Cameron's government in chaos over hospital food

A member of the Department of Health’s Hospital Food Standards Panel [1] has resigned in protest against the government’s ‘chaotic and unfair’ plans to change food served in prisons, schools and hospitals [2].

The government’s current proposals include improvements to existing mandatory standards for food served in prisons and in government departments [3], but rule out the possibility of making the same or similar quality standards compulsory for hospital food for patients.

The coalition government is planning to improve Government Buying Standards [4], which are mandatory for food served to civil servants, politicians, prison inmates and members of the armed forces, and would require that more food is produced by British farmers, grown in season in the UK and cooked in a way that promotes the health of the people that eat it.

At the same time, the Department of Health is planning to recommend food standards for hospitals to apply to patient meals on a voluntary basis, some of which look set to be even weaker than the mandatory standards that prison food must meet. Campaigners point out that government has consistently refused to introduce legally-binding quality standards for hospital food served to patients in the last twenty years, and has instead presided over more than 20 failed voluntary initiatives to improve hospital food, which have wasted more than £50m of taxpayers’ money [5].

In 2013, the coalition government set up another voluntary initiative, called the Hospital Food Standards Panel, which from the start ruled out legally-binding standards for hospital food.

Alex Jackson, Co-ordinator of the Campaign for Better Hospital Food, said about his resignation: “From the outset, I was dismayed that health minister Dan Poulter prohibited the Hospital Food Standards Panel from even considering the introduction of legally-binding standards for patient meals, if it saw fit to do so. Making this recommendation would have been the real breakthrough after twenty years of failed government voluntary initiatives to improve food for some of the most vulnerable people that government provides meals for.

My concerns about the restrictions placed on the Panel have grown in recent weeks after it emerged that the government is actively looking to improve existing mandatory standards for food served to civil servants, prison inmates and members of the armed forces, and also potentially for schoolchildren. But not for hospital patients.

Having seen over 20 voluntary government initiatives fail to improve hospital over the past two decades at a cost of over £50m to the taxpayer, I cannot in all good conscience continue to support yet another voluntary initiative, which I have every reason to believe will be ineffective. The Department of Health must recognise its responsibility to hospital patients and apply legally-binding standards for hospital food. It could easily have achieved this by supporting Lady Cumberlege’s Hospital Food Bill [6] which would have introduced legally-binding standards for hospital food for the first time but, staggeringly, it chose not to do so.”

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For more information and interviews, please contact:
Alex Jackson on Tel: 0203 5596 777, or by email at alex@sustainweb.org

 

Notes to editor

[1] Earl Howe announces creation of Hospital Food Standards Panel, Hansard, 8 November 2013

[2] Read Alex Jackson’s letter resigning from the Hospital Food Standards Panel here.

[3] In January 2014, the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) appointed Dr Peter Bonfield OBE to lead a government initiative to improve public sector food, including strengthening Government Buying Standards.

A copy of Peter Bonfield’s initial proposals is available on request, by contacting Alex Jackson at alex@sustainweb.org.

[4] Government Buying Standards http://sd.defra.gov.uk/advice/public/buying/products/food/.

[5] Campaign for Better Hospital Food, Twenty years of hospital food failure, February 2013

[6] Lady Cumberlege’s Hospital Food Bill is called the Health and Social Care (Amendment) (Food Standards) Bill and is available to read at http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2013-14/healthandsocialcareamendmentfoodstandards.html.