MP urges Army to cook school meals

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Wed 2nd May 2007

Army chefs at Colchester Garrison should be asked to provide hot meals for youngsters at the three junior schools on the Garrison estate the majority of whose pupils are the children of members of HM Armed Forces.

The suggestion was made in the House of Commons by the town's MP Bob Russell who pointed out that for the past three years the three schools - Montgomery Infant, Montgomery Junior and St Michael's Primary - had not been able to provide hot lunch-time meals after the school dinner service was scrapped by Essex County Council.

Mr Russell told the Commons: "While their dads are in Afghanistan or Iraq, the children back in Colchester are not able to have a hot school meal because the three Army schools, for whatever reason, do not provide it.

"Those schools are within minutes of the massive new kitchen arrangement in the 'super garrison' that has been built. If the Ministry of Defence can organise troops to go to Iraq and Afghanistan, can it not organise a system whereby hot meals can be taken from the Garrison kitchens to those schools so that the children of military personnel can have a hot midday meal, if that is the parents' wish?"

He added: "It is not beyond the wit of the Ministry of Defence and the Department for Education and Skills to work together on that one."

Mr Russell said that many schools, following the scrapping by the County Council of the school meals service in April 2004, had since made alternative arrangements but not all of them had done so because they did not have sufficient resources or capacity.

After making his suggestion in the House of Commons, firstly during Education Questions and then in an Armed Forces debate featuring the need for measures to improve retention of military personnel, Mr Russell said that he would now be writing formally to the Secretaries of State for Defence and Education & Skills to request that they should discuss how a hot meal service can be provided in partnership with the three Army schools.

He added: "There are fantastic kitchen facilities at the newly-opened Merville Barracks. I am sure that, given goodwill, it should be possible for arrangements to be made for them to also provide meals for the three Army schools."