Member

The Minister mentioned building on the compliance pilot. This took place with the Food Standards Agency in 2022-23 and focused on the ability of local authority food safety officers to ask questions about the standards of the food rather than just inspecting food hygiene in school kitchens. It was found that, yes, they could carry out this role given clear guidance, but that more work needed to be done to respond to the findings of schools that were failing. We now have consultations about reviewing the school food standards and bringing them up to date, but no plan to inspect or enforce the new standards or to help schools to comply; nor am I aware of any plan to review whether some schools are being disadvantaged by how FSM allowance is calculated, particularly small schools in disadvantaged areas, as I just mentioned.