Health Committee on Feb. 26th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

That sounds very good. We'll listen to you, and then we'll open it up for questions and answers. Go ahead.

[Joe Harvey]

Sounds good to me.

My previous history is one of being based in education all my life. The Health Education Trust came into existence in 1993, when I was senior advisor to the Birmingham education department.

The trust is an advocate for children. It argues for best practices. It argues for consistent approaches in education and health and the valuing of children in everything that is done inside a school. It also argues for their engagement and involvement in the decision-making process, and we see the power of partnership as being very important.

On the issue of food services, food curriculum, and the delivery of food and nutrition in the context of a school, it seems to us that the process is almost as important as some of the outcomes.

The last 10 years have seen the adoption of many of the principles we set out as early as 1993, 1994, and 1995, when we published the first approaches to whole-school food and nutrition policy--school nutrition action groups, and the concept that everything you do across the school day should be consistent, should engage children, and should be for the best of their health.

In response to the growing crisis in childhood obesity, we find ourselves with an explosion of activity right across the U.K., and probably the best opportunities we have had for positive change in 25 years. We have three national programs operating: Hungry for Success, which is Scottish; Appetite for Life, which is the Welsh program; and Turning the Tables, which is the English one. I am and have been directly involved in both the writing and the delivery of the Welsh and English programs for national change.

This change is consistent in terms of principles. It is looking at the whole of the food service throughout the day. It's not just the lunchtime provision, but also areas I know you're interested in, such as snacking and vending--vending has been a particularly disgraceful situation in the U.K. over the last 10 or 15 years--and all aspects of the taught curriculum, including what we teach children about the theory of food and nutrition and also the fact that for a long time there's been a very large gap in our ability to have children leave school with an ability to cook food and to understand basic food hygiene. We're looking at the whole picture.

One of the jobs the Health Education Trust has had as we've run up to this has been problem-solving--looking at issues like vending, for example, and deciding how we can produce healthy vending that will be appropriate for the children, that will be used, and that will be commercially viable.

Probably the country with the most to offer in terms of forging ahead at the moment is Wales, because they are again taking a point that was communicated to me from your government, this area of looking at food and physical activity at the same time. I'm engaged at the moment in writing some policy documents for the Welsh Assembly Government, looking at joint policy development for food and nutrition, physical activity, and recreation throughout all schools in Wales.

There were references on our website to one or two of the issues we've worked on particularly. Our Best in Class initiative simply looks at schools that have best practice, are delivering change, and are prepared to share with other schools the benefits that have accrued from what they've done in food nutrition policy.

We have in England and in the U.K. in general a very strong non-government organizational lobbying teamwork--organizations like ourselves--but I think I'd just finish by saying that probably the most exciting thing I've been involved in for a very long time is a big lottery award for £17 million that we have won, along with three other partners. It will turn 180 of our schools in our nine regions in England into beacons of best practice in all aspects of food and nutrition over the next five years. We are currently engaged in developing the groundwork for that, and we'll get into our first schools in September.

That's a whistle-stop tour of where we're at, at the moment. I'd be happy to pick up on anything you would like to talk about.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much for that presentation and for answering some questions.

We'll proceed to that questioning, and we'll ask Ms. Bennett if she would start.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Thanks very much.

I wonder if you would just elaborate on the Best in Class initiative in terms of the criteria that are used and in terms of whether it is on the student coming out, being able to do these things, or is it the availability of physical activity and good nutrition in a school?

Here in Canada, in the province of Quebec, there is a program called ISO-Active, which is almost like an ISO 9000 standard for a school to be designated an ISO-Active school.

Could you just go over the Best in Class idea and what is the critical appraisal being taught? What would be the things you would evaluate in terms of Best in Class, and are there some things you would include that are maybe not already included now?

[Joe Harvey]

I think probably Best in Class is already being overtaken by our Food for Life Partnership, the big lottery award I've just described to you, because that will, in effect, produce 180 Best in Class schools. But they won't be called Best in Class; they'll be called Food for Life gold standard.

Best in Class was an initiative that we put into place. And remember, we're a relatively small charity. We live off a shoestring. We just happened to be recognized as having great expertise in a fairly small area of education.

