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Mrs. Anne Campbell (Cambridge) (Lab): I welcome my right hon. Friend's statement and the report from Sir Michael Bichard. This appalling murder case uncovered weaknesses in some parts of the system and in some police forces. I know that Cambridgeshire police will take the recommendations very seriously and will already have considered the implications. Despite the fact that a national database will be in place, will my
 
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right hon. Friend issue a statement to all police forces asking them to review urgently their current procedures for storing and retrieving information?

Mr. Blunkett: Yes, the code that we are issuing under the Police Reform Act 2002 will do precisely that. The inspection process will be critical in making sure that it happens.

Mr. Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con): In the Home Secretary's very welcome statement, he referred to the need for social services databases to hold details of all alleged sexual offenders involved with named children. Does he realise the particular vulnerability of those who work with children on a day-to-day professional basis—I am speaking, of course, of schoolteachers—to unjust and unfounded allegations? In the very delicate balance of risk that he has to strike, will he take care to ensure that teachers in particular are protected from unjustified allegations destroying their careers and, in some cases, their lives?

Mr. Blunkett: I accept entirely that it is a very delicate and sensitive balance, which is why we have not rushed in today and made any bombastic statements or indications of unprecedented action. We need to try to get this right, reflecting on what Sir Michael rightly indicates is a mismatch between the holding of convictions and the holding of information, which, taken together, would have led to a conviction in the case of Ian Huntley. We need to do so precisely for the reasons enunciated—there are people who become vulnerable to unwarranted accusations that can destroy their professional well-being and livelihood. With regard to the teaching profession, my right hon. Friends in the Department for Education and Skills are examining how we can ensure a faster process of dealing with such allegations in order to meet the challenge of investigating them thoroughly, but not destroying the lives of those who are accused of taking the actions.

Mr. Ian Cawsey (Brigg and Goole) (Lab): For four years before entering this House, I had the great honour of being the chairman of the Humberside police authority. I saw at first hand the great skill and professionalism of the serving officers, who will be devastated by the report, which comes on the back of a recent poor performance assessment. There is no point in denying what is in front of us. Will my right hon. Friend assure the House that he will work as quickly as possible with the Humberside police authority to resolve these management issues and let Humberside police rebuild their reputation as a modern, efficient force, as the people of Humberside will wish and as the actions of a great majority of their serving officers deserve?

Mr. Blunkett: I appreciate my hon. Friend's experience and knowledge. I have made it clear through my officials to the chairman of the police authority, Colin Inglis, that we are prepared, and that the inspectorate and outside services will be drawn on, to give whatever help and support are needed to the deputy who will be acting chief constable for the weeks ahead, and to the police authority. I appeal to them to take up that help. In the end, the service that is provided to the people of Humberside is the sole concern of the police
 
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authority and those who work for the service. Confidence in the effectiveness and efficiency of that service is paramount in all our minds.

Mr. Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab): In 1997, my right hon. Friend's Department undertook widespread consultation before the introduction of the Data Protection Act 1998, which Sir Michael said does not need radical revision. Will my right hon. Friend consider undertaking the same process in developing the code of practice? I think that there is widespread expertise out there and in the House that will aid in getting that right and in ensuring that improvements occur across the board.

Mr. Blunkett: I am very happy to draw on expertise and experience in terms of the code. It would be right to do so. The difficulty that we have—we should be honest about it—is that we swing like a pendulum from one extreme to the other. A terrible incident occurs and people want to ensure that the maximum information is shared and is available. The next moment, there is real fear of intrusion into people's lives and danger of damaging the privacy of individuals and risking their exposure. Getting this right means having a code of practice that, in the cold of light of day, balances those two opposites.

Vera Baird (Redcar) (Lab): I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his speedy action in appointing Sir Michael and on his firm decision taking on receipt of the report. However, it is no wonder that the conviction rate for serious sexual offences is only 5.7 per cent. of complaints, as is clear when one looks at the catalogue of sexual complaints made by young women against the same person which are not investigated and prosecuted to court by this one police force to which we have been referring. Steps have been taken since the nineties that should make the investigation of sexual offences better, but will my right hon. Friend ask the police inspectorate to look most carefully into and report on the way in which those incidents were investigated, so that we may be sure that we learn the lessons of all the Soham-related failures?

