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.