Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Seventh sitting)
(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)
I beg to move amendment 6, in clause 21, page 42, line 23, leave out
“has the meaning given by section 437(8)”
and insert
“means—
(a) a community, foundation or voluntary school, or
(b) a community or foundation special school”.
This amendment amends the definition of “maintained school” in section 551B (inserted into the Education Act 1996 by clause 21) so that it does not exclude community or foundation special schools established in a hospital. Such schools are already excluded by the definition of “relevant school” in that inserted section.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 26, in clause 21, page 43, line 31, at end insert—
“(4) This section may only come into force after the Secretary of State has laid before Parliament a report containing the following information—
(a) what form breakfast club provision by schools currently takes;
(b) how much breakfast club provision costs schools, and how much is charged by schools for such provision;
(c) how much funding is estimated to be required to enable schools to meet the requirements of this section;
(d) what additional staff will be required to deliver the breakfast clubs; and
(e) the grounds on which the Secretary of State would use the power under section 551C.”
Amendment 27, in clause 21, page 43, line 31, at end insert—
“(4) This section may only come into force after the Secretary of State has provided details of how schools are to be resourced to meet the requirements of this section.”
Amendment 28, in clause 21, page 43, line 31, at end insert—
“551E Duty to fund secondary school breakfast clubs
(1) The Secretary of State must, within three months of the passing of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, create a national school breakfast club programme.
(2) A programme created under subsection (1) must—
(a) provide a 75% subsidy for the food and delivery costs of breakfast club provision; and
(b) offer pupils in participating schools free food and drink.
(3) To be eligible to participate in the programme—
(a) a school must be a state funded secondary school, special school or provider of alternative provision; and
(b) at least 40% of the pupils on the school’s pupil roll must be in bands A-F of the Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index.”
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to continue with the existing funding programme for secondary school breakfast clubs in areas of deprivation.
Clause stand part.
Stephen Morgan
The Government amendment stands in the name of my hon. Friend, the Minister for School Standards. The amendment is a technical one, which will ensure that the clause only includes one reference to the exclusion of community or foundation special schools established in a hospital from the duty to secure breakfast club provision. Without the amendment, the Bill would mention that twice, which might have caused some confusion.
The amendment ensures the consistent use of the definition of maintained school with the provision on limits to branded school uniform items, which has also been confirmed by Government amendment. The effect of the Bill before and after the amendment—to exclude maintained schools established in a hospital—remains the same. Schools established in a hospital are excluded from this duty, because the Government recognise that children and young people who cannot attend their usual school, because of their medical needs, will already be receiving breakfast and quality care in hospital.
Amendments 26 and 27, tabled by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, seek a report from the Secretary of State to Parliament with key delivery questions on breakfast clubs. He raises some important issues and, as I stated previously, I value his engagement with the Bill and this subject.
The Department is working intensively and at pace on the delivery plans for breakfast clubs, including the information the hon. Member mentions and more. I will come to that later, but first I want to address his points about what form breakfast club provision takes and why we need to act. What we inherited from the previous Government is a patchwork of provision with varying costs for parents, varying offers and often, critically, insufficient funding for the actual club, leading to the exclusion of many disadvantaged pupils. We are legislating to replace that patchwork with an absolute commitment to give all children, regardless of their circumstances, a great start to the school day via a free breakfast club.
On delivery, I want to reassure the shadow Minister that schools will be funded and supported to deliver the new breakfast clubs. We are working with more than 750 early adopter schools from this April to ensure that we get the implementation, funding and support to resources right, before national roll-out of the new clubs. We published our funding methodology alongside guidance for early adopters on 16 January this year. We worked closely with schools on the rates to ensure they were sufficient. Funding for national roll-out is, of course, subject to the next spending review. As we learn from the early adopters to develop our statutory guidance and support package, more information will be made available, including on the exemptions process, putting that in the public domain and before Parliament.
I trust that Members will agree that the Department has the right plans in place to deal with delivery considerations through work with early adopters, support and statutory guidance, and that they have heard my commitment in Committee today that schools will be funded and supported to deliver the clubs. Therefore, for the reasons I have outlined, I ask the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston kindly to withdraw his amendments 26 and 27.
I am grateful for the opportunity afforded by amendment 28, also tabled by the shadow Minister, to discuss the continuation of provision for secondary schools in disadvantaged areas. The hon. Member makes a good point about hungry children in secondary schools, and I confirm that the 2,700 schools on the national school breakfast programme, including approximately 750 secondary schools, will continue to be supported by the scheme until at least March 2026.