I think one was just to prove that schools could take a whole-school policy around food and nutrition, some physical activity as well, but not all...certainly not in England. Food and nutrition, sadly, is too often separate from policy on physical activity and recreation. I'm hoping that will change very rapidly over the next three to five years when we see the work coming out of Wales. And there is already an intimation that the English and Scottish governments are wanting movement this way.

But Best in Class was just a little toe in the water to show anybody who was interested enough to look at our website that where you have schools that were courageous enough to take the time to set principles around engagement of pupils in decision-making, you could work as a school to assess where you were, where you wanted to get to, what the particular emphasis was in your school, and work along those lines and achieve huge benefits.

We set relatively relaxed parameters in terms of overall outcomes. What we wanted to see were parameters that met the latest government guidelines, which are tough, parameters that involve children in the decision-making process through school councils and through the creation of a food policy working group, as well, of course, as a close partnership with a caterer, and, where possible, linked to the external community, which mutually supported the school and the school supported it.

We were also looking to see that the whole process of food and nutrition was used as a channel, not just for the engagement of pupils but for valuing them. The principle of this is an understanding that if you do anything badly in a school, it will have an impact on the way children perceive themselves, almost certainly on their behaviour, and certainly on their social education.

Where we have some schools that will see their lunchtime period as a problem rather than as an opportunity, we have a school where I see a bad senior management team, where I would ask the question as an ex-inspector/advisor, if you do that badly, what else don't you care about?

It's this principle of setting up a value system that sees everything in the school being done as well as it can and sees that process as a part of growing children up to take greater responsibility for the operation of the school.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Can you tell me, did this come to your research because the previous top-down imposition of what's good for you didn't work, and then you learned that if the kids were involved in the decisions, there was easier implementation and better results?

[Joe Harvey]

That's an interesting question. It almost presumes an either/or, and I don't see it that way.

I see children in schools working with staff and caterers within a set of constraints, because at the moment what we have.... We may want to get into this when we're looking at things such as vending, snacking, the impact of advertising, and the large companies.

I've seen the disgraceful development of large multinational soft drink and confectionery companies taking over, as they did in the United States, the whole of the vending/snacking operation and making a very considerable profit. In effect, they were buying profits at the cost of poor health to the children.

Quite clearly, there was an easily understood cynicism or, if you like, an inconsistency between teaching the importance of fresh fruit and vegetables and a balanced diet in the classroom and then selling high-fat, sugar-laden soft drinks and confectionery throughout the school.

It doesn't add up. So it seems to me that you establish a pattern of best practice, good quality catering, and good quality other services, such as vending and snacking. Then within that parameter, you sit down with your children and your caterers to say okay, how do we deliver these changes? What is the best way to operate? What's the time scale, and what level of flexibility is there for negotiations?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much.

Madam Gagnon.

[Christiane Gagnon, Bloc, Québec, QC]

I will defer to Mr. Luc Malo.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Luc, go ahead, please.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for appearing before us today, Mr. Harvey.

Last week, we had before us the minister of State of Sports of the UK who came to talk about various aspects related to a cultural change that he sees happening in your country. He told us it is important for young people to become more active and to have contact with positive role models such as professional athletes, for example.

Would you care to comment on this?

[Joe Harvey]

Yes. I'm not sure that our government has the greatest record again in terms of consistency, with delivering role models or processes that are particularly supported.

On a number of occasions recently, the government actually got into bed with big business through endorsement programs that supplied net ball posts and basketballs, for example, in return for a large collection of chocolate bar wrappers.

So I'm concerned again that if a government minister talks about such an issue, with which I agree in principle, at the same time we should be looking at the sponsorship of the sports that most of our sporting heroes take part in. For example, if you look at our number one sport, soccer, and you look at who sponsors the premier league soccer players, it is by and large alcohol companies, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi.

It seems to me that a government action to restrict the total domination of sporting events by these companies...and you could also take into account massive multinational companies, such as McDonald's, that spend a great deal of time, effort, and money making sure that the very exciting sports for men and women, which are right in the public eye at all times, are associated with their products.

If that could be curtailed, it would be very much more helpful than the odd athlete turning up at a school here and there to give an hour or two of free coaching.

The other aspect of this is that we have a major problem in the U.K. with our sports and recreation infrastructure, in terms of making sure that kids can get access to sporting facilities at a relatively sensible and accessible price, and also that those sports facilities are in good condition.

So while I take the point you're making, it seems to me that it's actually a little splash in a puddle. There's a whole lake of water that we should be looking at, in terms of the really important influences on young people regarding turning them on to activity.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much.

