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.