We now move on to item 7 on our agenda this afternoon, which is the Member debate under Standing Order 11.21, healthy school meals, and I call on Jenny Rathbone to move the motion.

Motion NDM7002 Jenny Rathbone, Dai Lloyd, Joyce Watson

Supported by  Darren Millar, David Rowlands, Mike Hedges, Russell George, Vikki Howells

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

1. Believes that healthy, nourishing school meals can make an essential contribution to pupils’ wellbeing, attainment, and positive behaviour.

2. Notes that the Children’s Commissioner’s report A Charter for Change: Protecting Welsh Children from the Impact of Poverty provides worrying evidence that a significant number of pupils are not getting their entitlement set out in the healthy eating in maintained schools guidance.

3. Calls on the Welsh Government to:

a) clarify whether the standards of school meals are the responsibility of school governors, local authorities or the Welsh Government and what action is being taken to ensure they are being monitored; and

b) outline what action is being taken to increase the amount of food for schools being procured locally as part of its emphasis on the foundational economy.

Motion moved.

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. Just over two years ago I visited Cornist Park School in Flintshire to look at the lunch provision. Why there? Because Flintshire was the only school caterer in Wales to have achieved the Soil Association's Food for Life certification. What did I observe? Every child got the meal they had chosen at registration that morning. Even if they were the last in, they knew their name was on that dish. This removed the anxiety that some children have about eating something they don't like or they don't recognise. Meal supervisors actively encouraged all children to add some salad to their meal, targeting the seven-a-day goal; a dedicated cook with the skills to meet the healthy eating guidelines; next to no waste in a world where one third of all food is thrown away; a whole-school approach to food; displays around school celebrated food; and once a month other family members were invited to come to lunch to help spread the healthy food message.

I suggest that is needed in all schools to deliver the objectives of 'Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales'. All primary schools take the register at the start of the school day. So why can't all primary pupils make their lunch choice at the same time? It's starting to happen in Cardiff, but it's definitely not universal. What's not to like about eliminating waste and children's anxieties?

The Soil Association's Food for Life certification is a badge of quality assurance. We have it here in our Senedd canteen. What is required to meet that objective in schools? First, school caterers have to demonstrate compliance with the national healthy eating guidelines. At least three quarters of the dishes on the menu have to be freshly prepared from unprocessed ingredients. Any meat has to be from farms that meet animal welfare standards. Any fish must exclude the Marine Conservation Society's 'fish to avoid' list. Eggs have to be free range. No nasty additives, artificial trans fats or genetically modified ingredients can be used, and free drinking water is prominently available—not hidden away in the toilet. Menus are seasonal and in-season produce is highlighted. All suppliers are verified by the Soil Association to ensure they meet appropriate food standards; otherwise, who knows that that is actually happening? Most importantly, in my mind, catering staff get training in fresh food preparation, as this is something, unfortunately, we cannot take for granted.

Over 10,000 English schools use the Soil Association certification as a proxy of compliance on freshness and quality, and that involves over half all primary schools and many secondary schools as well. The most ambitious school caterers, like Oldham—serving one of the poorest communities in Britain—have gone further to achieve the gold standard: at least 20 per cent of the money spent on ingredients has to be organic, including organic meat. 'Oh, that's unaffordable', I hear people say. No, it's not; they still only spend 67p per pupil per meal. Some of Oldham's brownie points are for their above-average sourcing of food from the UK—that will give them resilience against Brexit uncertainties. They also get brownie points for buying food produced in their region, enriching the local food economy. Research into these Food for Life menus proves that for every £1 spent locally, it delivers a social return on investment of over £3 in the form of increased jobs and markets for local food producers.

So shouldn't all local authorities be aligning their food procurement policy decisions with the economic obligations of the well-being duties of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015? If Oldham can do it, why can't Wales? Because it's not just in England. Scotland is also using this framework to drive up their procurement of locally produced food. I suggest that Wales could use it as a tool to strengthen our food foundational economy.

