School Fees: VAT

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

The noble Lord mentions crazy mathematics—I think he was one of the leading proponents of Brexit, so he would know all about crazy mathematics. This measure raises £1.7 billion to spend on state schools. He will have seen in the previous SR settlement for schools that, to raise school standards for every child and break down barriers to opportunity, the Government are increasing the core schools budget by £4.7 billion per year by 2028-29. This is a real-terms increase of 1.1% on average each year, on a per-pupil basis, taking per-pupil funding to a new record high.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

Will the Minister comment on data that seems to suggest that schools are using some of this additional money to fund free school meals—because there is insufficient funding for the level of the cost of those meals—rather than employing more teachers?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I do not know about specific decisions that each individual school is making. Obviously, how individual schools fund a specific policy is a matter for them, but I am very confident that our free school meals policy is fully funded.