We want to start by giving the youngest pupils, regardless of their circumstances, a great start to the school day. Through our opportunity mission, the Government will ensure that all children get the best start in life as we deliver what we believe is the most important starting point of a child’s schooling journey. These new primary school breakfast clubs will be transformational, giving every child access to fully funded provision of at least 30 minutes of free breakfast club. This measure goes much further than the existing national school breakfast program, which only funds the food and covers up to 2,700 schools.
Our plan builds on the evidence that breakfast clubs in primary schools can boost children’s academic attainment and attendance and drive up life chances. The free club and food will also support parents with the cost of living, and support parents to work. Compared with studies of programmes targeted at primary-age pupils, there are few high-quality experimental studies on the impact of breakfast clubs on secondary-aged pupils. Typically, primary school breakfast clubs have higher take-up than secondaries, and more studies, such as Magic Breakfast’s evaluation, report their positive effects on attainment and attendance. The reported attendance improvement for children at breakfast club schools is equivalent to 26 fewer half days of absence per year for a class of 30 children. Education Endowment Foundation research also shows up to two months of additional progress from key stage one to key stage two.
It has always been our intent—with limited resources, but backed by the evidence—to start with primary schools as we roll out breakfast clubs. It is right that we start with supporting the youngest children. We are working with 750 early adopters from this April to test how the measure will best be implemented. That will not only help us to test and learn how every primary school in the future can deliver the new breakfast clubs, but it will give us important insights into how schools with unusual age ranges, such as all-through schools, special schools or those with on-site nurseries, implement the policy. On that basis, I invite the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston to withdraw his amendment.
Clause 21, by placing a duty on state-funded primary schools to introduce free breakfast clubs, will give all children, regardless of their circumstances, a great start to the school day. We are absolutely committed to spreading the evidenced benefits that breakfast clubs offer, which will form a key part of our mission to break the unfair link between background and opportunity. Many more children will be settled and ready to learn at the start of the school day. It is also good for attendance, good for attainment and good for behaviour.
At a minimum, the breakfast clubs will start for 30 minutes before the start of the school day and will include breakfast. They will be free of charge and available to all pupils from reception to year 6 at state-funded schools. Importantly, the provision includes children with special educational needs and disabilities at mainstream schools, as well as state-funded special schools and alternative provision.
Schools will be able to do what works best for their families, so they will be able to work alongside childcare providers and even other schools if that means that they are best able to deliver the benefits of breakfast clubs to help parents and children.
Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
Has the Department conducted any analysis differentiating those students who are disadvantaged and on free school meals, or considered disadvantaged, and those who are not? The Government are applying a blanket policy across all students of primary school. The Minister makes an eloquent point that some of those children are very needy, but others are not. Has the Department conducted an analysis of the impact across different groups?
Stephen Morgan
The beauty of this scheme is its universal offer—a free offer to every child in primary school. As I mentioned earlier, we see the clear benefits of the scheme in terms of attainment, behaviour and, indeed, attendance. That is what is really exciting about our plans.
Work is already under way with 750 early adopter schools to start to deliver from April 2025, thanks to a tripling of funding for the breakfast clubs at last October’s Budget compared with financial year 2024-25. Early adopters are just the first step in delivering on our steadfast commitment to introducing breakfast clubs in every primary school. They will help us to test and learn how every school can best deliver the new breakfast clubs in the future and maximise the benefit to schools, their pupils and the families and communities they serve. Legislating for breakfast club provision in the Bill will give schools the certainty they need to plan for the future and ensure that there is a consistent and accessible offer for children and parents who need a settled start and support with childcare. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Neil O'Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)
I rise today, as we pass the halfway point of line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill, to find that we still do not have the impact assessment. The Bill has passed Second Reading. It is totally pointless having an impact assessment of a measure if it is produced after has Parliament debated it. The Ministers would make the same point if they were still shadow Ministers, so I make it to them now. I do not understand what the hold-up is.
The last Government substantially expanded access to breakfast clubs in primary and secondary schools and created the holiday activities food programme. The national school breakfasts programme has been running since 2018, and in March 2023 the then Government announced £289 million for the national wraparound childcare funding programme, which helps to fund breakfast clubs, among other things. That was part of a much wider expansion of free childcare that saw spending on the free entitlement double in real terms between 2010 and 2024, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, including things such as the 30-hours offer, the two-year-old offer and the expanded childcare offer.