This investment in our children would also be popular with adults too. A recent YouGov poll for Cancer Research UK showed 86 per cent support for measures to ensure every school in Wales complies with the healthy eating guidelines, because we know that this is not the case at the moment. Does it really take the Children's Commissioner for Wales to tell us that turning off the water fountains in one school has forced pupils to use dinner money to buy bottled water?

How is it that Cardiff secondary schools now offer so called 'meal deals' of a bottled drink with food, adding to the plastic waste as well as the malnutrition of many schools? With a third of all Welsh children living in poverty, it is vital that the food served in school is of a high quality. For many it is the only meal they will get. All the research around holiday hunger tells us that. A meal deal should be a main meal with at least two veg plus a pudding of some sort, and that is my challenge to Cardiff.

Yet the squeeze on local authority budgets and, in my view, inadequately trained catering staff in many cases is causing them to trade quality for price. Last year, I'm sad to say, Flintshire outsourced its catering service to a new arm's-length trading company and dispensed with the Soil Association's certification services. To date there hasn't been much difference for children, but it deprives Flintshire of the framework to move forwards not backwards. The Minister for Education has made it very clear that all local authorities and school governors are responsible for monitoring adherence to the Healthy Eating in Schools (Wales) Measure 2009. Flintshire's NEWydd Catering and Cleaning's managing director assures me they still have full traceability for everything they use, and that they dropped the Soil Association because they couldn't get suppliers to deliver in the quantities they required, as well as on grounds of cost. But it's also because the visionary catering leader left. I come back again to Oldham: if Oldham can deliver, why can't Wales?

The Soil Association certification is but one way forward, but it’s what a majority of primary schools and some secondary schools are using in England, and what Scotland is applying to its ambition to become a good food nation. I invite you to compare what pupils in your constituency eat compared with what is dished up for pupils in France, in Spain, in Italy and in Greece. Where’s our ambition for our children? Either we must adopt the Soil Association framework for radical improvement, or devise something better. We cannot stay the same. No change is not an option.

I had a look at the 2013 guidelines in preparation for this debate, and what I read reminded me, actually, quite a lot of old-fashioned school dinners, which were meat and veg, and custard as your pudding. Obviously, nothing in the olden days, if you can put it that way, to do with vegetarianism or veganism—they hadn't been invented then. There was probably a lot more salt in those days as well. But I can see that things that we consider bad practice, likes cakes and biscuits, are still very much allowed on Welsh menus as long as they don't contain confectionery. So, I guess that means you still can get a cookie the size of your head, so long as it's full of raisins rather than chocolate. And, of course, nobody knew what a cookie was in the 1960s and 1970s, so things have definitely got better, or got worse—it's your call. I don't think there were guidelines all that time ago, but we need them now, that's for sure. 

From the dominance of manufactured foods and the transition of things like sweets and crisps from the status of treats to the status of careless snacking or even meal replacements in some cases, to the growth of takeaway culture and loss of cooking skills—a big one I think—there are loads of reasons that have moved us on from that very traditional fare, through the excitement of the introduction of the freeze-dried mashed potato. Do you remember that on the school menu? How excited we all were when Smash was introduced. And then onto that era then when spaghetti hoops were formally considered a vegetable—a bit of an accent colour on a plateful of beige.

But you're quite right, Jenny, we're not the only country to have guidelines for school meals, but you'd be surprised how many EU countries don't have them. Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands—these places we look to for very interesting ideas. Whereas others, like Germany, follow a similar pattern to us, I would say, and similar to England. Maybe Scotland's a bit more ambitious, with lists of what is allowed, what is limited, what is encouraged and what must be provided, accompanied in most cases by guidance on the quantities of different nutrients, including minerals and vitamins.

