I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I will not say which option I prefer, because I want to air all the issues, which I think are rather complex, and it is very important that they are all considered.
To return to my point about the variability in how children access free school milk, I have some figures from Bournemouth, Poole and Dorset, three local authorities, for the percentage of under-fives accessing
Cool Milk, which is the agent that provides it, so it is possible that there are other ways of getting the milk. The figures are interesting: for Dorset it is 89.8%, for Bournemouth it is 25.5% and for Poole it is 46.3%. It would be worthwhile to get all the figures from the local authorities, rather than receive the answer, “This information is not collected centrally.” Some worthwhile statistical analysis could be carried out to make sure that our most disadvantaged children actually access the milk, because that is not automatically the case.
The School and Nursery Milk Alliance raises serious concerns about the knock-on effect that changes to the nursery milk scheme could have on the over-fives scheme. It is worried that a reduced take-up among under-fives will result in fewer over-fives moving on to school milk and that, if providers are no longer supplying nurseries in other settings, it will be harder for them to supply schools as part of the over-fives milk scheme.
Another point to consider is the administration process for child-care providers. At present, child-care providers or the agent they use, such as Cool Milk, which operates in my constituency, are reimbursed for the costs of the milk after they have purchased it. Whatever scheme is put in place must not put more of a burden on child-care providers, but be simple and easy to use so that nurseries and other settings are not put off taking part in the scheme.
We must consider how the milk will be delivered to the care providers. It is, of course, more expensive to deliver to nurseries in small and rural areas and to childminders working in difficult to access places.