Free School Meals

Statement

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Thursday 5 June.

“With permission, I will make a Statement to update the House on free school meals for children.

This is a Government who put children first—they are at the centre of the change that we want to see, because what we do for our children, we do for our country. If we want to break the unfair link between background and success, deliver opportunity to every home and shape a fairer society, that has to start with our children. It has to start with the fundamentals: making sure that every family has a stable, loving home where no child lacks food or warmth. That simple dignity should be the uncontroversial birthright of every child as they grow up in a civilised society, but after 14 long years, that dignity was not universal, nor that birthright uncontroversial.

When this Government won the trust of the British people, which Conservative Members forfeited last July, the legacy of the Conservatives’ shameful record in power was a record number of children growing up in poverty. Some 4.5 million children were robbed of opportunity and hope, of life chances and of possibilities. Child poverty is a scar on our society. It is a mark of the failure of Conservative Members to grow the economy, to spread success to working people and to deliver for the next generation the ordinary hope that tomorrow will be better than today.

The last Government did not see the growing number of families in deep poverty as a failure to be addressed, but let me be clear that the growing number of children on free school meals under the last Government was an index of failure, not a story of success. This Government are determined to turn the picture around, tackling child poverty and spreading growth and opportunity to every family in every part of our country. That is why today I am announcing the biggest expansion of free school meal eligibility in England in a generation, because we can and must end the scourge of child poverty.

Today, we are setting out that we will give every child whose family is in receipt of universal credit the entitlement to free school meals. That means not simply meals in mouths but, crucially, money back in the pockets of parents and families on an unprecedented scale. This is a historic change for children and for families, with 100,000 children lifted out of poverty. That is the mark of a Government who are serious about backing parents and tackling child poverty, the mark of a Government with a plan for change and the mark of a Government with the ideas, investment and determination to see it through.

On that note, this Government’s child poverty taskforce, which my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education co-chairs with the Work and Pensions Secretary, is forging ahead. We have listened to parents, to charities and to people with lived experience, and now we are acting, bringing the change that children and families deserve. In the months and years to come, that change will be shaped by the child poverty strategy, which we will publish later this year.

This is an intervention that backs parents as well as children. Our free school meals expansion will put up to £495 back in parents’ pockets every year. For them, that means more freedom in how they support their families, more choice in how they care for their children and more opportunities to get on and live a good life. Our expansion of free school meals is not just about the here and now; it is an investment in our children’s futures. It sets them free from the worries and strains of growing up in poverty, leaving them free to learn and play and to do their very best in school. Today’s announcement is not only anti-poverty, but pro-learning. I know that Members across the House will agree with me when I say that those two causes shine brightest when they shine together. That is what the evidence tells us.

These meals need to be healthy. School food standards have not been revised since 2014, but this Government are acting quickly to put that right. That is why I am pleased to announce today that we are working with experts from across the sector to revise those standards. We are supporting schools with the latest nutritional guidance, because the benefits for children of getting a decent, healthy meal at school are huge, with their attendance higher, their focus sharper, their behaviour better, their grades stronger and their futures brighter. That chance to succeed should be open to all. That is the sort of society I want to live in and that this Government want to build, but the kind of change that our children need is not the work of a single day or a single policy, even one as important as this. That is why today’s announcement is part of our wider approach and moral mission with the child poverty strategy, the opportunity mission and this Government’s plan for change.

We have already begun rolling out school-based nurseries and 30 hours of government-funded childcare, saving parents up to £7,500 a year. Children are already eating, playing and learning together as our free breakfast clubs reach 750 early adopter schools, saving parents another £450 a year. We are cutting the cost of school uniforms for 4.2 million children, saving some parents £50 in their back-to-school shop. On top of that, we are recruiting more teachers, driving high and rising standards in our schools, reforming children’s social care, boosting the early years pupil premium and so much more.

Growing up in Fratton, I saw at first hand the devastating impact that poverty can have on children in Portsmouth. Friends came to school hungry and not ready to learn. That is why I am proud to stand here today as we offer a helping hand to ensure that every child, whatever their background and wherever they come from, achieves and thrives.

We are delivering the change that parents need and that children deserve—the change that will break the unfair link between background and success once and for all. That means doing everything in our power to end child poverty. Today, we say enough is enough. Today, we begin to turn the tide. Today, the fightback that began in July last year kicks up a gear. We are acting to secure a brighter future for our children and for our country too. I commend this Statement to the House”.