France, of course, plays to its strengths with a policy for a two-course meal accompanied by a side dish, plus an additional dairy product—all terribly silver service, it strikes me as. But it's Finland I think that's done something very interesting and which I think might give our teachers some ideas, actually, about how they might incorporate children's experience of eating school food into the wellbeing AoLE. Because, to a degree, they've got similar guidance of the type I've just described, but the main thrust of their policy is the sample plate. I don't know if you know about this. The sample plate, which is on view in the canteen, is supposed to encourage, or basically influence, school children about how to fill up their own plate when they get to the lunch queue. In this case, it's made up of half a plate of freshly cooked vegetables, a quarter potatoes, rice or pasta, and a quarter of meat, fish or non-animal protein. With that, the children can have milk and water, some bread and butter if they really want it, and their pudding is fruit. Puddings, like cake, are offered, but only rarely, when the main courses for some reason just don't have the full calorific value. So, they're real treats. 

But I think just as important is that the Finnish guidance says that the food must be temptingly presented, at the right temperature, by staff who are respectful of the children, but who are also respectful of the food. So, there's none of this slopping stuff into plastic trays. I think something else that's interesting from Finland is that their school meals cost 8 per cent of the education budget to provide. School meals are free in Finland, but that’s not my point—it's that basic cost about what they spend providing the food of this type with that nutritional quality.

Here, where schools have the same obligation to provide nutritious food, and can recover some of the money, we heard evidence from the children's commissioner—we were talking about children eligible for free school meals—they're being given meals that are worth just £2, or just over. Schools can't make profit on their food, so that's what the thing cost. I'm just thinking, the example that was given in the children's commissioner's report is that a slice of pizza cost £1.95. I'm not really sure why it cost £1.95 when, for a proper meal, you can charge 67p, but it certainly doesn't meet the nutritional guidelines. 

As you said, local authorities get, wrapped up in the RSG, money that's based on the number of children eligible for free school meals. The higher the number, the greater that contribution to the RSG. Schools get PDG for those same pupils. So, how on earth can a school get away with offering food worth £2? I think that's a bit of a policy failure in that particular case. I don't know if you know Minister, or whether you can tell us, how much goes into the RSG per free-school-meal pupil and how much of it then finds its way out of the RSG again to provide those nourishing meals we all want to see. I presume we're miles away from Finland's 8 per cent of the education budget—I'm sure we can't afford that.

I just want to finish by saying the guidelines are comprehensive but there's no duty to observe them, apart from promotion of healthy eating and providing drinking water. So, we're back in that area of expectations rather than obligations. So, I'm curious to hear from the Minister about what you can do when schools are caught out persistently ignoring guidelines. Thank you.  

To many children, including many in my constituency, their school is their major source of food during term time. The breakfast and midday meals provided in schools are the only meals they have, topped up only with snacks at home. Children will attend school in the morning having not eaten properly since their school midday meal the day before. This is not bad parenting, this is poverty, the result of austerity and the cruelty of universal credit. For many children, the breakfast and lunch they get in school is the only healthy food they will eat that day. By improving school meals, we are not only providing important nutritional assistance, but we are also helping kids to be better equipped to feed their minds and learn.

Will you just take an intervention?

Please.

Thank you. I take the point you're making about children in poverty, but there are children from pretty well-off families who are just given a pile of money and told, 'Get down the chip shop at lunchtime.' So, I don't think you can just put it into one category of children.

I'm going to come to something very similar to that later.

Concentrating on what is being taught in a classroom is a lot harder when you are hungry and the need for food exceeds any importance of what you are being taught in the classroom. That is why I am supporting this debate today and why I believe it is incredibly important that children are adequately fed in school and fed healthy meals.

The current situation is that the Healthy Eating in Schools (Nutritional Standards and Requirements) (Wales) Regulations 2013 outlines food and drinks that are suitable to be provided in maintained schools. This also covers foods provided as part of the free breakfast scheme. Governing bodies are required to provide information regarding their actions taken to promote healthy eating and drinking to pupils in their annual reports. Estyn, the education and training inspectorate in Wales, then reports on actions taken by schools to the Welsh Ministers.

Firstly, I want to concentrate on the school midday meal, or school dinner, as it is known to many. One of the many things that differentiates people like me from the wealthy is that I consider the midday meal 'dinner' whilst they describe it as 'lunch', and their main meal, 'dinner', occurs in the evening when I eat 'tea'. I think that's the difference, and a point that was raised by Suzy Davies: they may be given some money to go and get something, but they have a main meal when they get home, because their parents have that level of wealth. 