We will not vote against the clause and will not push our amendments to a vote, but I was struck by the comments made by Mark Russell of the Children’s Society, who said that given the resource constraints, he would have focused on rolling out breakfast clubs to a greater number of deprived secondary schools, rather than on a universal offer in primary. He said:
“I would like to see secondary school children helped, and if the pot is limited, I would probably step back from universality and provide for those most in need.”––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 55, Q122.]
I draw attention to the uncertainty being created by the Government’s refusal to commit to funding the existing free breakfast provision in secondary schools beyond next year, and likewise to the uncertainty being created around the holiday activities and food programme. A number of witnesses in our first oral evidence session called for Ministers to guarantee that funding beyond next year, and I join them in asking Ministers to give us that guarantee, or at least give us some sense that the provision targeted on deprived schools will be maintained.
To that end, our amendment 28 would lock in the existing provision in secondary schools and secondary special schools. There are arguments for specifically targeting needy secondary school pupils. According to evidence submitted to the Committee by Magic Breakfast:
“The extension to secondary pupils in special schools would not require a significant amount of additional resource”.
It would require about 2.2% of the budget. What did Ministers make of the suggestion by Magic Breakfast to make secondary special schools a priority? The Government have made primary schools their priority.
Amendment 26 would require the Government to report properly on provision. Groups such as Magic Breakfast are calling for careful measuring and monitoring of the programme, which is what we need. In Wales, we saw a commitment brought in in 2013 to reach all primary schools, but by last year, 85% of disadvantaged pupils were still not being reached by the provision. Obviously we do not want that to happen here. The Secretary of State must collect data on who is getting breakfasts and on the impact. As Magic Breakfast said in its evidence to the Committee,
“if the Government policy doesn’t significantly impact”
behaviour, attendance, concentration, academic attainment and health and wellbeing,
“then the Secretary of State should consider the efficacy of the policy roll out.”
That is why we want special monitoring.
The programme is landing on top of a complex existing patchwork, as the Minister said. Some 85% of schools already have a breakfast club, and one in eight of all schools, including secondary schools, have a taxpayer-funded breakfast offer. The new requirement being brought in by the clause will interact with the existing provision in lots of different ways.
Many school breakfast clubs currently run for an hour on a paid-for basis, and I hope that most of them will want to continue to run for at least the period that they run now. Now, if a breakfast club is provided for an hour or more, the school will have to charge the first 30 minutes but not the final 30 minutes, which unavoidably leads to complexity. On the other hand, we do not want schools to focus on just delivering the new statutory 30 minutes then pull the earlier provision, which is useful for parents. Schools will have to do a lot of agonising as they think all this through, and they will have to manage it carefully. In some cases, where the demand is very high, schools may struggle get all the children fed in 30 minutes—lunchtime is normally longer than that. That is one reason why Magic Breakfast is calling for advice and guidance, which I hope the Minister will consider.
Amendment 27 asks for a report on funding, because there is still a lot of uncertainty around that. According to a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies last year:
“Based on the experience of the national school breakfast programme, the estimated annual cost today would be around £55 per pupil…for food-only provision and double that (around £110) for a ‘traditional’ before-school breakfast club. Labour’s manifesto offers £315 million overall in 2028; this could be enough to fund all primary school pupils under a food-only model, or 60% of pupils if the party plumps for a traditional breakfast club with some childcare element.”
The Government are just at the pilot stage, and we just want to make sure that the lessons are learned about the very real costs of this policy in different places and settings, be that for on-site provision, off-site provision, expensive or cheaper places to live, or small rural primaries. They will all have different costs and the funding will have to reflect that.
Hopefully all of these problems are surmountable, as this is obviously a good thing, but we want careful monitoring to make sure that the policy is actually making changes and having the positive impacts that people hope for, and to avoid any unintended consequences.
Damian Hinds
As ever, my hon. Friend makes an important point. My worry is that, in a couple of years’ time, when Members sitting on both sides of this Committee Room get emails about the funding pressures on schools—because, spoiler alert, there will still be funding pressures on schools—breakfast clubs will be one of the factors contributing to those pressures, if this programme is not fully funded or almost fully funded. I wonder whether the Minister will say on the record that it is his expectation that this programme will, like the national school breakfast club programme, cover at least 75% of the actual cost of provision.