20:15:00

My Lords, I am grateful to the Government for this opportunity to understand the Statement on free school meal expansion rather better. I acknowledge that parents and children in receipt of universal credit will welcome the Government’s announcement, and many across the House will welcome a review of school food standards. However, I would be grateful if the Minister clarified a number of points about how this change will work in practice. As the Minister knows, transitional protections established in 2018 ensured that pupils who were eligible for free school meals would keep them during the universal credit rollout. This nearly doubled free school meal eligibility, from 13.6% to 25.7%. The Department for Education has now announced that these protections will end in September 2026 with the introduction of the new policy. However, it is not clear how many children will be affected by this. Dr Tammy Campbell, director for early years, inequalities and well-being at the Education Policy Institute, said: “To the best of our knowledge, the Department for Education has not fully assessed the number of children who will cease to be eligible for FSM as a result of the conclusion of transitional protections”. She added: “It is possible that the extension of eligibility will largely serve to balance out the cessation of transitional protections, rather than making significant numbers of children newly eligible”. Can the Minister confirm whether the department has done such an assessment and, if so, what are the figures that it revealed? If it has not done one, when will that happen? Can the Minister clarify the position in relation to pupil premium funding, since eligibility for free school meals is currently the gateway to the pupil premium? The pupil premium, which was a significant achievement of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition Government, provides £1,480 per primary school pupil and over £1,000 per secondary school pupil. My understanding is that the Government initially said that the link between the two will be broken, but then said in a second announcement that the total amount will remain unchanged. Can the Minister confirm exactly the Government’s position, how that will work in practice and whether the Government are indeed committed to the full £3 billion or so of pupil premium funding continuing? The Government’s announcement included other important figures relating to child poverty, including that this change will lift 100,000 children out of poverty. Again, I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm the timescale for that change. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has confirmed that, in the longer term, it believes the policy will lift 100,000 children out of poverty, but it cautioned that, due to the phasing out of the transitional measures which I mentioned earlier, the short-term costs and benefits are likely to be far more limited. Christine Farquharson, associate director of the IFS, said that we will “not see anything like 100,000 children lifted out of poverty next year”. How long does the Minister think it will take to reach the Government’s targets? How many children does she believe will be lifted out of poverty next year? Finally, can the Minister confirm how this policy applies to holiday activities, food funding and home to school transport? Will schools and local authorities continue to receive pupil premium and home to school transport funding based on the existing free school meals threshold or the expanded criteria? I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

My Lords, we very much welcome the Minister’s Statement. As we heard, over half a million more children will benefit from a free, nutritious meal every day. The Government have estimated that this will put £500 back into parents’ pockets. In the coalition, as we heard, we introduced a free meal for every key stage 1 pupil and prepared to extend this to key stage 2. This is excellent news for parents and their children. As a primary school head teacher, I was always concerned that the number of pupils’ parents who did not take up the free school meal entitlement was quite alarming. Despite numerous personal letters to those parents, newsletters and all the rest, they still did not take up their entitlement. That is why auto-enrolment of free school meals at a national level ensures that every child gets the meal they are entitled to. Will the Government now follow the example of many successful local authorities and introduce auto-enrolment for meals, and if not, why not? As we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, many vulnerable children spend many weeks each year not in school during the holidays. Will the Government take the opportunity to end holiday hunger and perhaps look at the feasibility of funding for meals during school holidays? Children on free school meals, particularly those in more affluent areas, often feel embarrassed and stigmatised, and are sometimes bullied, because they are having free meals. Will the Minister assure the House that confidentiality will be maintained at all times for those who are entitled to a free meal? I realise that the Statement was about free school lunches, but can the Minister update us on the number of children receiving breakfast and the timescale for rolling this out to more schools? The Minister is probably aware of the letter from a whole host of children’s charities about the problems of free breakfast for those children with special educational needs, which I have no doubt will come up during the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. We on these Benches have been pushing hard for the provision of free school meals in schools; it was in our manifesto. It is a victory for thousands of passionate campaigners, and the Government have listened.