Absolutely, but I don't think you can just jump to that conclusion, Mike—if you'll take the intervention—because sometimes those parents aren't at home and what you find are 85 packets of crisps on the floor. 

Well, I'll use the word 'many', in which case we may reach a point where we agree. 

Three questions I'll pose: what happens when the children are ill or on holiday from school? Then, parents have to find 10 extra meals per week, per child. Is it any wonder that school holidays are the busiest times for foodbanks? I always remember the mother who told me how much she hated school holidays, not because of a need for childcare, but she knew how much extra food she was going to need during the holidays.

Secondly it is not just the school meals, the British Nutrition Foundation says that schools can play an important role in both promoting healthy eating habits among children and ensuring school food provides healthy, balanced and nutritious meals with the appropriate amount of energy and nutrients pupils need. Breakfast clubs, healthy tuck shops, school meals and packed lunches can make an important contribution to the energy and nutrient intake of children. It is crucial that there is a whole-school focus on healthy lifestyles, including the food provided to pupils, as well as the emphasis placed on healthy eating and nutrition throughout the different curriculum subjects. It is important that school food providers work together and the whole school community, from headteachers to parents, the cooks, the teachers and classroom assistants are all involved, in order to provide consistent messages for children to make healthier choices.

Thirdly, how does healthy food benefit children? Healthy eating can help children maintain a healthy weight, avoid certain health problems, stabilise their energy and sharpen their minds. A healthy diet can also have a profound effect on a child’s sense of mental and emotional well-being, helping to prevent conditions such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Eating well can support a child’s healthy growth and development into adulthood and may even play a role in lowering the risk of suicide in young people. If a child has already been diagnosed with a mental health problem, a healthy diet can help the child to manage the symptoms and regain control of their health.

It’s important to remember that children aren’t born with a craving for French fries and pizza and an aversion to broccoli and carrots, and babies are fed with milk, not with chocolate. This conditioning happens over time as kids are exposed to more and more unhealthy food choices that are high in salt and high in sugar—things like chocolate—which they tend to then keep on craving. However, it is possible to reprogramme children’s food cravings so that they crave healthier foods instead. The sooner you introduce wholesome, nutritious choices into children’s diets, the easier they’ll be able to develop a healthy relationship with food that can, and hopefully will, last a lifetime.

Finally, we need to ensure children are fed well in schools because we have no control over how they are fed anywhere else. And so we need to get it right in the schools, and I'm very pleased that Jenny Rathbone has brought this forward and I'm very pleased to support it. 

First of all, I'd like to thank Jenny for raising what is an extremely important issue, particularly about the availability of water to pupils.

I'm going to talk about vegan school meals. I think that school meals can play an important role in our children's health, development and their future choices. Building on that, I believe schools should regularly offer plant-based options without pupils having to make special requests. I'd like to see tasty, nutritious, appropriate vegan meals on daily menus. 

The number of vegans in the UK has risen rapidly and more flexitarians are choosing plant-based food as part of their diet. Vegans in the UK have the right to suitable plant-based catering under human rights and equality law, although, in practice, this often does not happen. Research has linked vegan diets with low blood pressure and cholesterol, as well as lower rates of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some types of cancer. Building familiarity with plant-based food could help offset bad dietary habits, like the ones that Mike was just mentioning, which are formed young, and then they contribute to public health challenges later on. Plant-based diets are also sustainable. Individually, we can reduce our food-related greenhouse gas emissions by up to 50 per cent by switching to a vegan diet in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, land and auto use, and soil erosion. And last year, research at the University of Oxford concluded that eating a vegan diet could be the single best way to reduce your environmental impact on the earth, and the United Nations has urged the global move towards a meat and dairy-free diet for the benefit of the planet. These are things that we've seen young people on the streets campaigning for, and I think that we ought to offer those same young people in their schools the option to make a choice, which I've mentioned isn't very often there, to carry that into their eating choices in school.