Stephen Morgan
I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their interventions. Members will appreciate that future funding decisions are subject to the spending review, but they can have the assurance from me today of the commitment that we have already made with regard to secondary school inclusion in the national school breakfast club programme and, indeed, my recently announced confirmation of more than £200 million for the holiday activities and food programme for the next financial year.
The shadow Minister made a number of points regarding schools currently on the national school breakfast club programme. Funding was confirmed in the previous Budget, which will ensure that that programme continues to at least March 2026. Subject to the will of Parliament, schools with children from reception to year 6 will transition from the existing programme to the new offer of free breakfast clubs lasting at least 30 minutes. The timing of the national roll-out will be confirmed in due course. Schools moving from the national school breakfast club programme to the new offer will be supported in that transition. Further details on the programme will follow after the conclusion of the spending review.
The shadow Minister asked a number of questions about when the duty will commence. Legislating breakfast club provision in this Bill will give schools the certainty that they need for the future. The national roll-out and commencement of this duty will be determined in 2025 after the spending review. National roll-out will also be informed by the assessment of the early-adopter phase of the roll-out, which will help us to test and learn how best we can support schools to implement their duty and overcome the barriers that they might encounter. As the Committee will know, we must go through the appropriate spending review process before committing to a date for national roll-out.
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
I have respect for the insight and experience of the right hon. Member for East Hampshire, but I ask the Minister whether one of the goals of the free breakfast clubs is to ensure that children, particularly those from hard-up backgrounds, are in a position to be ready to learn, so that they can start the school day with a hungry mind, not a hungry belly. The right hon. Member for East Hampshire made a point about the current provision of free breakfast clubs, but in my constituency of Bournemouth East, we have remarkably few. There is a real inconsistency in provision across our country. On that note, I will make a special call for schools in Bournemouth East to be among the early adopters. I thank the Minister for his response.
Stephen Morgan
I am afraid that my hon. Friend needs to remain patient in waiting for the confirmation of which local authority areas will have early adopters, but I know that he has been a tireless champion on these issues. I promise that he will not have to wait much longer to know which schools in his patch may have a breakfast club.
This scheme will make a huge difference to children’s lives. We know that it will put more money in the pockets of parents, but also, as I mentioned earlier, that it will be good for attendance, attainment and behaviour. Research out today demonstrates the impact and the challenge that we face to make sure that children do start school ready to learn.
Amanda Martin
I want to make about point about attendance and the evidence that suggests progress. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East that is about children’s bellies being full and them being able to learn in the best part of the day. It is also a calming part of the day. It allows parents, if they have an infant and a junior, to drop them off—they could do the infant first, and the junior next. It also helps our parents to go to work. Evidence also suggests that breakfast clubs can help children to make up to two additional months of progress in their core reading, writing and maths skills because they are, as my hon. Friend said, ready to learn.
Stephen Morgan
My hon. Friend speaks with real authority on these issues as a former teacher. I know that she will be very excited about breakfast clubs coming to her new constituency of Portsmouth North. Attendance is a key priority for this Government, and it goes right to the very top—the Prime Minister has set out that he is also keen to make attendance a key priority. Children have to be in school to learn the skills that they need for life and work. I know that breakfast clubs will make a big difference in making that happen.
Matt Bishop (Forest of Dean) (Lab)
I am a previous chair of governors and I have worked as an education welfare officer. Do you agree that punctuality also comes into the issue of attendance? If children come into school earlier for breakfast clubs, they are in class, which minimises the risk of disruption to other students’ learning and to teachers presenting their lessons.
Stephen Morgan
I thank my hon. Friend for his time as a school governor. Governors across the country do such important work holding headteachers to account and supporting them in the difficult challenges that they face. He made an important point about punctuality. We know, of course, that if a child is accessing a breakfast club, it hopefully gets them to school on time. I know that he has been a real champion of those issues in his constituency.
We have just heard how passionate Labour Members are about the difference that breakfast clubs will make, and that is why we are so excited to roll them out through this legislation. We will learn from the early-adopter scheme, which will inform the monitoring and evaluation plan for the national roll-out. For that roll-out, we will ensure that there are appropriate arrangements for the collection of breakfast club data from schools and for the evaluation of the programme.
