It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd, and to respond to the debate on behalf of the Under-Secretary of State for Public Health, Start for Life and Primary Care, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom). I am grateful to the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) for raising this important debate about the Healthy Start scheme, and to other hon. Members who have contributed.
The Government are committed to supporting the next generation of children, who are, of course, our future, and their own will obviously depend on this as well. A child’s early life is critical to their health later in life. We want every family to receive the right support to care for their children. Growing up with a healthy diet and weight is strongly protective against ill health in childhood and adulthood. Eating a healthier diet, as set out in “The Eatwell Guide”, could increase population life expectancy by up to eight years.
We know that fruit and vegetable consumption is lower among more deprived children, and that those children may be at risk of not getting enough micronutrients. More than one in five children start primary school overweight or obese, and the numbers are higher in more deprived areas. That is a major risk factor for long-term diseases including heart disease, type 2 diabetes and many types of cancer.
Against that backdrop, the support for children to eat healthily through the Healthy Start scheme and our provision of free school meals is crucial. The Healthy Start scheme benefits hundreds of thousands of families across the country. The statutory scheme encourages a healthy diet for pregnant women, babies and young children under four from low-income households. Eligibility criteria for the scheme ensure that we target nutritional support on families who need it most.
In April 2021, we increased the value of Healthy Start by 37%, from £3.10 to £4.25 a week, therefore helping families with the increased cost of living. I welcome the support demonstrated by colleagues today for this important
scheme and the emphasis placed on its uptake. I fully agree that we need to ensure that eligible families are aware of and able to access Healthy Start. I now turn to how we are doing that.
Healthy Start is delivered by the NHS Business Services Authority, on behalf of the Department. Following user research and testing by both the Department and the NHSBSA, the scheme switched from being paper based to a digitised service in 2021. An online application and prepaid card replaced the previous paper form and vouchers. The number of families being supported by Healthy Start has grown following the introduction of the prepaid card. Since September 2021, of the more than 600,000 successful applications, 45% have come from new families and the scheme now supports more than 360,000 beneficiaries on lower incomes. The uptake is 62% of people who are eligible, which is higher than in the previous paper scheme and shows the benefits of the transition to a digital scheme.
Hon. Members have raised the question of auto-enrolling eligible families on Healthy Start. Moving to auto-enrolment would require a substantial redesign of the scheme. In contrast to what I heard the hon. Member for South Shields say, such a move, unfortunately, is not a simple thing to do. I am told that the prepaid card would need to be removed because it is a financial product that, under financial services legislation, requires applicants to accept the terms and conditions on an opt-in basis, so we cannot have it as an opt-out. Creating a new delivery method and process is therefore far from straightforward and would come at an additional cost to Government, with disruption for the beneficiaries.