Child Poverty

Lord Bishop of Leicester Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Leicester]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, on securing the debate and thank her for her tireless work in addressing child poverty. Like many others, I welcomed the publication of the Government’s child poverty strategy and was delighted by the Government’s decision to abolish the two-child limit on universal credit. Like others, I felt that the Government missed the opportunity to deliver some quick wins—measures that would not require legislation yet would make a tangible difference to children’s lives.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, already mentioned a number of these measures, but I wish to focus on just one: auto-enrolment for free school meals. On the face of it, it is a very modest proposal, yet it would have profound positive consequences for some of the disadvantaged children in the country. Around 250,000 children in England who are eligible for free school meals are not enrolled to receive it. That is approximately one in 10 of all those who should be benefiting from this scheme; in the north-east, it is one in five.

The entitlement exists, but it is not making its full potential impact. There is a substantial body of evidence, including a major cost-benefit analysis conducted by PwC for impacts on urban health, which demonstrated that free school meals improve concentration in the classroom, boost attendance, raise attainment and improve long-term health outcomes. Yet, some of the children most in need of this benefit are missing out. This is because under the present system, families must apply for free school meals. They must navigate forms, eligibility checks and, in many local authorities, repeat the process each time circumstances change. This creates administrative barriers, stigma and confusion, particularly for parents with limited digital access, for those for whom English is an additional language or for families in unstable or temporary accommodation.

I previously spoke in your Lordships’ House about the poverty-shame nexus—a mutually reinforcing relationship between material hardship and the emotional experience of shame. This is particularly relevant as, time and again, researchers have found that shame and stigma are among the biggest barriers that prevent parents from applying for free school meals.

This is not only a question of feeding hungry children, though that alone would be a good enough reason to introduce it. Free school meal eligibility is the gateway to pupil-premium funding, currently worth £1,515 per eligible primary school pupil and £1,075 at secondary level. When five local authorities introduced auto-enrolment in October 2023, they identified more than 2,500 additional eligible children in their first cohorts, with opt-out rates of less than 1%.

The question arises: why, if local authorities have piloted this measure, does it now require government action? Last year, the charity Feeding Britain convened a working group of 29 local authorities to examine this question. I commend its report to the Minister. In brief, however, this approach reaches only those families who already engage with their local authority for other welfare support, which, again, because of stigma, not all do.

Most importantly, the managed migration of families from legacy benefits on to universal credit will, over the next few years, substantially reduce the number of families applying to local authorities for housing benefit and similar payments, so the window of opportunity for local authorities to introduce auto-enrolment is closing. The working group’s proposal, which I commend to the House, is to build automatic registration into universal credit itself, extending the sort of mechanism that already exists for council tax support and for the NHS Healthy Start scheme.

I know that this Government are committed to social mobility, and education is at the heart of achieving this. Can the Minister explain, therefore, why this measure—one which would help direct resources more accurately to schools serving disadvantaged children, with no changes required to the pupil premium framework—was not included in the child poverty strategy?