Conservative MP for Richmond Park and green campaigner wants annual budget for schools, hospitals and care homes to be spent on local, organic and sustainable food
Zac Goldsmith is urging ministers to kickstart a revolution in eating habits by ensuring that all schools, hospitals and care homes start using healthy, environmentally friendly, sustainable food.
A Conservative party taskforce led by the new MP for Richmond Park and prominent green campaigner wants the government and public sector's £2bn annual food budget to be spent on produce that is organic, has been produced nearby and meets animal welfare standards.
The taskforce's unpublished final report calls on the government to overhaul public sector food procurement to boost British agriculture, help the planet by reducing "food miles", reduce dependence on an increasingly precarious international food supply chain and improve the quality of food that millions of people eat every day. Changes could be cost-neutral or even save money, it says.
If implemented, its proposals would apply to all food produced by the NHS, local councils, schools, care homes and Whitehall departments as well as prisons and the armed forces.
They would ensure that meals produced in such settings were much healthier by having less salt and saturated fat and always including fruit and vegetables, and included only fish and meat that met welfare standards.
Voluntary initiatives in recent years to drive the takeup of sustainable food have "failed", taxpayers' money has been wasted and "strong leadership from central government is now needed to drive reform", the report says.
Goldsmith, who underlined his green credentials during the election campaign by threatening to resign his seat if a Conservative government backtracked on its pledge to scrap the planned third runway at Heathrow, told the Guardian last night that he hoped to meet ministers at the Department Environment, Food and Rural Affairs shortly to discuss his report.
"I'm going to push this issue. I will push as hard as I can to get this through the system. I would like this policy proposal to become policy. I would love this to become part of the way we do things," he said.
Cornwall's three hospitals serve increasing amounts of fresh, locally produced and organic food to patients, visitors and staff, while in East Ayrshire 30% of the food in local school meals is organic, 70% is from local sources and 90% is unprocessed. In 2008 the Dutch government pledged that all the food it, as well as the country's regional and local authorities and water boards, buys will be sustainably produced by 2015.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: "The public sector is a significant buyer of food, and there is potential to influence demand for healthier and more sustainable food that meets British standards of production.
"That's why the government has committed to ensuring that food procured by the public sector meets or exceeds those standards wherever it can be achieved without increasing the overall cost."