5. What plans does the Welsh Government have to increase the amount of locally grown food in school meals? OQ57302

I thank Jenny Rathbone for that, Llywydd. We are committed to increasing the amount of locally grown food in school meals, benefiting local economies through sustainable and responsible procurement and supply chains. An extension to the successful Big Bocs Bwyd project, for example, was included in this month's announcement of our new household support fund.

First Minister, you'll be aware that I'm one of the greatest fans of the really important commitment to ensure all primary school children are going to be getting a free school meal in the future, but I don’t underestimate the challenges involved in that—getting the right personnel who know how to cook, as well as ensuring that it is affordable in the long term. It seems to me essential that we ask our local authorities to clarify exactly how many tonnes of potatoes and carrots and all the other things that go into food for school children they are going to need in the future, so that we can get our farmers to grow those things rather than having to source them from elsewhere, because in that way we are both nourishing our children as well as nourishing our local economy. So, I just wondered what conversations have been had with local education authorities on how to really start planning this important matter.

I thank Jenny Rathbone for those really important points, and for her very strong support for school meals per se, but also the quality and the nature of those meals. The Member, I know, will be aware of Carmarthenshire council’s challenge fund project, which we funded through the foundational economy fund—a really excellent project led by the local authority in partnership with the local health board and the local university. It highlighted a number of really important opportunities, but it did also expose some of the real practical challenges, to which Jenny Rathbone has just drawn attention—problems of menu design, of public kitchens, and of the lack of processing capacity. So, all the milk used in schools in Carmarthenshire is Welsh milk, but some of that milk has to be taken, not just outside the county, but sometimes outside the country, in order to be processed and bottled. The local authority is committed to doing some work to see whether processing capacity, co-operatively based, could be recreated in the county. And the need to develop the Welsh horticulture sector, which the Member has often spoke about on the floor of the Senedd, was one of the lessons drawn from the challenge fund experience as well.

So, a lot of work has gone on, Llywydd, to identify the issues that need to be resolved if we are to make sure that the expansion in free school meals is accompanied by an uplift in the capacity of Welsh indigenous suppliers to then be part of all of that. Caerphilly council leads for the Welsh Local Government Association on public sector food, and I know that it is currently very directly engaged, for example, with Castell Howell, to see where there are opportunities to substitute Welsh suppliers for some of the suppliers that are currently used, not just in school meals, but in the wider public food sector. There are real opportunities there, but some very genuine, practical issues that will have to be resolved if those opportunities are to be properly realised.