Jamie Oliver Slams Gove Over 'Eroding' Standards

The celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has slammed the Education Secretary for "eroding" the healthy school meal standards brought in after his lengthy campaign.

Jamie said he was concerned that academy schools were not obliged to sign up to the standards introduced by the previous government on the back of the high profile campaign.

Speaking to BBC News on Thursday, Jamie said: "The bit of work that we did which is law was a good bit of work for any government.

"So to erode it, which is essentially what Mr Gove is doing - his view is we let schools do what they want.

"I think that's a wonderful ambition, that everyone's going to be brilliant, but headteachers are more pushed than ever, expected to do more than ever, now they have to be entrepreneurial caterers as well as everything else they have to do.

The chef called on parents to tell Michael Gove not to touch the rules, warning that a move away from them would be a disaster.

Responding to Jamie Oliver's concerns Labour's Shadow Children's Minister Sharon Hodgson said: "Once again, this out-of-touch Education Secretary is just crossing his fingers and hoping for the best when it comes to the health and education of our children.

"Ministers know that children concentrate and learn better when they have had a filling and nutritious meal, and for many children their school lunch might be the only time they get that. Yet, they purposely set about destroying the healthy legacy that Jamie Oliver and everyone in the sector worked so hard to build.

"First they scrapped the dedicated grant to subsidise healthy and fresh meals, and then they exempted thousands of primary and secondary schools from having to provide them. Michael Gove is effectively throwing away years of hard work and achievement in driving up standards for purely ideological reasons, and without any mandate from parents."

(DW)