It is also the case that plant-based diets are rich in fibre, they're low in saturated fat, provide multiple servings of fruit and veg, and they exclude processed meat. Unfortunately, we're in a situation where very often it is the school meal that is the basis of most children's diet, but then after that we see the foodbanks taking over. And we all know that foodbanks offer processed food, because it's the very nature of what they have to do in order to keep it. So, it would also help—. I'm not actually advocating that people go to foodbanks—it is the case that, very often, that is what's happening. So, to offer a plant-based diet would be an extremely good option for some young people.  

It also gives us the opportunity within schools for young people to see the growing of food within their schools, because many do have small gardens, with the option of eating the produce of what they are growing. And also in some urban settings, where we have urban gardens, the food won't be travelling very far, so it would be nutritionally advantageous to the young people, but also in terms of the climate, it will also sustain that community, and also build communities, because young people can be involved in those activities. You can make this food affordable both within the school and outside the school, and our committee—the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee—are actually doing an inquiry at the moment into allotments. We can build some of the findings back into, I think, a debate like this today.

It's been mentioned today about the waste. Well, if you gave a plant-based diet to children in school, you'd actually be recycling peelings, not plastic.  

Can I now call on the Minister for Education, Kirsty Williams? 

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. Can I begin by thanking Jenny for raising this important issue? Unquestionably, healthy school meals can make a contribution to pupils' well-being, their attainment and positive behaviour. We have done a lot of work to ensure our children have healthier food in our schools, however I do believe that we can do more. 

Improving the health and well-being of children is a Welsh Government priority, as is improving the educational attainment of our learners. Ensuring that children have healthier and nutritious food in school is important in delivering on this commitment. Food feeds and fuels the body, but also feeds the brain. It's fundamental in ensuring the well-being of children, and when our children are happy and not hungry at school, then they can truly flourish and learn.

Can I take this opportunity, Deputy Presiding Officer, to thank those in our schools who work so hard every day to provide those meals for our children? Many of you will have heard me say before that my grandma was a cook in Blaenymaes Primary School in Swansea for many years; she peeled a lot of spuds for those kids, but I can tell you she took huge satisfaction in providing those meals too.

The Government has finalised a consultation on 'Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales'. In Wales, we know that one in four children start primary school overweight or obese, and habits relating to food consumption and declines in levels of physical activity are not new. They have built up over generations. And we also know that there is a very strong correlation to health inequality. I do not believe that we should tolerate any more children growing up with poor dietary habits or insufficient activity in their daily lives, but I also understand that there is no single solution or a simple way to change this. We all have a role to play. The Minister for Health and Social Services will publish a summary of the responses to that consultation by July, and a final strategy will launch in October, setting out our 10-year approach and our ambitions to turn this curve.

I am committed to updating our healthy eating in schools regulations, which were introduced in 2013, so that they include best practice and the most up-to-date current advice—for example on the levels of consumption of sugar and fibre in our diets. But let me be clear: local authorities and governing bodies are responsible for complying with the regulations, and anyone involved in providing food and drink in maintained schools should be aware of the statutory requirements if they plan menus, if they purchase or procure food and prepare food and drinks for our schools. Local authorities are responsible for the procurement of food in schools, and current legislation on procurement already allows schools and local authorities to procure Welsh produce, but it doesn't impose a requirement to do so. This is to avoid situations that could make the supply of produce in some cases either unaffordable or sometimes insufficient. But some local authorities, especially our rural ones, already procure local produce for use in their schools. That has a number of benefits. Earlier on today, I heard people talk about food miles and sustainability, but, actually, many of those schools then go on to use that food as an innovative way of talking about food production and nutrition as part of the wider school curriculum, and I applaud such approaches and innovations in local authorities that do that. As outlined by Mike Hedges, governors should report to parents via their annual report on the issue of school food, and it is subject to Estyn inspection.

