School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme: Expenditure

Tim Loughton
To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much has been spent on the free fruit and vegetable programme in schools in each year since it was introduced.

Dawn Primarolo
The lottery provided £16 million towards the original pilots of the National School Fruit Scheme between 2000 and 2002. Lottery funding also provided £42 million to support scaling-up of the original pilots across five Government regions between 2002 and 2004.

The Department spent £0.75 million in 2001-02 and £0.3 million in 2002-03 on administering and evaluating the national school fruit scheme pilots.

The national rollout to all local education authority infant, primary and special schools across England of the scheme was completed at the end of 2004 and in the year 2004-05 the Department spent £28.5 million on the scheme.

From April 2005 the Department has fully funded the school fruit and vegetable. The cost of the scheme in 2005-06 was £37.83 million and £36.77 million in 2006-07.

As the scheme has developed we have been able to achieve efficiencies in the overall administration of the scheme and the supply and distribution of the fruit and vegetables which has resulted in spending on the scheme reducing over the last year.