My Lords, when this Government came into office there were 900,000 more children living in poverty than there had been when the Labour Government left office in 2010. This was a stain on our country. It was a terrible way for those children to live, preventing them having what they needed day-to-day and limiting their opportunities for the future. That is why this Government have announced the biggest expansion of free school meal eligibility in England in a generation, because we can and we must end the scourge of child poverty. That is why we will give every child whose family is in receipt of universal credit the entitlement to free school meals. That means not simply meals in mouths but, crucially, money back into the pockets of parents and families on an unprecedented scale. It means that 500,000 more children per year will be entitled to free school meals. In response to the noble Baroness’s question, it means that, over the course of this Parliament, 100,000 children will be lifted out of poverty. I commend the approach of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, to asking questions to gain some confidence and elucidation from me—an approach very different from that of the shadow Education Secretary, who did not allow the facts to get in the way of her tweeting completely erroneous information about the Government’s proposals. I will respond to the specific questions raised by the noble Baroness. First, we have been clear that transitional protections will now be extended to 2026, when all children whose families are in receipt of universal credit will be entitled to free school meals. At that point, we will bring to an end the transitional protections that were put in place to protect entitlement as universal credit rolled out. Secondly, the Government will continue to spend £3 billion on pupil premium and disadvantage this year. In 2026, the total will remain the same, on the basis of the level of those who would have been entitled to free school meals. Over the longer term, we will take action to consider the most appropriate way to distribute the funding necessary to respond to disadvantage and support schools in a range of ways, so that they can use it to help ensure that all children can succeed, regardless of their disadvantage. The holiday activity fund will also remain at existing levels. It will enable local authorities to have, as they already do, the flexibility and funding to ensure provision for children who need it. The entitlement to home school transport will remain the same, based on the current eligibility criteria post 2026, so no children will lose their entitlement to extended home school transport. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, talked about take-up. First, it is likely that the simplicity of now basing the entitlement on universal credit means that it will be much clearer to families, when they claim universal credit, that they are automatically entitled to free school meals. In addition, the Government are also improving the ability for not only local authorities but parents and families to check their eligibility more clearly than they have been able to until this point.

If we find that that is not having the take-up that we hope for, will the Government look at auto-enrolment?

The Government are extending the entitlement to free school meals because we want children to benefit from them. We will keep under review the extent to which those free school meals and all the benefits that come with them are being taken up. The noble Lord made a point about the stigma that some children and families feel. I know that many schools are—all schools should be—very careful about the way in which they identify which children are eligible for free school meals and which are not. We have moved some way from the terrible times when those children eligible for free school meals had to sit at separate tables and all the awful things that I know some people have experienced or certainly heard of. Schools will work hard to make sure that there is confidentiality and that that stigma is removed. On the point about breakfast clubs, we have ensured that, from this April, there are 750 early adopter breakfast clubs across the country, having significantly increased the investment in those breakfast clubs to £30 million. As the noble Lord says, we will be able to consider this and the further rollout of breakfast clubs in more detail when we come to that part of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which will put the Government’s intention to ensure that all children in primary schools can benefit from breakfast clubs into legislation. This considerable investment in our children is a significant sign of this Government’s commitment to tackling the scourge of child poverty. It is, as the Prime Minister says, a “down payment” on the Government’s child poverty strategy and it is symbolic of the difference that a Labour Government make.

20:30:00

My Lords, I warmly welcome the extension of free school meals. It is important for children and for parents in poverty. I very much welcome what my noble friend has said about it being a down payment on the child poverty strategy, but I echo my Commons colleagues who argued that it cannot be a substitute for the abolition of the two-child limit on universal credit. Given that the real benefit of the free school meals extension will not be felt until September 2026, that it is estimated that over 100 children are falling into poverty every day that the two-child limit continues, and that parents and children are really struggling now, will my noble friend please impress on the Chancellor and the Prime Minister the need for urgent action on the two-child limit?

I say to my noble friend that, as I think she has conceded, this considerable investment in our children is urgent action on tackling the issue of child poverty—as have been the Government’s investment in breakfast clubs already; our plans to limit the cost of school uniforms; the increase in the national minimum wage, adding an additional £1,400 to the income of those poorest families; the extension of the entitlement to free childcare; the uprated benefits this year; and the way in which the Government has supported 700,000 of the poorest families by introducing a fair repayment rate on universal credit deductions. But I agree with her that there is more to do. That is why the child poverty task force is currently looking at all the levers that could be used to support children out of poverty, including income, housing, energy costs and the availability of work for our poorest families. This is, as I have already emphasised, the latest step to put extra money into people’s pockets, building on action that this Government have already taken. It is a down payment on our child poverty strategy, where work continues, and the Government will have more to say.

My Lords, I quote from the Statement that “it is an investment in our children’s futures. It sets them free from the worries and strains of growing up in poverty”. Does the Minister agree that, if this is the Government’s aim, there should be compulsory financial education in schools about pensions? A £50 pension contribution every month from the age of 18 can produce £363,000 at retirement age. The excellent brief last year from the House of Lords Library stated that there were “concerns have been raised that financial education is not being adequately provided”. How will the Government ensure that education on pensions is being properly taught and help to end poverty?

