Free School Meals

Beth Winter Excerpts

Tuesday 7th May 2024 Westminster Hall

[Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

Diolch yn fawr, Mr Betts, and it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship. I congratulate the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) on securing the debate.

I believe that access to sufficient, nutritious food is a basic right. It is essential to the development and growth of our children—our future generations—and the provision of free school meals is fundamentally important to that. Guaranteeing children at least one hot, healthy meal a day is a vital way of enabling young people to develop, and there is strong evidence that it improves their health and wellbeing, their academic performance and our economic prosperity as a country. The Government like to say that they have increased free school meal provision, but the low household income threshold of £7,400 means that close to 1 million children living in poverty in England are not eligible for the Government’s free school meals scheme. Furthermore, as the National Education Union highlights, the divisions inherent in a means-tested system mean that stigma remains a barrier to accessing free school meals, even for parents who are aware of their children’s entitlement. It has been estimated that as many as 215,000 eligible children missed out in 2020. As well as being in the interests of children and their families, expanding free school meal provision makes sense economically. Research conducted by PwC has found that expanding free school meal eligibility in line with universal credit has economic benefits.

I am proud to say that in Wales we are leading the way in many regards—alongside the other devolved nations, I hasten to add. I have been fortunate to be involved in a grassroots campaign that has led to free school meals being provided in all primary schools in Wales. That is part of the co-operation agreement between Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru. As of last month, all primary school children in Wales, including in my constituency of Cynon Valley, are receiving free school meals.

It is time for England to catch up. I commend the campaign work that the Food Foundation has done through its Nourishing the Nation campaign. I also commend the NEU’s Free School Meals for All campaign. I thank them for their briefings ahead of the debate today. England can start to catch up with Wales by ensuring that at least the 900,000 children living in poverty who do not have access to free school meals can have that.

We can do a lot more, including in Wales, and I want to mention the excellent work that the Bevan Foundation has recently been doing on provision for those currently subject to no recourse to public funds. Eligibility assessments for children rely on receipt of benefits that parents subject to no recourse conditions cannot access, so Welsh Government guidance encourages local authorities to exercise their discretion where children are affected by no recourse. However, many children from low-income households are not entitled to free school meals, so the Bevan Foundation recommends that the Welsh Government introduce automatic eligibility for free school meals for those children, and England should be doing that as well.

To go further, I passionately believe that free school meals should be an entitlement for all children and young people. I started by saying that access to sufficient nutritious food is a basic right, so ensuring that every woman, man and child has a right to nutritious food should be enshrined in law.

I want to finish by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) and thanking him for the sterling work that he is doing. My colleague and friend is working tirelessly in demanding that the right to food be enshrined in law, and I am pleased that I am able to support that. We can afford it. We are the fifth—the fifth—richest nation in the world and we could introduce a wealth tax and end tax evasion and avoidance by the rich.

There is another way, and we have to start getting our priorities right as a country. I am determined to continue to work in collaboration with colleagues in this House but also, crucially, with grassroots organisations and individuals to end the scourge of child poverty.