Free School Meals Campaign
Free school meals now!
Don’t take no for an answer when nation’s health is at stake
by Frances Curran, SSP West of Scotland MSP
First Minister and former teacher Jack McConnell recently got his ten-year
report card from the Scottish Diet Action Plan on improving the health of Scots.
He scored a bottom-of-the-class one out of ten.
Jack should be sent back to policy school for revision because some of the
answers to the question ‘how do you improve the health of children and
young people’ are easy-peasy.
Get them to eat healthy, nutritious food, and do this by introducing free,
healthy school dinners.
The Scottish Executive and Labour MSPs are childishly putting their fingers
in their ears and sticking their tongues out at the growing evidence that free,
healthy school meals works.
They should stop throwing their toys out of the pram, grow up and support my
Free Healthy School Meals bill which has huge support in Scotland and which
began its journey through the parliament on 28 September 2006, on its way to
becoming a law if it gets a majority of MSPs to vote for it.
Proof that it works and could help change the lives and health of our children
can be summed up in one word - Hull.
The foresight of Hull City Council puts to shame all the naysayers in the Scottish
Parliament.
Every day in Hull, 68 per cent of primary school children eat a healthy, well-balanced,
nutritious meal.
It’s enough to make a Health Tsar do a double back-flip in celebration.
How did they manage such a breakthrough, given that only 34 per cent ate healthy
meals two years ago?
Did they force-feed the little darlings broccoli and carrots?
Or administer intravenous doses of vitamins, and nutrients?
No. Nothing so drastic. They just introduced healthy, free school dinners (and
breakfasts and after-school snacks) for all primary school kids.
Kind of blows a great big polystyrene hole in the argument that ‘kids
won’t eat healthy meals, they’ll still go to the chippy’.
So, what would it cost the Scottish Parliament to introduce free school meals
throughout Scotland? A mere £74million.
Last year the Scottish Parliament underspend (money they fail to spend in any
given year) was £235million. In previous years it’s been much higher
- three times that amount in 2001.
So £74million is nothing to Scotland’s MSPs, when you consider
the health benefits of nutritious, free school meals, both immediate and long-term.
A nation of kids who eat healthily will take their eating habits with them
into later life, and pass them on to their own children. Heart disease and
obesity levels will plummet, saving millions for the NHS.
For kids today, it will also mean higher concentration levels, higher academic
achievement, and less tantrums and less bad behaviour in class.
Holyrood has the chance to make Scots healthier and smarter for years to come.
But first, its MSPs need to pass the free school meals bill...