I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Healthy Start scheme and increases in the cost of living.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I am pleased I have been successful in securing a debate on this issue at such a timely and critical moment.
Hon. Members will be aware of the shocking revelations from Sky News last week that parents are being forced to steal baby formula to feed their infant children. Other parents revealed that they are watering down formula or mixing it with other ingredients, such as flour, in a desperate attempt to make it last longer. One parent in that situation, who was quoted in Sky’s report, talked about his baby’s “hungry scream” and how he has heard it so often that he knows it now.
It has also been reported that an unregulated black market has sprung up with second-hand baby formula, which is often less safe than formula found in supermarkets, being sold online at a cheaper price, to which parents are now turning in their panic. The British Pregnancy Advisory Service has warned that parents being forced to make such decisions is putting the UK on the brink of a public health crisis.
Let me be clear from the start: the fact that parents are in such a situation in 21st century Britain is utterly shameful. Although I do not want the debate to turn into a political slanging match, last week’s reporting from Sky should make the Government reflect on their record on the cost of living crisis. Not just baby formula is proving out of reach for struggling young families. Food banks are reporting steep increases in the number of parents with infant children coming to them for support. When asked what his Government were doing in the face of this cost of living catastrophe, the Prime Minister said:
“We have particular support for young families, something called Healthy Start vouchers, which provide money to young families”
to help
“with the costs of fresh food.”
I am sorry to say that the Prime Minister is living in a different world if he thinks the current rate of Healthy Start, which has been frozen by Conservative Governments in each of the past two years, is sufficient for struggling families who are living through the worst cost of living crisis on record. That is the reason I have secured the debate today. Healthy Start is simply not living up to its stated purpose. It does not cover the cost of healthy food, it does not cover the cost of baby formula and it is no longer acting as the nutritional safety net for families that it was originally intended to be.
Although many much-needed reforms could be made to Healthy Start to make it more effective, including auto-enrolment, on which my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) is doing great work, fundamentally, as is so often the case, this is a question of money. The money being provided by Healthy Start is simply not enough for struggling parents. The solution must, therefore, be to uplift the value of Healthy
Start so that payments reflect inflation and so that children, regardless of background, are given the best possible nutritional start in life. That is what I am calling for today.
To set out the context: Healthy Start was introduced by the previous Labour Government in 2006. It provides payments to people who qualify to help buy milk, baby formula, fresh fruit and vegetables, and pulses. Eligible families receive £4.25 a week from the 10th week of pregnancy, then £8.50 a week while the baby is from nought to one year old and £4.25 per week thereafter, until the child is four. As of April 2023, there were 336,468 beneficiaries of Healthy Start payments, although my understanding is that there is a lack of transparency on the number of Healthy Start recipients as data is published only on the number of beneficiaries, as opposed to the number of actual children the claims relate to. I would be grateful if the Minister could set out why that data is not published, and commit to sharing that information as soon as possible, given the seriousness of the issue.
Healthy Start payments have been uplifted only once under the Conservative Government—once in 13 years. That was in April 2021 and was in response to a recommendation from the National Food Strategy. That date is important because, since the last increase, inflation has torn into the budgets of the poorest families hardest. The cumulative change in UK consumer prices from April 2021 to March 2023 was 17%. Looked at in isolation, food inflation was much higher than that and was running at 17.2% in the last year alone.
New data from First Steps Nutrition Trust shows that the cost of the cheapest brand of formula milk has risen by 45% in the past two years. Other brands have risen by between 17% and 31% in the same period. Currently, Healthy Start payments do not cover the full cost of any baby formula on the market in the UK. What might have been affordable when the last increase was announced is now out of reach for many of those in most need.
The Government talk about halving inflation, but I am sure that even the Minister would agree with me that that cannot be achieved overnight. In the meantime, families have to make ends meet, but at the moment they simply cannot. Increasing Healthy Start payments to reflect the 17% rise in costs that families have endured in the last two years would make a real difference. That is being called for by the national charities working in this area, as well as my local Labour-run Trafford Council, which I must credit with first raising this matter with me and highlighting the impact that freezing the allowance is having on families in my constituency and across Trafford.
I understand that money is tight, and 17% might sound like a big increase, but we are talking in real terms about less than £1 per child per week for those on the lower rate of Healthy Start, which is the vast majority of recipients. If the £4.25 voucher were uprated to reflect inflation, it would rise to around £4.97—72p more than current levels. For context, the Best Start Foods scheme in Scotland is currently £4.95 per child aged between one and three years old, so the uplift would effectively bring parity. I do not believe that in 21st century Britain, which, despite all our many issues, remains one of the
wealthiest countries in the world, a 72p increase to help the poorest children is beyond us. Not only is there a strong moral case for it; there is also a compelling economic case. We know the impact that child poverty and the poor nutrition that comes with it have on a child’s health and wellbeing, with a knock-on effect on their future life chances.
Loughborough University has estimated that the costs of child poverty on future lost earnings retained by individuals were £11.6 billion in 2021. Not only is that terrible for the individual, but it represents billions in lost tax revenue for the Treasury. That is before we get to the fact that people on the lowest incomes are more than twice as likely to say that they have poor health than people on the highest incomes, meaning that they are more likely to be reliant on an NHS that is now at breaking point.
I am pleased that yesterday the Labour party put prevention at the heart of our mission for the national health service. I am sure that when the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), responds—[Interruption.] He says “Hear, hear” from a sedentary position, but he might not when I finish. I hope that he will agree on the importance of tackling health inequalities and on why it is such an important issue. An improved Healthy Start scheme can be a part of the journey, given we know that it is effective in improving childhood nutrition and leads to greater consumption of healthy foods.
I will not pretend that increasing the value of Healthy Start is a silver bullet. The increases that I am calling for are modest, but they must form part of a much wider national effort to tackle child poverty, which has now reached such a level that more than 4,000 children in my constituency of Stretford and Urmston are growing up under the yoke of poverty. Labour has a record to be proud of here: the last Labour Government lifted more than a million children out of poverty, largely through fairly redistributing the proceeds of sustained economic growth, which this Government is failing to achieve. Alongside that, they prioritised tackling child poverty and implementing the measures in the Child Poverty Act 2010. Those measures were scrapped by this Government several years ago, leaving us in the mire we now find ourselves in.
The debate is about calling on the Government to take action now. They are the ones with the power to make a difference. A modest increase to Healthy Start could have a significant impact on the poorest families. When considering the issue, I urge the Minister to think of last week’s reports, the indignity that poverty brings and the stigma, shame and anxiety felt by families who are forced to steal or risk their child’s health. Think of what it must be like to feel helpless, hearing again your child’s hungry scream, which many parents now know so well. With all that in mind, if the Minister does not support uplifting the value of Healthy Start in the face of such powerful testimony, I ask him, why not?
2.41 pm