Date published: 2005/03/30
The BBC says:
An extra £280m over three years is to be spent on improving school meals in England - as TV chef Jamie Oliver's campaign on the issue reaches a climax.
At least 50p will be spent on each primary school lunch and 60p in secondaries. Some primaries currently spend as little as 37p on ingredients.
Handing in a 271,000-name petition to Downing Street, the chef regretted it had taken a TV show to get changes.
But the education secretary insists she always planned better school lunches.
Jamie Oliver told reporters: "It is certainly very positive - 20 years too late but we are talking about the right sort of money."
He said there could always be demands for new money and he would be discussing the details but the package was a "massive improvement".
"Unfortunately, it has taken a documentary and really the hearts and emotions of the kids and families we filmed to touch the nation," he added.
Grants, to go via local education authorities, involve "new" money from Department for Education and Skills reserves.
Priority will be given to areas which currently spend the least, though all schools should get something from a £220m pot.
Another £60m is for a new School Food Trust, which will advise schools and parents on healthy menus.
It must be an election year, the government is caving in to all sorts of special interest groups. Those 271000 people were so brave signing a petition asking for someone else to pay more tax so they could have better food. Has anyone thought to ask whether the parents should pay more for the better food? Of course not, parents should never pay for anything. Around £1.50 is actually spent per pupil on lunch, but most of it gets soaked up in labour costs, hence the risible 37p left for ingredients. Imagine the kind of food that children would get if instead parents spent £1.50 on packed lunches. But of course parents should not be expected to make packed lunches, they should expect someone else to make their children's lunches and someone else should pay for it. The worst aspect of the announcement is that £60m pounds of the "new" money (i.e. over 20 percent) is going to be blown on a quango that will no doubt produce lots of patronising glossy brochures in traditional government fashion. The only good thing in all of this is that if you are going to spend £220m of other people's money, at least this amount is being spent on something useful, i.e. decent food (which is not the same as "organic" food, which yet another middle class special interest pressure group, the Soil Association, seems to think).
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