On the issue of water, let me be absolutely clear—I should not need to be, but let me be absolutely clear—free and easy access to free drinking water is a non-negotiable. It is quite clear in section 6 of the Healthy Eating in Schools (Wales) Measure, passed by this Assembly back in 2009, that that is a requirement. Now, I am aware of the case quoted by the children's commissioner, although the commissioner was not in a position to tell me which school it was because, rest assured, I would have been, or my department would have been, in contact with that school. In the absence of that information, I, via the Dysg newsletter, informed and reminded each school and each local education authority of their responsibilities on this on 13 March.

However, I would be in a position to tell you that I have seen such denial of water in one of the schools I've visited, and privately I'd be happy to tell you which one it is. But I'm sure that these are not lone examples. You mentioned Estyn earlier on, and I just wanted to probe you as to how much you think Estyn pays any attention to the healthy eating guidelines, because I can remember when I was a lay inspector being told off by the main inspector that this was not an issue we should be exploring.

Well, it is clear to me, and it is clear to Estyn, that this is indeed an issue that they should be reporting on—how a school ensures that healthy food and drink are available to the children in school. And, as I said, I'm very disappointed that any school would restrict access to free drinking water for children. It is quite clear in the Measure and, as I said, on 13 March of this year, via the Dysg newsletter, we reminded all LEAs and all schools of their legal responsibilities in this regard.

Now, revising the regulations is one action to ensure a positive impact on children's well-being, attainment and behaviour. Recent reports, such as 'A Charter for Change' by the Children's Commissioner for Wales, and the recently published children's future food inquiry, have flagged issues ranging from holiday hunger, which Mike spoke about, to school meal debt, which I know has been a concern for the Member Joyce Watson, and non-take-up by those who are entitled to a free school meal. These are factors around poverty that have a significant impact on our children's happiness and their well-being.

Members will be aware that we have taken a number of actions to remove worries associated with some of these issues, whether that's thinking about how children's well-being can be prioritised or helping remove worries associated with some of the costs of the school day. Schools also play a vital role in promoting positive behaviours. The new school curriculum will support learners to develop an understanding of the contributory factors involved in achieving and maintaining a healthy body weight, particularly the impact of food and nutrition on health and well-being, and the skills to adopt healthy behaviours. Exploring these subject areas within the curriculum, facilitating new experiences and developing new skills in the process, will contribute to the whole-school approach and to learners' lifelong attitudes, I hope, to food and food consumption.

There are also a number of programmes within Welsh schools that could be strengthened and aligned to provide additional support for this agenda. The Welsh network of healthy school schemes, a national programme operating within the majority of Welsh schools, seeks holistically to promote health, both physical and mental, and programmes like eco-schools have the potential to inspire children to value the environment, understand the benefits of being outside, encourages food growing within the school campus, as well as wider issues around plastic and food security and the impact of food production on our sustainability agenda.

Lest we forget, Wales pioneered the way in a number of areas that have benefited our children. We led the way in the UK with the introduction of our free breakfast in primary initiative in 2004. And I admit I was a sceptic at the time, but the evidence and the research on the impact of that policy is clear: it makes a real difference to the educational attainment of those children. In its fifteenth year, the scheme is integral to our wider work to improve food and nutrition in maintained schools. Since 2017, we have funded the school holiday enrichment programme, and since then we have provided £1 million support to SHEP, making available nearly 4,000 places in SHEP schemes across Wales. And, in this financial year, we are making available up to £900,000 to further roll out SHEP, enabling local authorities and partners to support even more families this summer.

The well-being of our children, Deputy Presiding Officer, in conclusion, must be at the heart of our inclusive education system, and promoting and encouraging good eating habits while in school and, hopefully, taking those habits home is a shared responsibility between schools and families. Encouraging children to develop good eating habits will stay with them throughout their lives and help them develop into the happy, confident and healthy individuals all of us would want to see.

Thank you. Can I call on Dai Lloyd to reply to the debate?

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. May I thank everyone who has contributed to this important debate on healthy school meals? Of course, tackling the obesity agenda is vital, and one aspect of that is what is taking our attention this afternoon, namely healthy school meals, where, as the Minister has said, habits for life can be developed and built on—if they are good habits, of course.

