School Meals: Hull

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Mr Marcus Jones.)

It is very nice to see you back in your place, Mr Deputy Speaker. I convey my thanks to Mr Speaker for allowing this debate, and it is very good to see the Minister in her place.

I requested this debate to talk about primary school meals and their cost in Kingston upon Hull. I am sure that the Minister will have been told by her civil servants that Hull has had a reputation over many years of taking forward pioneering policies on school food, thanks to councillors such as Colin Inglis and Mary Glew. For a period, Hull had free school meals in all primary and special schools and, in more recent times, it has had a very well supported, low-cost school meals policy, even though most of our primary schools are academies. However, some of those schools have now increased the price of school meals by 200% in the last year. My debate seeks answers on academy accountability and how councils can influence academies’ decision making under the current legal framework.

It will be useful to give a bit of background. Hull is one of the most deprived cities in the country. Twenty years ago, we needed to up our game in terms of educational achievement. While huge improvements had been made, more needed to be done. In the 2003 local elections, Hull Labour campaigned on the connection between good nutrition and educational achievement and on the fact that in order to learn effectively, children must be well nourished. The vision was summed up in four simple words: “Eat Well Do Well”.

Labour believed passionately that by introducing a free, healthy school meal it could break the vicious cycle of educational underachievement, greater welfare dependency with limited life chances, and the subsequent poor health in later years at a great cost to the NHS, and that that could all be linked back to poor nutrition in childhood. Labour won the election and set about turning its manifesto pledge into reality, showing the power that progressive local government can have to help to change lives. The council was adamant that the cost of providing universal free school meals would not lead to cuts elsewhere. It believed that by not taking decisive action to tackle the city’s inequalities, the council would be failing in its responsibilities.

Research has also shown a clear correlation between a healthy diet and improved school performance, attainment, self-esteem and behaviour, and, in the case of breakfast clubs, better attendance and punctuality. It could therefore be argued that the cost of the scheme was a very good investment for the far-reaching and long-term benefit of the health of future generations in Hull.

An evaluation of the Eat Well Do Well programme by Professor Derek Colquhoun at the University of Hull found headteachers to be delighted with the success of the scheme in creating calmer learning environments in which children had the opportunity to reach their potential. For its three-year duration, the programme was the envy of local authorities across the country. It displayed long-term vision and ambition, using the buying power and economies of scale of the local authority to invest in the future of Hull’s children and families.

In addition to tackling food poverty and childhood obesity, the pioneering initiative aimed also to eradicate the social stigma attached to the current free school meals system and ease the bureaucracy of means-testing. It also promoted good practice for parents in making healthier hot food attractive to children—more attractive than cold packed lunches, which were often of poor nutritional value.

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech on a very important subject. On the nutritional value of packed lunches, I am sure she is aware that studies have found that only 2% of packed lunches meet the standards required of food provided in schools. In every way, we should want our children to be eating the food in schools, rather than bringing in packed lunches that, with the best will in the world, are unhealthy. Does she agree?

I pay tribute to the amazing work that my hon. Friend has done over the years on school food and free school meals in particular. I absolutely agree with her.

It is worth reflecting that in Hull 23% of primary school children claim free school meals, yet Hull City Council has estimated that as many as 800 pupils entitled to free school meals are not claiming them, and we know that many thousands across the country do not take up their entitlements, largely due to parental fears of social isolation or bullying. In addition, thousands of children classed as living in poverty or just above the poverty line but not entitled to free school meals could access Hull City Council’s Eat Well Do Well scheme.

Sadly, the scheme came to an end in the summer of 2007 after the Liberal Democrats took control of Hull City Council and reintroduced charges of £1 per meal. At a time when budgets were not under pressure, Hull’s Liberal Democrats decided to scrap the progressive measure for what I can only consider ideological reasons.

Following on from the undoubted success of Hull’s Eat Well Do Well scheme, two events followed. First, I remember sitting on the Front Bench 10 years ago as an Education Minister in the last Labour Government, and one of the things I was responsible for was helping to set up the free school meals pilots in Durham, Newham and Wolverhampton to get further evidence of the link between nutrition and educational attainment through free school meals. To this day, Newham still provides free school meals.

As my hon. Friend is saying, there is undeniably a link between educational attainment and free school meals. It is suggested that it can add two months of schooling, which is why Newham Council, in collaboration with its schools, is currently funding again free school meals for children. It is that important. In an area that is arguably the second worst in the country for child poverty, it is an essential. Does she agree that the Government should adopt the same priorities as Newham Council and Newham’s schools?

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I pay tribute to her work on social justice and the idea that people ought to have opportunities in their lives and that children should get the support they need in those early years.

A second point came out of the Hull scheme. When the Liberal Democrats got back into power nationally, after a very long time, as part of the coalition Government, they, learning from the experience in Hull—ironically—pushed through free school meals for the earliest years in primary schools, so we now have that from five or seven. When Labour returned to power on the council in 2011, we managed to reduce the price of a school meal to 50p—down from the £1 as set by the Liberal Democrats. That was thanks to an agreement from both the schools and the council.

I see this as a modern-day social contract. The subsidy of 80p per meal was provided by the council: 50p from the public health grant, and 30p from Hull City Council’s general fund resources. The council has been subsidising the school meals of children aged between seven and 11, and I do not think that any other local authority has been doing that very specific job. Again, Councillor Inglis was instrumental in making both the educational and public health cases for reducing the cost of school meals. The cost has remained at 50p, well below the rates of surrounding local authorities, for some years. Although the Eat Well Do Well scheme has ended, Hull has achieved a low-cost school meal and a partnership between our city’s schools and the council for so long, and in the face of national austerity that resulted in massive and unfair cuts in the council’s funding.

