Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend Lady Barran and to associate myself with Amendment 104 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, whom it is a pleasure to follow.

The Welfare Food Regulations 1996 lay out in astonishing detail the importance of milk to those who were entitled to it for the early years. While there are different regulatory regimes in Scotland and the rest of Great Britain, it is clear that certain children in certain circumstances are entitled to dried milk or fresh milk in prescribed portions per week, be it according to age; to those whose families are on financial assistance for low income; to the Healthy Start, which would include expectant mothers and those with children otherwise under four—and, of course, some people of any age, including children, but not necessarily children, with certain physical and mental difficulties.

I think it is common ground on all sides of this House that the provision of milk as part of a healthy diet is a good thing. But the regulations provide for this milk to be dispensed, if I can use that word, in maternity and healthcare centres, as part of the National Health Service, but also in other welfare and food distribution centres. But the world has changed, and these settings are no longer the only places where people access help.

The NHS, which may work from nine to five, or a food distribution centre, which may open for only a few mornings a week, are not necessarily the only places nowadays where people can access the help they need. Those settings are just not as thick on the ground as they used to be at times that are convenient to families.

I do not deny the good work of those settings, but others are available under the same regulations, and some of them are even paid for by the state. My noble friend Lady Barran laid out the importance of childminders and childminder agencies as a part of the mix that helps provide time and space for families to get into work so they can earn and improve their family circumstances, with the flexibility to take different jobs, which may be available on a part-time, out-of-hours or seasonal basis.

These settings—the childminder agencies—are relevant. They are local, flexible and professional, and we have heard that they are regulated. But for some reason, they are not trusted by these regulations to dispense milk in liquid form or in dried powder. It just serves no purpose to exclude them. This is why these amendments are so important: to exclude the most accessible settings from the ability to provide milk and other healthy foods is not just bad for them, it is bad for the children.

I cannot understand for the life of me why one setting is good and the other is bad. But there is another string to this argument: that it is bad not only for the children and the settings themselves, but for the economy. There are 1.8 million dairy cows in this country, with a herd size average of 225, and that number has doubled in the last 50 years since 1975.

Significant parts of the West Country are devoted to dairying—milk production, cheese production and so forth. I see my noble friend Lady Williams sitting in front of me on the Front Bench. She is from the Cheshire plains and will know better than anybody the importance of the work dairy farmers do, rising early to milk and care for their cow herds, come rain or shine, suffering as they have in the last two months a 30% reduction in the price of liquid milk from the dairies.

It is not just the children who need all the help they can get; it is our dairy farmers too. While this is, of course, a subsidiary point to the main thrust of Amendment 98 in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran, it is a consideration. The main thrust is that we must stop this arbitrary division that forms gaps between different sorts of settings, saying that only the NHS can be trusted to dispense milk, and that childminders and the CMAs are not to be trusted.

If we really have the interests of the child at heart, we need to have as many settings as possible that can dispense good food and milk and associated products, at times that are convenient for the busy lives families lead, rather than just straitjacketing them into the nine to five and thinking that is good enough.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I support both amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, in particular Amendment 113 on the school food improvement scheme. I am incredibly glad to see how many steps the Government are taking, but there are still things we need to work on. The noble Baroness referred to Professor Defeyter’s work on the finances and how, with big schools versus small schools, a lot of the money gets lost. It also happens with councils that are so cash-strapped that they sometimes take some of the money.

We are still living in a country where we have a postcode lottery on food. Some schools do amazing jobs with limited resources and some schools really do not. Nobody can now dispute the fact that the free school lunch, or any school lunch, is incredibly important to children. Yet we hear too often about schools that allow only 20 minutes for lunch, in which time you are meant to play, make a call, go to the toilet and have lunch, which is clearly going to be seen as a secondary part of a school.

It is also secondary in that the school catering departments at the moment get very little training. I wonder whether the Minister is aware of a scheme in the department being run by Chefs in Schools and a lot of philanthropic organisations to actively train chefs to go into schools and work with them to improve the quality. For the same amount of money, you can have really good quality and transform children’s lives.

Finally, nursery is equally important in getting kids eating the right stuff right from the beginning. I absolutely support that we need milk, but children also get fed there and those meals tend to fall outside of anything right now, as far as I can see. I would be interested to know what the Government will do.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, the amendments in the third group cover free school meals, the nursery milk scheme, the Healthy Start scheme and school food. Ensuring that every child has access to nutritious food and support is fundamental to their health, development and ability to learn. We know that good nutrition starts early and that simple measures, whether access to milk or balanced school meals, can make a lasting difference.

I turn to government Amendments 111 and 112. Last year the Government announced that from September 2026, every child in a household receiving universal credit will be entitled to free school meals. This decisive action will lift 100,000 children across England out of poverty and save families around £500 per child each year. The amendments will enshrine this crucial commitment in law and ensure its successful delivery.

A child is currently eligible for free school meals if they attend a state-funded school in England, their household is in receipt of universal credit and the household’s income is less than £7,400. Government Amendment 112 creates a new category of free school meals, to be known as expanded free school meals, which will apply to that cohort of children in receipt of universal credit but with a household income greater than £7,400. This will ensure that free school lunches are provided on request to all pupils from households in receipt of universal credit and that state-funded schools in England will be under a duty to provide meals to those eligible children.

We will support over half a million more children in this way. Providing the most disadvantaged children with a healthy lunch each school day will help secure their education and improve their future prospects.

Government Amendment 111 will deliver the practical implementation of the free school meals expansion. The Department for Education relies on the provisions of the Education Act 2005 to process income and benefits data from other government departments so that it can check and confirm a child’s eligibility for free school meals. The scope of this power is, however, limited. This amendment will amend the 2005 Act to enable the department to identify whether a child is eligible under the current free school meals criteria or the expanded free school meals criteria and then communicate this to local authorities, parents and schools so that they in turn may determine whether a child is also eligible for other education benefits and funding.