Mr Neil Macfarlane (Sutton & Cheam)

I am grateful to the hon. and learned Member for Accrington (Mr. Davidson) and to the hon. Member for Preston, South (Mr. Thorne) for having given me an opportunity to participate in this important debate. I listened with great interest to what they said about the school meals service in Lancashire. In the media in recent weeks, and in this debate much attention has been focused the comparison drawn by the hon. Member for Preston, South and by the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) between one of the meals served in Lancashire primary schools and, according to the media, a meal that was provided by the Blackburn workhouse in 1933.

It comes as something of a surprise that the hon. Member for Blackburn is not here. I accept that there may be other constraints on his time that prevent his being here. However, in recent weeks much comment has been initiated by the hon. Gentleman. This subject is important enough for the hon. Gentleman to join his hon. Friends on the Opposition Benches.

Whilst such comparisons make good headlines, they are very misleading and do great damage to the school meals service. They also denigrate the efforts of school meals staff, who work hard and imaginatively to provide meals for pupils. The unfair and destructive criticism that has been heard not only in recent weeks but over a series of months is one factor that has contributed to the fall in take-up since 1979. Therefore, we must establish the facts and put them into perspective.

The hon. Member for Preston, South made certain assertions that I wish to put right. It has never been the intention that a school meal should provide for the full daily nutritional needs of schoolchildren. Even before the Education (No. 2) Act 1980, the Department's nutritional guidelines were that the meal should meet one-third of the child's daily energy requirements and about 40 per cent. of the protein requirements. It follows, therefore, that the majority of a child's needs was assumed to be met by the meals provided at home by the parents. If hon. Members say that children do not have the balance made up at home, I suggest that this is the responsibility of the parents, not of the State or the education service. We must also bear in mind that pupils spend nearly half the year outside school, when provision of their meals is entirely a matter for the parents.

One conclusion to be drawn from this, in passing, is that the critical comparison made by the hon. Member for Blackburn between the school meal and what was provided in the workhouse in 1933 would apply with equal force to the school meals that were being provided prior to 1980.

Let us now consider Lancashire. Again, what are the facts? Under the Education (No. 2) Act 1980 it is a matter for each local education authority to decide what to provide at midday, and there is no Government control over this. Nevertheless, I asked my officials to obtain from Lancashire details of what it provides. We have heard the interpretation by the hon. Member for Preston, South of what the Lancashire school meals service provides.

I understand that all primary school meals are planned on the basis of a 20-day menu cycle, which has been carefully constructed in consultation with the Health Service dieticians to provide overall the same proportion of the recommended daily amounts of protein and energy as was provided in previous years. That is to say, over a four-week period a pupil will receive in total one-third or more of the daily amounts of energy and protein recommended by the DHSS advisory committee on medical aspects of food policy. Clearly, if there is to be variety in what is provided, there will be some days during the four-week period when some aspects of the nutritional content of the meal will be below the average. Equally, there will be days when it is above the average.

The school meal referred to by the hon. Member for Blackburn in his comments on the north-west of England happened to be below the daily average for protein content but above the average for energy content. As examples from the authority's menu cycle which have a higher protein content, I can quote Lancashire hot pot, potato and meat pie and beefburger and chips. For these meals parents pay 40p, which is substantially less than the cost of providing the meal. By any standards, it represents good value for provision by the authority, which, as an outside caterer, has to meet substantial staffing costs and overheads.

What the authority is not claiming to do is to provide a meal that is suitable as the main meal of the day. For this reason, meals such as the one described have less bulk than would be appropriate to a main meal. Again, in passing, it is doubtful whether many children today would think much of being given half a pound of dry bread with their meal, as was apparently included in the workhouse dinner.

Because the hon. Gentleman referred to nutrition, I should like to quote from a newspaper from the North-West an article by Jill Sutton, the education correspondent, in which she said: Professor Arnold Bender, head of the nutrition department at Queen Elizabeth College, London, said that the children would be eating at least 760 calories—very near the 800 calorie target set by the Department of Education. That article goes on to describe the meal that was consumed that day. It is important to put on record that the nutritional content of meals is well understood and acknowledged by the Lancashire county authority.

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