Thank you very much for raising these issues relating to the children's commissioner's report. I can hardly believe I have to say that, yes, schools should be providing opportunities for children to drink free, fresh drinking water at any point during the school day, should they wish. Schools should be signposting water stations throughout the schools, providing younger children with a cup or glass of water, or allowing them to carry water bottles, and ensuring that dining room supervisors are encouraging children to drink available water at school times and promoting water right throughout the school—and certainly making the pupils aware also that things such as taps in the toilet areas aren’t an appropriate source of drinking water. These are all things that you could think would be basically understood by schools.

Certainly with regard to the standards, we have the Healthy Eating in Schools (Nutritional Standards and Requirements) (Wales) Regulations 2013, which apply to all food and drink served to pupils at breakfast, break times, lunchtimes, afternoon break or in after-school clubs. But I will certainly ask the education Minister to write to you with regard to the monitoring of those regulations and how we can be satisfied that those regulations are delivering healthy food and drink to children throughout the school day.FootnoteLink The Minister for local government has indicated that she would be happy also to write to local authorities regarding the quality of the food that is being presented to children in schools and how the local authorities themselves are satisfying themselves of that requirement for healthy food and drink.