Breakfast Clubs: Early Adopters

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend makes a very important point, which links to the point about children with turbulent lifestyles and how they can get to school on time. I will certainly take it back to my honourable friend Minister Morgan, to think about in the development of this. As he is very good at this sort of stuff, I am sure he has already thought about it, but I will make sure that he has.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, child obesity is one of the biggest problems that we face. I welcome the direction of travel and the opportunities this presents to address some of the long-standing problems. The Minister mentioned that school food standards would be applied. I see a wink from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, on the Benches opposite, given the number of interventions I made to her about the quality of school food standards being, in my view, inadequate, and the lack of enforcement. Can the Minister say what enforcement we will be applying? What standards will we have about the quality of the food? Is it not important that we spend more time looking at that, during this experimental period, to get the model right for the future?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend’s point about school food standards is a broader one and very important. I have previously told the House that, during my first time round in the Department for Education, I had the joy of being heavily lobbied to introduce school food standards in the first place, and I am very glad that we did. However, my noble friend makes the legitimate point that it is important that we keep those school food standards under review. There may be some learning from this scheme. I know that my colleagues in the department are keen to ensure that we have not only the right standards but the right ways of ensuring that they are delivered universally across schools. That is something that my noble friend will have the opportunity to badger me about in future months and years.