Free School Meals: Children with SEND

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered access to free school meals for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq, and thank you to all of the hon. Members for supporting the debate today. I am pleased to be leading this debate on fair access to free school meals for disabled children and those with special educational needs, to ensure that their voices are heard in this House.

I thank my constituent Irene Dow, because it was after meeting Irene and hearing about her experience as a parent and the shocking unfairness in the current system that I applied for the debate. In the Gallery with her are staff and campaigners from the charity for families with disabled children, Contact. Their incredibly powerful research and campaigning has been fundamental to the debate, and the support they have given to families has been absolutely invaluable.

It was a privilege today to meet campaigner and parent Natalie Hay, who is here with her son. She started campaigning on this issue after realising that many disabled children were eligible for free school meals but were unable to access them. I commend her for her interview today on Sky, for many reasons. I place on record the importance of the work that Irene, Natalie, Contact and many other campaigners do, and I pay tribute to everything they have done to put this injustice on the political agenda. They should not have had to fight this hard and for so long, and I sincerely hope that the Minister will be able to give us assurances that the Government will act swiftly in response. We saw, at Prime Minister’s questions today, how fast the Government can act to respond to an injustice, if the political will is there.

The key issue I wish to raise is that thousands of children with special educational needs and disabilities are missing out on the free school meals that they are eligible for due to their disability or sensory needs. That is despite the law being clear that most should be offered an alternative, such as a supermarket voucher. Children with conditions such as diabetes, epilepsy and autism are subsequently missing out on the equivalent of £570 a year of financial help. That is causing many families to fall into debt and means that they need to turn to food banks, which is completely unacceptable and totally unnecessary. Contact calculates that more 164,000 disabled children are unable to access their free school meals.

[Tahir Ali (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that food bank numbers are at a record high? Children are going to school hungry, and this is often the only hot meal that they will have. On top of that, if children with sensory needs or disabilities are missing out on their entitlements, the Government and statutory organisations need to do a lot more to make sure that no child misses out on those.

[Ian Byrne]

I totally agree. Contact calculates that more than 164,000 disabled children are unable to access their free school meals despite meeting the Government’s eligibility requirements. That is truly shocking. Access to food is a basic human right, and campaigning for universal free school meals is one of the five key asks of the “Right to Food” campaign. While we wait for that, we must ensure that the current system is fair and equal and that it delivers, in practice, what it claims to deliver. Disabled children and their families are already more likely to be living in poverty due to the difficulties of juggling care and work. Research shows that they have also been disproportionately affected by cost of living pressures and the pandemic.

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech on this very important subject. Does he agree that it is utterly unacceptable that 60% of the disabled children who are eligible for free school meals cannot eat school meals due to health conditions, dietary requirements or sensory processing difficulties? Schools must make reasonable adjustments to ensure that disabled children can access the free lunches that they are entitled to, and the Department for Education must step up and support schools to do that.

[Ian Byrne]

Absolutely, and I will cover that in my speech. Contact has found that 85% of families missing out on their free school meals entitlement reported that this has hugely increased pressure on their weekly budgets. Last year, I met my constituent Irene, along with a representative of the charity Contact, and they talked to me about why so many disabled children are missing out on free school meals and what can be done about it.

My constituent’s son, aged 15, is severely autistic and has avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder. Since the age of six, he has been at special school. He cannot eat the school food, because of his highly restricted diet. He mostly eats bread, butter and sometimes a bit of cheese and ham. For him, it is about the sight and texture of the food as well as the taste. That means that his mum has always made and paid for his packed lunches, even though he has been eligible for free school meals throughout his school life, which has been over a decade.

As Natalie highlighted in her interview this morning, it was only during lockdown that many families received their free school meals in the form of supermarket vouchers. The vouchers were cut off after schools reopened, and children were once again wrongly denied the free school meals to which they are entitled. We know that support can be given, so that is inexcusable.

