Free school meals for all primary school children in London will be healthy and nutritious, officials at City Hall have insisted, after concerns were raised about their quality
By Noah Vickers, Local Democracy Reporter
Free school meals for all primary school children in London will be healthy and nutritious, officials at City Hall have insisted, after concerns were raised about their quality.
Emma Pawson, City Hall’s head of health, said guarantees on the quality of the meals served in schools will potentially be part of the funding agreements signed with borough councils.
London mayor Sadiq Khan has committed £130 million towards providing universal free school meals for all primary school children in London during the 2023/24 academic year.
But questions were asked about the policy’s potential health impacts by Conservative Assembly Member (AM) Andrew Boff.
Speaking at a Thursday health committee meeting, Mr Boff – who said he was not opposed to the policy itself – said: “The average UK school meals are mostly made of ultra-processed foods, according to a story in the Guardian.
“As much as we want to try to make sure that free school meals are of a sufficient quality, what sanction will the Mayor have on those schools that decide to serve the kind of school meals that I used to have when I was a kid, rather than healthy meals?”
Dr Tom Coffey OBE, who serves as health advisor to the Mayor, said free school meals currently being provided in London are reducing the prevalence of childhood obesity by 9.3 per cent and are also beneficial for educational attainment.
He said the intention of the universal free school meal policy would be to “replicate” those benefits, adding that school meals tended to have “lower salt, lower sugar, and much more fruit and veg” compared with the average packed lunch.
Mr Boff pursued the point, saying he wanted to make sure City Hall was “getting bang for that buck, that we’re not throwing that £130 million at food that is not good for kids”.
Emma Pawson, head of health at City Hall, replied: “I would echo that around the commitment to making sure the children have a healthy, nutritious meal.
“We will be looking at how we can build it into the grant agreement that will go out to boroughs.
“I would say that one of the things that we are very aware of is this is a cost of living intervention. We have an increasing number of families who live in poverty. We have an increasing number of sad stories where children are actually going without food, or parents are going without food to be able to feed their children.
“So for us, making sure that every child has a hot, nutritious meal every day is vitally important for us, but I do take on board your point about building the standards into the grant agreement that we give out.”
Green AM Caroline Russell said she was concerned some borough councils would be “locked into school dinner contracts that potentially don’t have the bits in the contract that prevent the ultra-processed food”, because schools often provide meals via large catering companies.
Ms Pawson said City Hall staff would be “meeting with the Association of School Caterers to look at how we can leverage conversations with them” and working with individual boroughs.
She added that there would be ways in which councils can “collect together and use their collective power to re-look at their contracts” when it comes to ensuring the high quality of meals provided.