I understand that the threshold for free school meals has not risen for 14 years from a family income of about £17,000, so many more working poor families will not be eligible. The scheme that Hull City Council entered into with its academies was of particular benefit to them.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. She has been very generous, although she could go on until 7 o’clock if she wanted to detain the House for that long. She mentioned public health, and that reminded me of the pilots, which she also mentioned, in Newham, Wolverhampton and Durham. The funding for those pilots came from the then Education Secretary and the then Health Secretary, the former Members for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle and for Normanton. They got together and jointly funded the pilots from Education and Health for the very reason that it should not have been only Education that paid for them, because there were going to be huge health benefits as well. My hon. Friend is making a point about local government, but does she agree that this could equally be something for the Department of Health to look at under the public health budget?

Yes, absolutely. What I have been trying to say in my speech is that there is a link between education and public health, and that at the moment it is clear that they are completely separate. I am trying to bring them together to work collaboratively. I am also grateful for being reminded that, because the previous business went down early, we have until 7 o’clock to debate this issue. I notice that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is in his place, and I know that he usually intervenes in Adjournment debates, so I would be happy to give way to him as well.

First, I congratulate the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) on bringing this debate forward. This issue is appropriate to her own area, but it is one that probably applies across all our constituencies. She has referred to subsidy and the provision of school meals. The importance of that for me and my constituency is also very real, because if we did not have that subsidy and help for those families, some of those young children would never have a solid meal in their day. Does she feel, as I do, that when it comes to making provision for those who are at the bottom of the poverty level and who need our help to get at least one square meal a day, the Government need to respond in a very positive way?

I am grateful for that intervention, and I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. We have a new Government in place, and I think that they want to deal with some of the long-standing issues in this country around the working poor and how those children can be best served in our schools when it comes to access to hot healthy school food. What Hull was trying to do, from a local authority perspective, was to have those progressive policies that have perhaps been lacking at national level for some time. I am not going to detain the House for much longer. I just have a few more questions, unless the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) would like me to give way to him.

In a moment.

Let me return to my questions for the Minister. I want her to be clear about whether it is right that all schools have to take individual decisions on school meal prices, because there was some dispute in Hull about the role of the headteachers association, not being a lawful decision-making body, and each academy school having to go through its governing body to make decisions about school meal prices. I want her to confirm that that is her understanding as well. What do the Minister and the Government think about the postcode lottery that has developed in Hull, with prices in schools varying? How does she feel about one parent taking a child to school and paying 50p a day and another taking their child to a different school down the road and being charged £1.50? Is that what she wants to see happening? Is she aware that there appears to be no restriction on the maximum price that an academy can charge per meal? Does that need to be considered?

The other point is about the efforts made to increase registration of those eligible for free school meals, which obviously is right. We need to ensure that eligible children can access those meals. I am told that the academies are saying that one of the issues in Hull is that the reduced price of school meals acts as a disincentive to getting families signed up for the free school meals that they might well be entitled to. That has an impact on the pupil premium. I am sure that the Minister has looked at that issue already and is concerned about it, so what is her thinking about that? Obviously we want to encourage people to apply for free school meals, but where they are just above the entitlement level—there are a lot of those families in Hull; the working poor—how do we ensure that they can access good, nutritious food at a reasonable cost without causing problems for the school because of the pupil premium policy?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that issue. I say gently to the Minister that the criteria might be outdated, given what is happening in our communities, with 75% of families in poverty having somebody in work. We should not be stopping children who are experiencing real deprivation having a decent meal each day. I genuinely think that the criteria are outdated, outmoded and need some attention.

I echo my hon. Friend’s sentiments; that is right. While we need to make sure that money is made available for those children most in need, that particular scheme now needs to be reviewed in the light of what is happening.

The hon. Lady will recall that I was on Hull City Council when the free school meal policy was introduced. There was a huge political fight about it. We all wanted to achieve the same thing, but there were big differences. However, the reason for my intervention is to say from the Government side of the House to my hon. Friend the Minister that I, too, believe it is time that we looked at the criteria, for the very reasons that the hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Brown) raised. When I was teaching in Hull, it was not just a case of people who could not afford to send their kids to school with a proper meal; sometimes it was also parents who did not know how to do that. I had kids coming into my classroom who had had chips for breakfast. That is not acceptable. This is not just about the criteria; it is also about how we educate people better to ensure that they are sending kids to school with a proper meal inside them. There is a role for Government here, which is why I would fully support a look at the criteria, but I would also urge my hon. Friend the Minister to do exactly as the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) has suggested and do more to address those struggling families—the working poor, as we refer to them, sometimes a bit patronisingly. I hope that my hon. Friend will, under this new Government, look at that as well.

Not for the first time, I find myself in agreement with the hon. Gentleman. I pay tribute to him for the role that he played on Hull City Council. He was an esteemed member of the Conservative group on the council, although there were only two of them.

This has been a useful debate. Elected local councils are responsible and accountable. Alongside them, unelected academies have power but no responsibility. Academies have a vital role to play in the wider community, but there needs to be some responsibility and accountability locally, as well as through the Department. Can we look at whether rebalancing that relationship is necessary for the good of the coming generations upon which our country’s future depends?