May I congratulate Jenny Rathbone in the first instance for thinking about this idea and for doing all of the background work in putting forward this debate this afternoon? Thank you also for telling us about all of the activities that are ongoing with the scheme in Flintshire—of course, that was of great interest—and the innovative things going on there. I’m aware of some schools in Swansea where children can order what they want for lunch when they register in the morning, and that is working very well, as well as everything else, because, as Jenny said, this is an issue for the whole school.

And Jenny also emphasised the importance of Soil Association accreditation so that we have that vital standard of provision of the vital foods for our children. That means, of course, responsible procurement in the first instance that acknowledges health needs and environmental needs, indeed, including responsible local procurement, where that is possible.

And, of course, Jenny also emphasised the importance of the availability of water, free of charge and easily accessible, and the Minister also emphasised the importance of that. That is fundamental. Free, clean water: it is a statutory requirement. It should be happening. And we heard, of course, the communication back and forth about whether this is happening in all schools—I’m sure there will be further details forthcoming on that—but the availability of tap water avoids plastic bottles being used, of course, and avoids the need to purchase sugary drinks. So, those two issues are fundamentally important. We understand that; everybody understands that now, I would imagine, and we need to guarantee that clean water is available, free of charge, in every school, as the Minister has told us.

Of course, we had some international examples from Jenny, and we do need to look to other countries for the excellent examples in some areas. And, of course, that’s what Suzy Davies started with in her contribution, and thank you to her for that, telling us about some past school lunches—I won't pursue that—but, of course, that international experience, in Finland, in particular, again innovating, as Finland innovates in several different fields, and spending the necessary funds to innovate, it’s true to say. But I like that idea of showing children what a healthy plate of food looks like. That is very important—not just leaving it entirely up to the child’s choice. There’s an expectation there of what a healthy plateful looks like.

Then, moving on to Mike Hedges’s contribution, of course, Mike was emphasising the importance of the school meal, just in case the child did not receive any other food at all during that day—remembering the background of poverty, of course, in Swansea, that's a very important agenda for us—and again emphasised the importance of healthy food for the development and well-being of the child in educational terms and in terms of their health. And Mike also told us about the need or the challenge to provide food for our children during the summer holidays. It’s an issue that arises frequently in Swansea, particularly during the long school holidays in the summer. And Mike made the point that children aren’t born just liking chocolate and hating vegetables—there is a wider role in providing education and how children are brought up in this world, but I think that is outwith the parameters of this debate this afternoon. 

And that brings us to the very valuable contribution made by Joyce Watson about the availability of water, again, and making the case for having a vegan option as well in our schools—it’s about having that choice, isn’t it—and emphasising the importance of vegetables in terms of nutrition. And Joyce reminded us of the impact of what we eat, the direct influence of that on our environment. Joyce made the point, as several Members did, that the school meal can influence habits for life, as the child grows to be a young person and then an adult—you establish lifelong eating habits in school. And the very interesting point was made about when schools do grow their own produce to be consumed, emphasising the importance of local produce, but, in educational terms, children can see where their food comes from, and she referred to the current inquiry of the climate change committee on allotments and the importance in that regard of living a healthy life, eating healthy food and decreasing food waste. The result of that inquiry will follow from the climate change committee.

And the Minister, to conclude—I have noted some issues that she referred to already, but she also endorsed the importance of healthy meals to promote the well-being and development of the child, acknowledged the contribution of those who prepare the food, of course, including other members of her family over the years in areas of Swansea some of us know very well. It’s important to acknowledge the vital role played by those who prepare the food in our schools and the contribution they’ve made over the years, because the obesity agenda is the fundamental issue driving all of this. There are several elements to our response as a society to the obesity agenda, as the Minister outlined. The update of the regulations on healthy eating in schools is on the way. Again, the Minister emphasised the importance of local procurement. We had the debate again about the provision of water free of charge, and she reminded us that free breakfasts in school started here in Wales as well. To conclude, the Minister emphasised that the well-being of our children is what’s at the heart of this. Thank you.

The proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? No. Therefore, the motion is agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

Motion agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.