Breakfast Clubs: Early Adopters

Lord Desai Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Lord Desai (CB)]

My Lords, there seems to be uniformity, in that everybody has to have breakfast. Why cannot some schools have breakfast and others have lunch? I always went to school in the morning and always had lunch at home, so I did not have breakfast. I do not think my concentration was affected at all. It is a matter of choice, and one that should be given to students.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Choice depends on there being provision. At the moment, there is not universal free provision of breakfast clubs for those children—probably their parents, frankly, at that age—who choose that to be the right thing for them. There will not be compulsory attendance at these breakfast clubs, but they will be available for anybody who wants them. I come back to the point about lunch, and reiterate that the Government are already rightly spending a considerable amount of money on providing free school meals at lunchtime for around 3.5 million children and young people. That will remain for those children.