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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. It is a courtesy that we practise in the House when referring to Members of the upper House to refer to them in the proper way, and not in a manner such as that used by the hon. Gentleman.
Bob Russell: I am grateful to you for correcting me, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Even Baroness Thatcher, the milk-snatcher, never attacked some of the most vulnerable people in our society, depriving children as young as four or five of wholesome, nutritional hot dinners which are so important for their development and well-being.
For many children, the school dinner is their main meal of the day. For some, it is their only hot meal of the day. That is particularly important at this time of year.
I urge the Minister tonight, as I urged the Prime Minister on 28 January, to intervene to ensure that Essex county council continues to provide a proper school meals service, as it has done for decades, and ideally to return to what it was prior to the Education Act 1980, which was the first move to undermine the ideals enshrined in the Education Act 1944.
Unfortunately, the Essex Tories are hiding behind a Government 1999 education order to carry out their dastardly deed to rid themselves of the moral responsibility to maintain a countywide school meals service. Governors of 356 junior, primary and infant schools—all of them volunteers, many of them parents—now find themselves faced with the organisational duties and legal consequences that hitherto were undertaken by paid and professionally qualified full-time officials.
Mrs. Jan Blackwell, chair of the governors of North primary school in Colchester, tells me:
- "Governors and Headteachers are angry at this sudden extra responsibility in an impossible time-frame. We have little knowledge of Food Hygiene Standards, Nutritional Guidelines and Health and Safety Regulations in the kitchen."
We also need an explanation from Essex county council as to why it has acted as it has. We need to do whatever is necessary to restore matters to the way they were previously, the objective being to ensure that all parents who require their children to have a hot midday meal—either paid or free, as applicable—can do so.
If Essex county council is saying that it cannot oversee the school meals service of 27,000 meals each day with its purchasing power as the second-largest local
education authority in the country, how does it expect individual schools, or perhaps a few schools banding together, to achieve a better deal at very short notice? Some might, and good luck to them, but for those schools that do not have the capacity to do so, the moral responsibility ought to remain with the LEA. Perhaps Essex feels that it is not getting a fair financial deal from the Government to keep the meals service. Whatever the truth—it is academic for parents and the schools—either county hall or Whitehall must find the resources.This is not a reckless demand for greater public spending, but rather a plea for joined-up government—at all levels—so the world's fourth-richest economy ensures that no child goes hungry or is deprived of a hot meal for what, in terms of Essex's massive budget and what the national economy generates, is petty cash in comparison.
Bob Spink (Castle Point) (Con): Does the hon. Gentleman think that full consultation prior to taking a decision constitutes joined-up government? Will he ask the Minister to get Essex county council to have such consultation, something for which I called at column 1783 in an Adjournment debate on 18 December?
Bob Russell: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that helpful intervention and I sincerely hope that that will be taken on board. Lack of consultation is one of the major issues that we need to discuss.
The alternative is the real risk of some children—not just those from backgrounds which are already disadvantaged, but more widely—having their whole development damaged, with consequences for their health sooner or later. With national health service budgets always under pressure, the cost to the public purse ultimately will be greater than if children grow up healthy with a proper diet, of which a school dinner is often the main ingredient.
Young bodies damaged by lack of proper nourishment throughout their growing years may never recover. With obesity increasing all the time, often through poor diet, doing away with the carefully structured diets that hot school meals should provide will do nothing to help the situation. Essex LEA is setting the scene where, alongside obese children, we could also witness the return of rickets in others. That is irresponsible behaviour by the county hall administration.
The Government must act. The principles of the national healthy schools standard must be upheld; ditto the children's national service framework to promote healthy diets. It is not good enough to commission such worthy reports as "Securing Good Health for the Whole Population" from Derek Wanless, published only last week, and "Every Child Matters", published last September, and then do nothing when Essex county council undermines the good intentions in those reports by scrapping the school meals service. That service is vital to so many of the county's children, particularly those from disadvantaged families or from families where parents are at work and where the school meal is an important feature of that family's lifestyle.
I draw the Minister's attention to page 156 of the Wanless report, box 7.3, which states:
- "The issues of food promotion to children and school meals illustrate the importance of the involvement and engagement of stakeholders in public health issues—as awareness, consensus for action and support for future public health measures can all be gained."
- "we believe that the provision of school meals for pupils, especially from the poorest backgrounds, has a beneficial effect on their education. Unfortunately, some of our youngsters go to school without having had a proper meal. It means that they do not learn or pay attention in their lessons as well as they should, and it is for that reason that we are deeply committed to ensuring that the funding is there for local authorities to provide that service. I will look into the point that the hon. Gentleman raises."—[Official Report, 28 January 2004; Vol. 417, c. 307.]
I am deeply concerned that, with the ending of hot school dinners and their replacement with packed lunches, those children who currently have free meals will be the only ones served with a packed lunch, provided by bulk delivery or whatever. These will be identical little packages, making it obvious to everybody who is in receipt of a free lunch. Currently, all children having a school dinner sit together; there is no segregation or obvious difference as to who is in receipt of a free dinner and those whose parents can afford to pay. Only people in the office know. Children whose family circumstances qualify them for a free meal—there are around 7,000 in Essex—will in future be exposed, with all the unhappiness that can so often happen as a result of such singling out.
Although, of course, I recognise that ultimately it is the responsibility of each individual to look after his or her own body, and those of their children, the Government cannot ignore situations such as that to which I have drawn to Parliament's attention. Only last week, the Consumers Association warned:
- "Obesity and diet-related diseases are now seen as Britain's biggest killers."
