|
The People’s Voice
Hull Daily Mail
Blundells Corner
Beverley Road
Hull
HU3 1XS
LETTER FOR PUBLICATION
28 February 2007
Dear Editor,
Cllr Carl Minns is not such a delicate flower that he needs sympathy from Reg Deller (Mail letters, 28 February). Cllr Minns made no complaints to me about our recent television interviews about
free school food.
However, I have a right to challenge the Lib Dems when they seek to mislead the public. The Lib Dems regard the doubling of the take-up in primary schools of healthier food as a failure, while
blaming Government funding for their wish to bring back charges! However, since 1997, Government funding for Hull City Council has increased by an average of 6% per year in a decade when inflation
has averaged around 2.5%.
Hull’s progress in improving the diet and classroom performance of local children will be put at risk by axing the ‘Eat Well Do Well’ policy. This view is shared by the 77.6% of Hull people that
backed keeping the policy in the Mail’s recent poll, and the 92% of primary school parents who told Hull University researchers that they support ‘Eat Well Do Well’.
There is still some opposition to ‘Eat Well Do Well’ from those who see the issue only as a welfare matter, rather than a public health one. Not everyone yet realises that the childhood obesity
threat is not confined to those eligible for means-tested free school meals. Not everyone yet realises that unless we address this challenge the cost to taxpayers will be far more in the years
ahead than the present investment in ‘Eat Well Do Well’.
Pioneering policies that are ahead of their time always attract opposition at the start. Hull’s William Wilberforce found this 200 years ago.
Yours sincerely,
Diana Johnson MP
Kingston upon Hull North
| 
28 February 2007: To Hull Daily Mail
