European Parliament votes to give fruit to all children

Yesterday the European Parliament voted to give millions of children across the EU access to free fresh fruit in school. This is the first time that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) budget has been used in such a way to directly benefit the public health needs of European citizens.

This new scheme will effectively extend across Europe the existing successful Free School Fruit programme created in 2000 by Britain's Labour government which has already benefitted thousands of children in England, and will also go a long way to helping in the creation of similar schemes in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Although I and my fellow Labour MEPs believe a larger budget for the scheme would be more helpful (it is currently set at €90million per year), this encouragement from the EU for governments to support the health and wellbeing of our children will help to tackle obesity, diabetes, and other serious illnesses, as well as providing immediate benefits for child health and shaping young people's views on nutrition.

Unsurprisingly however, the increasingly erratic and dysfunctional Eurosceptics in UKIP opposed this report's conclusions, and the very real health benefits they will bring to our children, on the basis that this scheme would make the EU look good! Maybe they should try thinking more about the needs of their constituents than opposing every good idea they come across for their own political indulgence.