The hon. Member for Twickenham made a number of helpful points on the practicalities of funding our ambitions for children and young people. The new breakfast clubs and the benefits that they will bring to children and families up and down the country are a top priority for this Government. We will therefore, of course, provide funding to cover the new duty, including for the costs of nutritious food and staffing. Moreover, informed by our early-adopter scheme, we will support schools who face delivery challenges to find the right approach for their school, pupils and parents. Schools will absolutely not be left to do this alone. As I mentioned, from April this year, before this duty comes into force, we will work with up to 750 new breakfast clubs in schools across the country.
Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)
The right hon. Member for East Hampshire mentioned that many schools already have breakfast clubs. I regularly visit schools in Derby North and recently visited Cavendish Close junior academy, which already provides a breakfast club. Staff there were confident in their ability to scale up; in fact, they are excited to do so and welcome the opportunity. Does the Minister agree that this clause will open up the benefits of breakfast clubs to all our children in primary schools and that that represents a massive step forward?
Stephen Morgan
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. She speaks very eloquently about the benefits this will bring to parents. Those benefits will include not only £450 back into the parent’s pocket but more childcare choices. I know that she is excited about this programme being rolled out in her constituency. To summarise the points on funding, we are keen to learn from the early adopters and feed that into our ongoing support programme for schools.
A number of hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North, raised points about the impact on attendance. Breakfast clubs have been proven to ensure that every child starts the day ready to learn by improving attendance, behaviour and attainment. The Magic Breakfast evaluation reported that the improved attendance of children at schools with breakfast clubs was equivalent to 26 fewer half-days of absence per year for a class of 30, and research by the Education Endowment Foundation showed that there was up to two months of additional progress from key stage 1 to key stage 2. Schools that have offered free universal breakfast clubs have told us that they make a huge difference. For example, Burton Green primary school in York reported significant improvements in punctuality, children more settled for lessons and improved behaviour, especially for pupils with SEND.
I assure hon. Members that I understand that absence is a key barrier to learning. For children to achieve and thrive, they need to be in school. We are doing lots to support that, including making attendance guidance statutory last summer, requiring schools to return data through our attendance data tool, and working with our attendance ambassador, Rob Tarn, to develop an attendance toolkit. We have also expanded the attendance monitoring programme to reach 1,000 more children, and have invested £15 million to expand that programme, which provides targeted one-to-one support for students who are persistently absent. I commend the clause to the Committee.
The Chair
Before we move on, I will say that I suspect that some hon. Members wanted to speak earlier. I will select Members to speak only if they bob. Members can speak after the Member proposing the motion has replied to the debate. The proposer then has the opportunity to reply, so it is easier if all Members have spoken by then. I had the impression that at least two Members wished to speak and therefore made slightly overlong interventions. I remind Members that interventions should be short and to the point.
While I am being pedagogic, I note that Members have once or twice involved me in the debate. Please avoid saying “you”, because I do not have an opinion on these matters.
Amendment 6 agreed to.
Clause 21, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 22
Food and drink provided at Academies
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Stephen Morgan
I am grateful for the opportunity, afforded by the new clause suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson), to discuss compliance with school food standards.
It is important that children eat nutritious food at school, and the Department encourages schools to have a whole-school approach to healthy eating. The standards for school food are set out in the Requirements for School Food Regulations 2014. They ensure that schools provide children with healthy food and drink options, and that children get the energy and nutrition that they need across the school day. School governors and trustees have a statutory duty to ensure compliance with the school food standards. The existing regime involves school governors and trustees appropriately challenging the headteacher and senior leadership team to ensure that the school is meeting its obligations, and we want to support governors to work confidently with school leaders to ensure that the standards are met.
The Department for Education, with the National Governance Association, launched an online training pilot on school food for governors and trustees in November last year. The pilot, which will run until the end of May 2025, is designed to test the feasibility of using an online training platform to make information on school food available to governors and trustees in an accessible and flexible way. We will soon be evaluating the effectiveness of the training programme to determine whether it could be a valuable resource in the long term.
As well as supporting governors and trustees, we need a compliance regime that ensures standards are met without creating undue burdens. We note the findings of the compliance pilot run by the Department and the Food Standards Agency during the 2022-23 academic year, and we are working with the FSA on the next steps. Although the pilot demonstrated that food safety officers could conduct checks of school food standards during routine food hygiene inspections in schools, further consideration is needed of how non-compliance should be handled. Implementing that kind of monitoring arrangement nationally would require new funding, but more importantly, it is unlikely that it would be effective if the barriers identified in the pilot remained unaddressed. We want to work with the sector to understand how we can best overcome the challenges. For those reasons, I hope the new clause is not pressed.