On Thursday, I think I will have the opportunity to answer a Question in this House on financial education in schools. Of course, I agree with the noble Earl that it is important that children develop the mathematical and business skills to understand the decisions that they then need to make about their own and their family’s money, and he makes an important point about pension contributions —notwithstanding his argument that young people should start them from the age of 18. I am not quite sure whether, in primary school, you can embed in a child’s mind the significance of that, but he makes an important point about ensuring that people understand the importance of pensions. Of course, hopefully, those children will look to their grandparents and the additional funding that they will receive as a result of this Government’s ability to maintain the triple lock, and they will see that investing in a pension is a good thing to do.

My Lords, I very much welcome this Statement. It really is good news. I particularly welcome the look at nutritional standards. We talked about resources in, but, in education, we use free school meals as a measurement not only for money going into the school but for attainment levels, and that has become quite a considered and important way of monitoring performance and improvement. Have the Government given any thought to how having so many more children entitled to free school meals will affect that set of statistics, and does more work need to be done on that?

My noble friend makes two important points. First, she is right that, alongside this announcement, we have also said that we think now is the right time to review the nutritional standards for school food. My ministerial colleagues have already begun work with stakeholders on scoping out what will happen there and how those standards can be brought up to date. It is an important point that quite often accountability measures—analysis and monitoring of attainment—is based on a proxy of free school meals for disadvantage. The department will look at other ways of measuring that disadvantage and the way in which that can then be used to ensure attainment. Even more importantly, as I am sure my noble friend will have noticed, the Secretary of State is absolutely clear that the most disadvantaged groups need to have a better deal and to be supported to perform better in our schools than has been the case until this point, and she will do everything necessary not only to measure how effective that is, but to ensure that it happens as well.

My Lords, I very much welcome this announcement, as others have done, because, in the words of the Statement, it is not just anti poverty but pro learning. As chair of the E-ACT multi-academy trust, I see the context of too many children’s lives coming through our school gates every day. I also note the disconnection with pupil premium and free school meals eligibility. What advice does the Minister have for schools wanting to run registration campaigns for pupil premium without the literal carrot of free school meals?

My noble friend is right of course about the importance of the contribution to learning. I think it is hard to envisage how children can focus on the learning that needs to happen without having nutritious, good food inside them both first thing in the morning from our breakfast clubs and of course at lunchtime as well. The important point about the pupil premium, as my noble friend will know very well, is that, while it has been allocated and designated on the basis of individual pupils’ entitlements, it is spent within schools on a range of different activities. It is not attached to a single pupil. That is why I think the Government will want to undertake some serious thinking about how to maintain and improve the support that is available for ensuring that children who come from disadvantaged backgrounds get the support in schools that they can, without depending in the long term on the link to entitlement for free school meals. Of course, in the short term, not least because free school meal entitlement based on the current criteria lasts for six years, there will be a considerable amount of time when that could be used to allocate pupil premium, but there needs to be work on ensuring that funding for disadvantage can continue for students to be used as effectively as possible by schools.

My Lords, I join the congratulations to my noble friend and the Government. This is very good news at a time when good news is particularly welcome. I also welcome the welcome from the Lib Dem Front Bench and the very responsible and sincere questions about how many children will benefit from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. Does my noble friend agree that compulsory education for primary and secondary school children was one of the greatest things about the post-war, cross-party human rights consensus? Does she also agree that we would not dream of charging children or parents for heating, security and pencils during the compulsory school day and therefore it was always a little odd that food was charged for? Given the concerns about the number of children who benefit, stigmatisation et cetera and all the obvious logic that we have heard from noble friends about the learning benefits as well as the anti-poverty benefits of nutrition in school, might we one day, with this level of consensus, aspire to—my noble friend chuckles because she knows where I am going with this—universal free school meals for every child or young person in compulsory education?

One of the things I have noticed about this House is the ambition of noble Lords. They are not satisfied with the status quo. In fact, they are not satisfied with the next stage of development; they push for more. My noble friend will understand that this big increase in entitlement represents a considerable financial investment in children by the Government. There is, of course, entitlement to universal free school meals for infant-aged children. For the time being, we will have to celebrate, and ensure that we properly implement, this increase in entitlement, but I note the ambition of my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti and other noble friends on this issue.

20:40:00

Sitting suspended.