Labour moves to improve school meal quality
School meals would be dramatically improved under a third term Labour government, Education Secretary Ruth Kelly promised today.
Launching the party’s mini-manifesto for children, Ms Kelly said that there would be more money and minimum nutritional standards for school meals.
Other key measures included a potential ban on junk food ads aimed at children and tougher penalties for shopkeepers who sell children cigarettes.
She pledged that Labour would introduce minimum standards for fat, salt and sugar content this September, with more stringent standards coming into force next September.
Speaking on a platform with general election co-ordinator Alan Milburn and Children’s Minister Margaret Hodge, she said she didn’t believe that parents would consider these measures interfering.
Ms Kelly said that there would be support for school dinner ladies to enable them to improve their skills and resources set aside to improve kitchen facilities in schools, to make it possible for dinner ladies to serve freshly cooked food, not simply re-heat processed, packaged food.
Admitting it was “difficult to produce a high quality school meal for 37 pence” Ms Kelly said that more money would be made available to schools to help them raise the quality of school meals.
A Labour government would also set up a School Food Trust to help schools provide healthy, local and organic food for school meals. And Ofsted would inspect the standards of school meals.
“We want every child, whose parents choose it, to enjoy a healthy, high quality school lunch,” said Ms Kelly.
She denied that the Government was just responding to celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s high profile television campaign, saying that she had met with Mr Oliver to discuss setting up the School Food Trust before she had even seen the programme, she said.
What Jamie Oliver had exposed, Ms Kelly said, was that it was “not just the cost” that led to poor quality school meals. It was just important to get support for changes, and was a part of encouraging a healthy school environment.
Saying that action would be taken “beyond the school gates”, Ms Kelly said that regulations for advertising junk food would be tighten-up and warned food companies that Labour would legislate if the current voluntary system did not work.
There would also be action against shops selling tobacco to under 16s, with the prospect of a permanent ban on repeat offenders selling tobacco.
Mr Milburn said that Labour was determined to play a “supporting role” to assist parents, and that the Tories’ obsession with cutting back the state meant they would let down children.
He said that children had suffered most under the last Conservative government and accused the Tories of having “no target and no ambition” to cut child poverty whilst Labour would “remain on the side of hard working parents”.