Now, Mr. Mike Wallace.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome back.

Thank you, Mr. Harvey, for joining us today.

Just for my education on this, who developed your mandate, and where do you get your funding from for the Health Education Trust?

[Joe Harvey]

Could you repeat the bit about mandate? I'm sorry, I missed that.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

First, was it the Government of England that developed your mandate for the trust? Where did that come from?

Second, where do you get your funding?

And third, do you deal with partnerships? What's the role of parents in the education system on health education?

[Joe Harvey]

That sort of question should keep me busy for a little while, shouldn't it? Let's start with the mandate.

We don't get our mandate from the government or in fact from anywhere else. We established the principles and objectives that we believe are important to us as an independent charitable trust. They are enshrined within our memorandum as a charity and as a company, and we deliver them to the best of our ability, in partnership with those people who are like-minded. So when the government is doing something well, we support the government passionately. When it's doing something badly, we criticize it as toughly as we possibly can. We work with those people who share our ideals and our passion for giving the best possible outcomes for kids through the school process and beyond. So where we see meanness, or inconsistency, or hypocrisy, or an undue influence by large multinational companies, particularly who are interested in profits, not children's health, we will swing into action and bring as much influence to bear as we can.

We are a very small organization, so we partner up as often as we can with as many people as we can.

As for budgets and funding, we have very little budget; we have very little funding. We work on a shoestring, and I actually earn my living doing a whole lot of other things.

The money we get tends to do things. This document I'm holding up in front of you is the toolkit for healthy vending that we wrote for the Welsh Assembly government. They gave us a grant to deliver that one. Here is another one that relates to whole-school food policy; another one on vending; and another one on water policy.

I'm also chair of the Caroline Walker Trust, and these are guidelines, public health nutrition guidelines, for other institutions. This one is for old people.

So the work that's done is usually done on the back of grants to do specific pieces of work. Our lobbying is normally done on the back of other earned income.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

That's a help for me, because just based on the title of the trust and how it worked, I wasn't sure who was involved.

You touched on it briefly and you talked a lot about health education and food within the educational system. What is your trust's role in terms of education and promotion of physical activity, in conjunction with proper diet, and so on?

[Joe Harvey]

When I left Birmingham about 12 or 13 years ago, I left it as a specialist advisor in health. We've been almost driven down a much narrower path over the last, particularly, five or six years because of, I guess, the devastation that we're seeing in terms of the obesity crisis with our young people. But my background has to do with legal and illegal drugs and with physical activity. In fact, my original training was as a specialist physical education teacher.

So I'm passionate about linking the two, but at the moment it is a relatively small part, an understated part, one might say, of Scottish and English policy. It is much more strongly being pursued in Wales. I'm working very closely with the Welsh Assembly government to deliver policy that I hope will mean that schools, when they're looking at food and nutrition, at the same time look at physical activity, both in the curriculum and the recreative facilities available within the school, and link that very closely to what is available in the community outside, whether it's public services or whether it's based on the local clubs that can offer support to kids and good quality coaching to kids.

So it's not something that I am spending as much time on as I would like, but it's something that I see being pulled into the picture in the rest of the U.K. as the work in Wales, which is of a first-class quality, gets more and more noticed.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

We want to thank you very much for being here with us. I don't see any other questioners at this time. So I want to thank you again, Mr. Harvey, for your participation. We're actually drawing to a conclusion. We've had a tremendous number of witnesses on this subject of childhood obesity, and we hope to be moving into writing our report very soon. So I thank you for contributing to that.

Just before we sign off, I would like to make mention of those who helped with the technical and logistics on both sides, or in both countries. I was going to say on both sides of the pond, but it's a big pond. Let's call it both countries. I certainly want to thank those people in the United Kingdom who have helped set this up--they've saved us travelling over there--and the people on this end as well, by doing this videoconferencing. So thank you to them, as we are about to sign off.

Thank you, Mr. Harvey, for your contributions.

We will call this part of the meeting over, and we will then go into the motion.

[Joe Harvey]

Nice to talk to you. Bye.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you.

Madame Gagnon, would you like to present the motion?

[Christiane Gagnon, Bloc, Québec, QC]

I will move my motion on Wednesday because I need to leave immediately. I will not have the time to...

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

You don't want to do the motion.