Breakfast Clubs: Early Adopters

Debate between Baroness Barran and Lord Addington

Thursday 27th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Statement. The Government’s announcement in relation to breakfast clubs builds, obviously, on the approach of the previous Government, who ran a breakfast club programme from 2018. As we know, the vast majority of schools have a breakfast club; some are free and others charge a very low fee.

Although I understand and absolutely respect that the Government are following through on their manifesto commitment to deliver breakfast clubs in primary schools, can the Minister clarify for the House what will happen to breakfast clubs in secondary schools funded by the previous Administration when that funding ends? Similarly, the Statement talked about the growth in childcare provision and the very significant funding going into that, which also builds on previous Conservative government policy.

On the specifics of the scheme, the Minister will be aware that the Institute for Fiscal Studies report last year calculated that the £315 million announced by the Government for breakfast clubs would fund only the food element in all primary schools. As she knows, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill proposes half an hour of childcare as well as breakfast. Can the Minister clarify what percentage of funding for the new breakfast clubs the Government will provide? What discussions have the Government had with schools on how to cover any shortfall?

The Minister will have seen the report from the BBC yesterday of a small primary school in Lancashire that was part of the 750-school pilot phase and felt that it was not able to continue because, in its case, the funding did not cover its costs. Obviously, there has been wider commentary on this issue. Can she shed light on whether there is truth in the rumours that some schools were invited to take part in the pilot but were unable to and, if so, what the main reasons for that were?

Can the Minister also confirm what percentage of schools in the new scheme had no breakfast club provision before this?

I have tried to work out the Secretary of State’s assertion that the scheme will save families £450 a year. Maths is not my strongest suit but perhaps the Minister can help me. The Government, as I understand it, are funding 60p per child and 78p for those children in receipt of pupil premium. On my maths, £450 a year is about £2.30 per school day per child. Equally, if you put it the other way round, the government funding of £315 million spread across 4.5 million primary school children is about £70 a year. So can she set out what assumptions the Government are making that are behind the statement of the £450 saving to families?

Finally, I wonder what assumptions the Government are making about the uptake of the scheme. A range of breakfast clubs already exist, of course, with and without additional childcare, and the Government have said they aim to learn from the pilot. Given that the vast majority of schools already have breakfast club provision, I am unclear what the Government need to learn from this pilot as opposed to what has gone before. All this matters, of course, because the Government’s choice—and it is a choice—is to fund breakfast for all children in primary school, including those whose parents were happy to pay for that breakfast and could do so without financial difficulty. It would be helpful for the House if the Minister could explain why.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing this Statement to the Floor of the House even if it is a few days behind the Commons. The main thrust from my party is that we would rather have had the emphasis of this put into lunchtime meals, because, from the information I have received, about 40% of children who are eligible for this take it up, and anybody who has dealt with any child, or indeed rush-hour traffic, knows that you have more trouble getting children to school early in the day to get breakfast than you would do at lunchtime, when everybody is there.

That is a fundamental flaw in the system of getting the nutrition in. The second flaw is what is in one of these breakfasts. If it is a sugar-laden breakfast cereal, you have the equivalent of a turkey twizzler in the morning. If it is just preserve on a bit of white bread, you will fill somebody up, but what is the nutritional guarantee?

We have more experience in lunchtime meals—it is easier to get a balance in the meal. You will get a bigger bang for your buck. We also have the idea that people are used to eating that meal at lunchtime, so it will probably be slightly easier to get acceptance. If you are going to do this, what are the steps you will take to make sure it reaches more people? If you are going to put this money in, what is the benefit?

I had prepared a slightly less extensive list of other questions, which the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, has got to before me. I will not weary the House by repeating them. The basic thing is the strategy to make sure that you get the best nutritional outcomes for those pupils and get to a higher percentage of the school population. I think we are entitled to know about that from the Government.

Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Barran and Lord Addington

Committee stage
Tuesday 26th November 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I hope to be as quick as I can. My amendments suggest that everything should be under the affirmative procedure when it is reported back. That is just to make sure that Parliament gets a real look and a chance not to have those reports buried in the huge piles of SIs that are brought forward. We should guarantee that we are all looking at what happens in this new body.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, despite the Minister’s dismissal of my concerns about the Henry VIII powers at Second Reading, I have brought two amendments in this group to make sure that the scope of those powers is less broad.

Amendment 38 seeks to restrict the Secretary of State’s powers to amend only the Acts that are already listed in Schedule 3, so that both Houses can appropriately scrutinise the way in which these powers are being used. Surely it is the job of the Government and the department to identify all the Acts to which these powers apply. I cannot see the need for such a clause, unless the Bill has been rushed and the Government are worried that they have failed to capture all the legislation that requires amending with the abolition of IfATE. If this is indeed the case, perhaps there is more redrafting to do than we have already attempted.

My Amendment 39 is focused on the same issue but, rather than restricting the Secretary of State’s powers specifically, it simply removes the power to amend future legislation. Again, I note that all Bills which name IfATE as the body for apprenticeships and technical education have already been passed, so there should be no need to amend future legislation, unless the Government have plans to refer to IfATE in any future legislation that they intend to draft. Given that this seems unlikely, I am once again left with the question as to why this is necessary. I urge the Minister to reconsider this.

Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Barran and Lord Addington

Committee stage
Thursday 21st November 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, that is quite a challenge to follow, and it is tempting to take the same approach—I think my popularity with the Committee might improve—but, in all seriousness, as the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, said, my Amendments 10, 11 and 14 are based on a very similar argument to that debated in the previous group about the concerning lack of detail regarding what we mean by “a group of persons” and the potential dilution of employer focus. With that, I commend the amendments.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I rise just to give my much wiser noble friend a break. The assessment plan for any qualification is of the essence. If you get that wrong, you might as well not bother doing it. When you have a group of people looking at this, you stand a better chance than you get from one centre. There are a series of clichés about Secretaries of State, and I will try not to kick and wring every one of them, but the basic one is that if the Secretary of State has spoken to somebody who just does not understand or gets it wrong, the whole thing can go wrong. If you have a group, you stand a better chance of getting a correct result. Nothing is guaranteed either way, but that is what it is about.

I hope that we can get some response from the Minister on where we are going to get this expertise in to check on what is happening. That is it, in essence, because we have had Secretaries of State who know exactly what they want and will talk to a certain group that agrees with them. That is very easy to do, and we have all done it. I hope that we will get some assurance that the Secretary of State will talk to a divergence of opinion to go through these things to make sure that they work. If we do not and start to get them wrong, the price will be huge and we will have nothing useful. Being a little slower and a bit more certain is infinitely better than taking the chance of getting it horribly wrong. I hope the Minister can give us a reassuring answer.