Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:10 pm on 2 February 2021.
Llywydd, I thank Jenny Rathbone for those follow-up questions. I'm afraid I'm old enough to remember when, during the Thatcher era, the Conservative-controlled Shropshire County Council served potted meat sandwiches to its free school meals children for Christmas dinner one year. So, it's no surprise to me at all to find that, when a public service delivers something for children in need, then they get a better deal than when this is hived off to profit-making friends of the Conservative Party.
I agree with the Member about the Henshaw report, and I'm very grateful to all those who contributed to it. I was able to meet the group early on in their work, and it does provide us with some very practical ideas of how we can make sure that, as we recover from coronavirus, we're able to do so in a way that puts our environment, and the place that food has in that, at the top of our agenda.
Llywydd, the Member asked for some examples of what the Welsh Government is able to do, and here are, very quickly, just a small number. As I said, what we try and do is invest in ideas and then make those ideas go further when they turn out to be good ones. In my own constituency, Llywydd, the Dusty Forge project is a fantastic project that hosted the first pantry scheme in Wales. That's now gone to other parts of Wales, including, I know, Glenwood church in the Member's own constituency. Just before Christmas, my colleague Lee Waters announced £100,000 to take into Valley communities the Big Box Bwyd scheme that had started in the Vale of Glamorgan, has been successfully demonstrated in two pioneer schools in Barry, and will now be available to five schools in Merthyr, Aberdare, Maesteg and Rhydaman.
I'll give a final example, Llywydd, on a lightly bigger scale—Carmarthenshire County Council, in partnership with its local health board and its local university is using money through the foundational economy challenge fund is finding ways in which the public sector procurement of local food can both provide better food in hospitals, in colleges and in older people's homes, but will also secure supply, strengthen local economies and reduce the carbon footprint. Working with the Centre for Local Economic Strategies, we are also looking to take those ideas and to implant them in other local areas in Wales.