Mr. Blunkett: My hon. and learned Friend raises much wider issues. In the case of Ian Huntley, the incidents were reported. As the shadow Home Secretary indicated, they were known about, but they were not collated, no relationships were established and they were not held on the database and therefore not drawn on and acted on. I agree entirely that there needs to be a system, as the report recommends, that joins up not only what is found by social services, but what is referred by other agencies or individuals, and that deals with how that information is collated and held; in which circumstances it is deleted; and, above all, how one incident can be put together with another to build up a case and a picture of behaviour that allows us to intervene to save others from being sexually molested. That is what went so sadly amiss in the Huntley case.

Mrs. Ann Cryer (Keighley) (Lab): Can my right hon. Friend confirm that, owing to recent police and criminal evidence legislation, both the Crown Prosecution Service and the police can now, in certain circumstances,
 
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accept hearsay evidence from parents regarding under-age sex? This is playing an important part in my constituency as far as Operation Parsonage is concerned. If the legislation had been in place earlier, it might have helped the police in relation to Huntley.

Mr. Blunkett: The Criminal Justice Act 2003 permits the use of such evidence in circumstances in which the young person themselves, while having given details and evidence, is not prepared to do so in court. That measure will be of assistance if it is sensitively applied, with the checks that Parliament rightly built in on the use of such evidence, including in writing.

Helen Jones (Warrington, North) (Lab): I welcome the speedy action that my right hon. Friend has taken following the publication of the report, and especially what he has said about the need for someone on each interviewing panel to be trained in the protection of children, since there would be no use in having the best system in the world if those on the ground were not trained to operate it. From his discussions with his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Skills, can he tell the House how quickly he thinks such a system of training can be put in place? Does he envisage joint training for those in education, social services and the police so that everyone is working to the same agenda and on the same priorities?

Mr. Blunkett: The Minister for Children is determined to move as quickly as possible, but we have to bear it in mind that in preparing lead governors in 24,000 schools, with the necessary consultation with all the elements of the education service and training providers, will take a little while. We need to find a way of identifying those at a local level who are available and will be in a position to provide such light-touch training very quickly, so that we can draw on the expertise that exists. My right hon. Friends will be examining that matter. The last thing that we want is to set up some tremendous bureaucratic system that would take years to implement and would probably be out of date by the time people accessed it.

 
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Food in Schools

1.39 pm

Mr. David Kidney (Stafford): I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require all schools in England to have a food policy; to provide support for schools in drawing up, implementing and developing food policies; to make permanent the scheme for free fruit in schools and to extend it; to extend entitlement to free school meals, including to breakfasts; to amend the law relating to the nutritional values of school meals; and for connected purposes.

I expect that, before the mass production of motor cars and television sets, most people took regular exercise, and those who could afford to do so enjoyed a balanced diet. Today, cars and TV, whatever their benefits, play their part in stoking up obesity on a scale that has not been seen before. According to news reports, the Health Committee, the Consumers Association and the chief medical officer, we are witnessing a mass outbreak of obesity.

Populating our streets with overweight individuals is not only an aesthetic disaster; obesity is a major risk factor for serious, life-threatening conditions such as diabetes and heart disease. Individuals will die younger and society will pay more for the extra demands on our national health service. The antidote to that threat, which the CMO has described as a "health time bomb", remains the same prescription as before—regular exercise and a balanced diet.

My Bill focuses on diet. If we can instil healthy eating habits in young people while they are young, there is a good chance that those good habits will stay with them for life. Better still, if schools involve their students' parents in the enterprise, schools and parents in partnership will mutually reinforce the same messages on diet.

Many positive initiatives have been taken in schools in recent years. Labour has reintroduced compulsory nutritional standards for school lunches—a previous Government abolished such standards in 1980. All pupils aged five, six and seven now get free fruit in school, a wonderful development that makes fruit a popular choice among children. The Department for Education and Skills and the Department of Health have worked together on trialling a new national healthy schools standard. I want to go further, not towards a nanny state where the Government know best and tell people what they can and cannot eat, but towards empowering people to make the right choices for themselves. For that, we all need relevant information and the understanding to make our own judgments.

