is a diet that is high in fat, high in sugar, low in non-starch and low in iron and calcium. Research has found that an average school meal contains 46 per cent. fat, which exceeds the Government's recommendation of 35 per cent. A poor diet will affect children's general level of activity and their academic performance.
Without a proper nutritional base in childhood, people may suffer heart disease later on. That, as we know, is one of the major causes of death in the United Kingdom. An estimated 30 per cent. of such deaths are attributed to
a wrong or poor diet. The disease process begins in childhood: thickening of the arteries has been seen in children under the age of 10. Obesity is on the increase. A study published in the British Journal of Nutrition estimated that the number of obese children doubled between 1980 and 1990. A change in school meal cooking methods and content could make a significant difference.
Dental decay is one of the most common diseases of childhood, with more than half of all children having dental decay before their second set of teeth. That is one reason why I am appalled by the widespread introduction of sweet-laden fizzy drinks and snack dispensers in schools--it is doing the children no favours. Iron deficiency--the main cause of anaemia--is three times more common in girls than in boys, for obvious reasons. As well as affecting tissue growth, it can lead to adverse effects on intellectual performance and behaviour.
I know that the Government are not entirely unaware of this problem, which is partly of their own making. Just as the Education Act 1980 abolished nutritional standards in school meals, so the Local Government Act 1988 introduced compulsory competitive tendering to the school meals service. Very few school meals contracts have mandatory standards for nutrients built into them--often, the cheapest bid wins the contract, with no compulsory nutritional base line. Caterers often opt for a cafeteria system, providing burgers and chips. Much of the monitoring of school meals contracts focuses on hygiene and health and safety, rather than on nutrition.
Last night--after intensive lobbying by trade unions such as Unison and health professionals--the Government issued guidelines for school meals which were welcomed by, among others, Professor Tim Lang, chair of the School Meals Campaign, but he added:
The poorest 25 per cent. of society spend £1.64 a day on food--that is a fact. Official food consumption statistics, according to Suzi Leather's excellent book "The Making of Modern Malnutrition", show that the people in the largest poor families eat, on average, the equivalent in nutritional terms of a couple of Brussels sprouts per person per day for their nutritional value. The fresh food consumption of the largest poor families is the equivalent of one quarter of an apple a day. In large poorer families, the consumption of fresh green vegetables has dropped to one third of the amount eaten in 1980.
The growth of out-of-town shopping has had an enormous impact on the diets of the poorest. In a six-year period, 30 per cent. of greengrocers closed. As one mother of two put it:
As we approach the millennium, official concern about child nutrition and poverty seems to be reaching an all-time low. As Suzi Leather so effectively points out, the last decade and a half has seen the systematic reduction in state support for the diets of the most vulnerable--especially our children. Let us look at the details. In 1971, Thatcher's milk legislation abolished free school meals. In 1980, school meals were deregulated and nutritional standards abolished. The Social Security Act 1986 cut the number of children entitled to free school meals by one third, and made the provision of schools milk discretionary.
In 1988, special dietary additions were abolished, compulsory competitive tendering was introduced to the school meals service, and single payment grants for items such as cookers and fridges were replaced with social fund loans. In 1992, further social security changes took away from 35,000 of our children entitlement to free school meals, and removed the educational entitlement of all secondary school children to education in nutrition and cooking skills under the national curriculum. Finally, the 1995 Budget saw the Government opt out of the EU scheme which subsidises the use of milk as an ingredient in school meals and the provision of milk for drinking in secondary schools.
That the Treasure Act 1996 draft Code of Practice (England and Wales), which was laid before this House on 13th March, be approved.
Resolved,
That the Treasure Act 1996 Northern Ireland draft Code of Practice, which was laid before this House on 17th March, be approved.--[Mr. Sproat.]
Resolved,
That the draft Legal Aid (Functions) Order 1997, which was laid before this House on 30th January, be approved.--[Mr. Streeter.]
Resolved,
That the draft Legal Advice and Assistance (Scope) (Amendment) Regulations 1997, which were laid before this House on 30th January, be approved.--[Mr. Carrington.]
Ordered,
That Standing Committee A be discharged from considering the Police and Firemen's Pensions Bill and that the Bill be committed to a Committee of the whole House.--[Mr. Streeter.]
6.46 pm
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons render prepayment water devices illegal as a means of payment for water and sewerage services for low income families.
To lie upon the Table.
6.47 pm
"The United Kingdom has extensive social protection and assistance arrangements, among the most comprehensive in the world. It is by working to maintain and improve living standards through economic and social policies that we will fulfil the aspirations of the United Nations Year for the Eradication of Poverty, and in a way that is relevant to our society."--[Official Report, 14 October 1996; Vol. 282, c. 650.]
That statement should be considered in the context of the 3 million families on income support, or the 14.1 million people living in households with an income that is less than half the average. Of those people, 4.3 million are children--one in three children in the United Kingdom. The work of the family budget unit at York university shows the inadequacy of income support levels to provide minimum acceptable standards of living, including nutritional standards, for children.
"We look forward to the guidelines becoming compulsory rather than voluntary. Ofsted could be given the power to ensure that school food providers are complying with the guidelines, highlighting the school meals service in the same way as they do educational performance."
The shadow Education Minister has pledged our determination to address the problem of inadequate nutrition in school meals and to introduce national nutritional standards. Some 4 million United Kingdom children eat just one meal a day, and the Government have a duty to ensure that that meal is a good one.
"It costs money to go to the shops. It costs us £7 to get to the shops and back--and we are only spending £30 a week on food for all four of us."
18 Mar 1997 : Column 781
A recent study carried out by the London school of economics compared the shopping basket prices of small shops and supermarket chains, and the price difference could amount to between 10 per cent. and 30 per cent., depending on the food bought.
We underestimate the considerable psychological stress that results from food poverty on parents, who feel that they are failing their children by not providing the right food, and on children, who see their parents going without to feed them. In the words of one mother of two with a husband on a low wage:
"I don't always eat. I sometimes have breakfast, about four times a week. I always go without lunch, just a cup of tea, and very often without an evening meal. I might eat up what the kids leave. Saturday evening is the only good meal of the week."
That is happening in 1997.
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