LONDON – The British government is urging school leaders to use their “common law powers” to search student lunches and potentially confiscate any items they deem “unhealthy or inappropriate.”

Education minister Lord Nash tells Express, “Schools have common law powers to search pupils, with their consent, for items.

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“There is nothing to prevent schools from having a policy of inspecting lunch boxes for food items that are prohibited under their school food policies.

“A member of staff may confiscate, keep or destroy such items found as a result of the search if it is reasonable to do so in the circumstances.”

The government’s foray into lunch inspections began when Cherry Tree Primary School in Colchester banned a Peperami sausage snack and scotch eggs from a six-year-old girl’s lunch.

Manchester’s Manley Park Primary School seized cereal bars from lunches, according to the Huffington Post.

“Government should get out of people’s lunchboxes and focus on trying to fix the big things like immigration and the deficit,” Ukip member Douglas Carswell says.

Iain Austin, a Labour MP, adds: “With Britain tumbling down the international league tables and with a generation entering the work force with less literacy and numeracy than the generation retiring, you would have thought that teachers might have better things to do than rummaging through children’s crisps and fruit.”

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There have been glimpses of such policies in the U.S.

A teacher at an Aurora, Colorado school blocked a preschool girl from eating Oreo cookies in her home-packed lunch.

They were accompanied by a ham and cheese sandwich and string cheese.

When the girl returned home from school, the cookies were still in her lunchbox, along with a note:

“Dear Parents, it is very important that all students have a nutritious lunch. This is a public school setting and all children are required to have a fruit, a vegetable and a heavy snack from home, along with a milk. If they have potatoes, the child will also need bread to go along with it. Lunchables, chips, fruit snacks, and peanut butter are not considered to be a healthy snack. This is a very important part of our program and we need everyone’s participation.”

Pearson’s daughter says her teacher didn’t allow her to eat the cookies during lunch, because “they don’t have enough nutritional value,” according to 9 News.

“What the school thinks is healthy for her is not what I think is healthy for her,” the mother says. “That’s between me and her and our doctor – not the school.”

And now, apparently, to progressives in power.