My Bill has five components. First, every school should have a food policy. For example, I want schools to decide the extent of formal teaching about balanced diets and safe levels of salt, fat and sugar. I should like students to learn from their experiences that a healthy diet can be fun. Food consumed in schools includes school lunches, the contents of lunchboxes brought from home and commercial products purchased from vending machines—schools should examine the contents of those vending machines. Some products are fine, but others are junk food and fizzy drinks. School governors should decide whether the extra income for the school is worth the possible harm to our children's
 
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health. My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley) is taking on the related issue of food and drink advertising that aims a hard sell at our children.

Children should be equipped with basic food skills, so that they can prepare healthy, safe meals, know how food is produced and marketed, and understand what labels mean. I saw a good example of a whole-school approach to learning about food at Silkmore primary school in Stafford, which held a week of lessons and activities on the theme of food. Students themselves think that those matters are important. When I met the members of the school council at Stafford's Weston Road high school last Friday, they told me, unprompted, of their plan to reduce sales outlets for fizzy drinks and increase access to drinking water.

Of course, school communities, including unpaid school governors, are already very busy, and I do not want to add new burdens. My second provision is that the Government and local education authorities must support schools in developing food policies and making them effective. I discussed that point with Melanie Swanwick, the head of Staffordshire's successful school meals service. She has sufficient confidence in the quality of meals in Staffordshire's schools to suggest that Ofsted inspections should extend to schools' food policies. That is why I asked at the last Education Question Time for Ofsted to be involved in policing minimum nutritional standards set by the Government.

My third proposal concerns the entitlement to free school meals. According to the Local Authority Caterers Association, school meals are big business. In England alone, 3.25 million meals are served to pupils every day, 100,000 people are employed in the industry, and total expenditure by parents and LEAs is nearly £1 billion a year. In secondary schools in England, one in seven pupils is eligible for free school meals, but one quarter of those pupils do not receive their entitlement. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, North (Helen Jones) made constructive suggestions to improve that situation in her Adjournment debate on 4 February 2004.

My suggestion in this Bill is to extend the eligibility for free school lunches to include free school breakfasts. Just less than half of secondary schools now offer school breakfasts, and I argue that it is equitable that the existing free school meals scheme should cover school breakfasts in the same way in which it covers school lunches. In Hull, the LEA plans to pilot a scheme to offer all primary school pupils free school lunches in an effort to link education and health. That experiment is interesting, and the future evaluation of its effects on health and learning should be studied closely.

My fourth idea highlights the success of the free fruit scheme for all five, six and seven-year-old pupils, which is already popular in primary schools. Last Friday, I visited St. Patrick's Roman Catholic primary school in Stafford, where the school meals staff told me that the scheme is changing attitudes, because pupils
 
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increasingly choose fresh fruit and raw vegetables with their school lunches. The current scheme excludes LEAs' stand-alone nurseries, and I would rectify that omission.

My fifth and final proposal is to raise the nutritional standards of school meals. The Government have restored minimum nutritional standards, but many children's meals still read like fast food menus and include few fruits and vegetables. Children should have a choice of healthy meals in an environment that makes healthy choices enjoyable. We should adopt the nutrient-based standards, which experts still recommend, in the 1999 Education and Employment Committee report. I also hope that a greater emphasis on fresh foods will benefit local farmers, who can best supply freshness while keeping food miles low.

My Bill is well timed. Last month, the Government closed their consultation, "Choosing Health?", on action to improve people's health. As part of that consultation, the public were asked what key actions are needed to help people maintain a healthy weight. What better place to start than in schools? Let us educate young people about food quality, a balanced diet and health consequences. We must act to get young people into the habit of eating a balanced diet and finding out that it is enjoyable. Through schools, we can also engage pupils' parents in that aspect of their children's education. By doing so, we may encourage more families to reinforce at home the positive messages given in school.

Shakespeare scholars may recall Julius Caesar's line:

"Let me have men about me that are fat".

Today, I call for the opposite: with apologies to the Bard's fans for my poor imitation of his prose, let me have people about me whose bellies hang not over their waistbands; exercise and balanced diet will keep them more years from grim reaper's hands. I commend the Bill to the House.

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