Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Knight of Weymouth and Baroness Sherlock

Monday 24th October 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, I, too, support the aims of this amendment, which are primarily about protecting certain key benefits but also making sure that they are not subject to the benefit cap, which we will come to later. My noble friend Lady Hayter of Kentish Town carefully set out the challenge that the Minister will have in squaring a circle, in making sure that work pays but also dealing with the consequences of a quite important specific provision. I ask the Minister to reflect briefly in his reply on the fact that free school meals, for example, have more than one public policy aim. How does he go about squaring that? They clearly are a means of effectively transferring a benefit that has a cash value to some of the poorest families in the country, but they also have the effect of making a hot or at least good, nutritious, meal available to children within all those poorest families. That feels like a separate and quite specific policy aim. How will he ensure that that policy aim will be achieved within whatever solution he comes up with?

As the Minister will know—and I certainly support the view of his erudition, which is obviously legendary—the evidence of the efficacy of free school meals goes back to the 1960s. If anything, the evidence suggests the extension of breakfast clubs rather than going in the opposite direction. Some noble Lords, perhaps more on this side of the House, may have read the Observer yesterday, in which there was a piece specifically on breakfast clubs. It looked at both, mentioning in passing that one in four school children in the UK are in a position where the only hot meal that they have in the day is their school lunch. It was talking in particular about breakfast clubs. An interesting head teacher in a very poor area described the benefits of breakfast clubs as being way beyond any cash benefit and being in the energy of children, improving their behaviour and improving their learning. She said:

“It helps with their socialisation skills too. School is about life chances and unless the children have something in their bellies then they are not going to get those life chances they deserve. There is very little money out there in our community and for many it's cheaper to feed the family on takeaway fried chicken than anything else. You see the leftovers in lunchboxes, or rice; we get a lot coming in with just rice.

We tried to run a breakfast club ourselves, it was £1 a day, but the numbers just dwindled away and you realise that it doesn't seem expensive but it adds up, five days a week, three children or more. It's a lot. And you can't turn a child away if they arrive without their £1”.

The article also pointed out that breakfast clubs are starting to shut around the country as a result of a combination of budget cuts and the ending of ring fencing for wrap-around care. If we are not careful and end up with a solution that does not retain the provision of free school meals, we could end up with a double whammy, with the two potential sources of nutritious food available to children disappearing at the same time.

I am just as concerned, as I know everybody in this room is, that the universal credit system continues to make work pay and that we do not find ourselves in a position where someone who is now entitled to free school meals will not be entitled to them in the future. That would be a travesty of the anti-poverty element as well as of the work incentive element of universal credit. It means that we have to consider carefully the other policy implications.

In the years I worked with single parents, I became very aware that the vast majority of parents prioritise spending on their children. In fact, I often met lone parents who went without food themselves in order to buy things for their children. Indeed, there is research that bears that out. I suspect that my noble friend Lady Lister may have done it; she seems to do most of it. The evidence is very clear, but none the less there is a minority who, for a variety of reasons, are not in a position to put the kind of food in front of their children that we would wish them to do. In some cases there simply is not enough money to go round. Since it is cash, it is subject to an awful lot of other pressures: a huge bill coming in, debt collectors, being sanctioned or fined, or other pressures on the budget. At least this is money that is for the child, not simply for the family. I do not want to say any more than that. I am not pretending it is easy. When he replies, will the Minister reflect how he will do those three things: protect those families that currently get the benefit of free school meals; ensure that work continues to pay; and fulfil the other policy objective?

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

I want to comment briefly on this. I say “briefly” because I have the next amendment, there is more I want to say and I do not want to take up too much of the Committee’s time today. I got a bit of billing from my noble friend Lady Hayter as someone who might know something about this, which daunts me somewhat as I had intended to make a contribution more in keeping with my noble friend Lord Foulkes than my noble friend Lady Hollis in terms of knowing something about it or being something of an expert. My noble friend Lord Foulkes is, of course, the master of the probing question, rather than the probing answer.

My noble friend Lady Hayter and others have set out the quandary that the Minister and the Social Security Advisory Committee are clearly in as regards issues around whether it will be included within the cap, for example. If it is going to be part of a tapering rather than a cliff edge, I hope that extra money is added so that you are not taking money away from those who currently get free school meals. I particularly want to focus on free school meals because if I know anything about any of these things, it is about free school meals, given the time I served as a Schools Minister.

Very much in keeping with what my noble friend Lady Sherlock said, I think there is great importance in ensuring that free school meals continue to reach the child. It is a finely grained argument, but I encourage the Minister to look at whether it is possible to get the money straight to schools rather than including this in universal credit. It is important to note that free school meals are used as a proxy within the education system for all sorts of things, and I am sure in other areas as well. In particular, the level of the pupil premium in England is set by the numbers on free school meals. That presents an opportunity to the Government, if they choose to follow the side of the argument that I would advocate in terms of giving the money to schools, and, through them, to children, rather than having it within the universal credit. If the pupil premium is set on the basis of knowing how many children are eligible for free school meals within a school, it ought to be possible to passport the money for those meals to the school directly, given that most schools now operate a cashless payment system. It will then be possible to passport that money through to children's fingertips, if they use fingerprint technology, in respect of paying for their school meals, or on to their cards, if they use a card system. Either way, if they do not operate that, it is possible to get the money into schools so that we can be confident that children are getting a nutritious meal every day, which is hugely important.

I represented a parliamentary seat in Dorset for some time where I found that the health inequalities were such that a child born in my constituency had a life expectancy 10 years longer than one born in Manchester. A lot of that was to do with issues like whether or not they were getting a decent start to the day as regards food and nutrition and the quality of the nutrition that they were receiving during the day. I know that school meals are a crucial part of that. That is why, in the end, my contribution on this is to encourage the Minister to think about that aspect in terms of the needs of children to get a decent meal every day, rather than how things work within the universal credit.