A roll call of schools in my constituency where the reluctant decision has been taken to provide only packed lunches from next month includes the Montgomery infant and junior, the St. Michael's primary, and the King's Ford infant and junior schools. There are others, but I deliberately highlight those five because they are the ones attended by the bulk of children aged under 11 whose parents are members of Her Majesty's armed forces based at the Colchester garrison.
About 3,000 soldiers from Colchester served in the Iraq war less than a year ago. Currently 600 other soldiers from the town are on peacekeeping duties in Iraq. That is how Conservative councillors reward our troops who put their lives on the line—they deprive their children of hot school dinners.
I shall be drawing the attention of the Secretary of State for Defence to that scandalous situation. The House needs to know that it is not good for the morale of our troops, and does nothing to help the retention of our professional soldiers, for their children to be going without a hot school dinner because of penny-pinching by those who control the public purse.
As an aside, I am told that the food allowance per meal that the Home Office makes available for each prisoner is greater than the cost of a school dinner. Is it asking too much for equivalent funding to be provided for the school meals service in Essex, so that the health of our children is given the same consideration as that of prisoners?
The scrapping of the school meals service in Essex has led to a major outcry right across the county. The only people who seem to be in favour of it are Tory county councillors. Schools are outraged at the short notice they were given—just days before Christmas—that the service would be terminated at the end of March. Heads, teachers, parents, governors have all protested, but all to no avail.
Two weeks ago, Ms Ruth Brock, chair of the Essex primary heads association, told a packed meeting at Colchester town hall:
- "We did not know that we were going to be left in this situation. Most heads are feeling incredibly dumped upon because we did not know this was going to happen."
- "The NUT is concerned about the welfare of many of the pupils who rely on this one hot meal in the middle of the day. This may seem like a saving in the short term, but the long term effect of unhealthy eating will have a greater cost to the nation's health."
- "Proper meals will be off the menu".
- "Hot meals are to be dropped from many school menus in Colchester. Schools across the county have struggled to arrange their own dinners after Essex County Council decided not to renew a central contract with meal providers.
It left schools having to try to hammer out their own deals with dinner providers within just a few weeks.
Some have managed to keep their hot dinner service, but many have not. It means hundreds of schoolchildren in and around Colchester will only be offered sandwiches for lunch."
- "We didn't have the time to get something else sorted out. Budgets are tight and we just cannot afford to lose money on it.
We are going to have to offer packed lunches. We hope this will just be a stop-gap measure and we will be trying to offer hot dinners as soon as possible. It might be back from September but it is too early to say."
- "We feel deep regret about losing a hot meals service. We have not been given enough time to sort this out."
On Thursday, the Evening Gazette carried a full-page article with the comments of pupils at King's Ford junior school, stating that their message
- "came through loud and clear: we love our dinners, please keep them on the menu".
- "I enjoy my hot dinners especially when it is cold outside."
- "I don't really like having packed lunches. I have been here four years and I've only missed having a school dinner five times. When the hot dinners go, I think it will be odd . . . And what will happen to our Christmas dinners? We all sit down and have a Christmas dinner and the teachers bring us our food. It is a special time. And all the dinner ladies here are really nice and good cooks."
- "It is simply impossible for schools to go through a proper process of decision-making in order to find a new provider in the time they have been given. As a consequence, some children will no longer get a hot dinner.
This is a disgrace and shames the politicians and bureaucrats at County Hall whose own lavish facilities mean they never go without."
Parents are deeply angered. Their views are summed up by Ms Paula Chandler, of Monkwick, who has organised a petition urging the county council to rethink its position. She said:
- "When parents work shifts, they often have to make children sandwiches at night. They don't want their children having two packed lunches a day.
And then there's single parents such as myself. It is nice to know they've had a hot meal at school because we lead such busy lives and it takes the pressure off to know they have had a hot meal."
Mrs. Blackwell, chairman of the governors of North primary school, described matters from her perspective, saying:
- "The LEA decided, after 15 months of negotiation on a group contract for meals as requested by over 340 schools in the county, to abandon and devolve meals to individual schools. I am not
- entirely sure of the legality of this decision. It breaches the contract with the schools. Lord Hanningfield failed to comment when I asked him in a letter.
Schools effectively had three months to arrange a new contract. Business plans were provided. Most schools were predicted to make a loss—minimum £2,800 for North School. This does not take into consideration the age of the kitchen; replacement, maintenance and repair at North could potentially be very costly.
Losses would have to be covered from individual school budgets, which are already very tight and predicted to remain at a standstill for the coming year in Essex. This takes money away from the teaching and learning provision of every child in that school. How can this raise standards?
There is no longer equity for children in Essex, and this decision does not sit comfortably with the Government's Every Child Matters. It also makes a mockery of the Teachers Work Load Agreement.
No consideration has been given to staff involved, namely Headteachers, Governors and the cooks. They were not included in the discussion nor decision to end the group contract. Many cooks now face redundancy after many years of service."
It is not enough to say that the responsibility is one for the local education authority, for the LEA has passed the legal responsibility to school governing bodies, which in most instances would prefer not to have it—as a general rule, they do not have the experience or the qualifications to operate the school meals service, they do not have spare revenue funds to finance it, and they have no capital to pay for replacement kitchen equipment in due course.
Government intervention is the only solution. I urge the Minister to act without delay. Children at schools across Essex, as well as their parents and all involved with the school meals service, will appreciate it. After all, as the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said in his introduction to "Every Child Matters",
- "Since 1997 we have tried to put children first. We have increased the focus on prevention through the child poverty strategy, Sure Start and our work to raise school standards. But there is still more to do."
The end of the school meals service in Essex is against what the Government have been striving to achieve. To me, every child matters. I look to the Minister to demonstrate tonight by a promise of immediate action that every child in Essex matters to the Government.
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