We are committed to raising the healthiest generation ever. We have already laid secondary legislation to restrict television and online advertisement of less healthy food and drink to children and announced changes to the planning framework for fast food outlets near schools. We are also committed to banning the sale of high-caffeine energy drinks to under-16s, for which we will set out plans in consultation in due course.
Clause 22 formalises the long-standing position that all schools should comply with the school food standards across the whole school day. The clause is a technical measure, as academies are already well versed in the standards, and this legal change simply confirms long-standing policy. All academies have had to comply with standards for lunchtime provision; but for some academies there is a regulatory gap in respect of food served outside lunch. The clause will close that gap and ensure that the food served at breakfast clubs is healthy and nutritious, giving pupils the energy they need to get the most from their school day.
Munira Wilson
I want to stress the concerns I expressed in my previous remarks about the quality and nutritional value of the food that will be offered. I recognise that school food standards are in place, but although the recent House of Lords report on obesity welcomed the introduction of school breakfast clubs, it strongly recommended that the Government review and update the school food standards, and one of the witnesses this Committee heard said that schools should be given clear direction on what is and is not acceptable.
It is important that our children do not get high-fat, sugary or minimal nutrition provision from the breakfast clubs. When it evaluated the breakfast offer at 17 primary schools in Yorkshire, the Food Foundation found that fruit and water were not always offered at breakfast. Such things should be addressed. I hope that as the guidance is rolled out, more detail will be provided, but I urge the Government to consider the recommendation to review school food standards as they roll out breakfast clubs.
Stephen Morgan
I thank the hon. Member for Twickenham for her contribution; this is an issue that I know she cares passionately about. As I mentioned, the early adopter programme for breakfast clubs will give us an opportunity to test and learn, and to make sure we implement a national scheme based on really good, nutritious food. Governing bodies have a duty to ensure that the standards for school food set out in the Requirements for School Food Regulations 2014 are complied with, and they should appropriately challenge the headteacher and senior leadership team to ensure the school is meeting its obligations.
I believe we are making quick progress to deliver breakfast clubs in every primary school, with 750 early adopters. We recently published early adopter guidance to provide support to schools on these issues, which includes support and advice on a healthy, balanced breakfast offer. It is important that children eat nutritious food at school, and the school food standards define the foods and drinks that must be provided and those that are restricted. As with all Government programmes, we will keep our approach to school food under review.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 22 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 23
School uniforms: limits on branded items
Munira Wilson
I beg to move amendment 87, in clause 23, page 44, leave out lines 22 to 29 and insert—
“(1) The appropriate authority of a relevant school may not require a pupil at the school to have to buy branded items of school uniform for use during a school year which cost more in total to purchase than a specified monetary amount, to be reviewed annually.
(1A) The Secretary of State may by regulations specify the monetary amount that may apply to—
(a) a primary pupil; and
(b) a secondary pupil.”
Neil O'Brien
That is an incredibly helpful point, because it leads me to the point that the word “branded” here is being used in a very specific way, which is not a particularly natural meaning. Anything specific or anything where there is only a couple of shops that sell it will count as branded. For example, I think of the rugby jumper that I used to wear when I was doing rugby league in Huddersfield in the 1990s. It was a red jumper with a blue stripe. If it was freezing cold and snowing, I could reverse it. That jumper was branded. It did not have any brand on it—it was not sportswear—but anything like that is captured in the provision. I also remember that when I was at school, in summer we had very unbranded clothing. The school said, “You can have a black T-shirt.” What happened? Everyone had a black Nike or Adidas T-shirt, so more expensive stuff fills the space.
Let us take a worked example and think about the primary school that my children go to, which is typical. They have a jumper and a tie in the winter. My daughter has a summer dress. They have a PE hoodie, a PE T-shirt and a plastic book bag, so they are a couple of items over the limit. Our children are at a really typical state primary, so which of those items do Ministers want them to drop?
The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)
It is up to the school.
Neil O'Brien
If they drop the book bag, other bags will likely be more expensive. My kids are quite young, so they are not very brand-aware, but we will end up with a request for a branded bag and something more expensive. [Interruption.]