[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I represent a constituency with one of the highest rates of child poverty in the entire country, and we know only too well that the current situation is compounded by the SEND funding crisis. Does my hon. Friend agree that a simple solution to the problem would be to update the Government’s FSM guidance to make it clear that schools must make reasonable adjustments, such as ensuring that supermarket vouchers can be made available, and to write to all schools to make sure that they communicate that more widely?

[Ian Byrne]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point, with which I absolutely agree and which I will cover later in my questions to the Minister.

We know that support can be given. It is therefore absolutely inexcusable that I am standing before the Minister today to tell him that 164,000 children are not receiving their free school meals. Research carried out by Contact in March 2023 with 1,500 families found that there are different reasons why disabled children cannot access their free school lunch. That includes 60% who cannot eat school meals due to their health condition, dietary requirements or sensory processing difficulties, 22% who are off school because of a long-term medical condition or illness, and 18% who are not in school because they have an education package provided by the council or are waiting for a suitable school place. Many parents are incorrectly being refused food vouchers as a reasonable adjustment; others are being asked to travel miles to pick up a food parcel that does not include food that their child can eat. Families should not have to face that battle.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. I pay tribute to his tireless work in campaigning on issues related to hunger; he is exemplary in that regard.

Today’s debate is particularly timely because yesterday it was announced that primary school children in London would receive free lunches for another year. Will my hon. Friend join me in commending that action on behalf of the authority in London and in saying that surely we can follow that across England? Does he agree that it is important that allowance be made for disabled children in receiving their school meals if they are unable to access the meals that other children are receiving

[Ian Byrne]

I totally agree. Sadiq Khan and his team in London deserve a huge amount of credit for extending the scheme to the second year. Hopefully that can be replicated soon across the country.

Section 512 of the Education Act 1996 places a duty on maintained schools, academies and free schools to provide free school meals to pupils of all ages who meet the criteria. The meals must be provided to all eligible pupils, either on the school premises or at any other place where education is being provided. That could take, for example, the form of a voucher. Schools also have a duty under section 20 of the Equality Act 2010 to make a reasonable adjustment to the way in which free school lunches are delivered if the standard way of delivering them puts a disabled pupil at a substantial disadvantage compared with other pupils. However, many schools are unaware of their responsibilities, as the Government’s free school meal guidance is silent on a school’s duty to make reasonable adjustments and fails to make reference to the Equality Act altogether. That means that even when parents ask for alternative provision, schools are not complying with equalities law. Parents are therefore put in a difficult position in which they are in conflict with the school and then face a battle to challenge the refusal.

I call on the Government to take responsibility, update the free school meals guidance, and provide any additional resource and support needed to schools and local authorities to make this happen immediately. It must be made clear that schools and councils need to provide an alternative—ideally a supermarket voucher—to disabled children who cannot access a free school meal in the regular way. I believe that if the Government addressed the issue and established supermarket vouchers as an alternative to free school meals and an acceptable reasonable adjustment, it would give a workable solution to a situation that so many people find themselves in, as we saw during lockdown.

Last month, the Government conceded that free school meals should be provided to eligible children who are unable to attend school due to their special educational needs and have the package of support often referred to as EOTAS—education otherwise than at school. The Secretary of State for Education has said that it may be a breach of article 14 of the European convention on human rights if children receiving state education other than at school are not provided with meals; the Government are therefore preparing guidance for local authorities, which is expected in March 2024, to ensure that local authorities provide access to a meal for those with EOTAS. That really is welcome: it means that almost 2,000 disabled children across England who have been missing out on a free school meal may now get funding for a free lunch from their local council.

I will finish by asking the Minister five questions. First, will he ask his Department to update the free schools meals guidance to make clear to schools, governing bodies and councils that eligible disabled children can be offered a free school meal in the form of a voucher? Secondly, will he update the free school meals guidance so that it clearly references the Equality Act and the duty to make reasonable adjustments? Thirdly, will he write to all schools about the duty to make reasonable adjustments to the way in which free school lunches are provided so that disabled children do not miss out, and will his Department support schools to ensure the provision of appropriate food at school for children with special educational needs and disabilities that caters to their individual needs? Fourthly, will he use this opportunity to confirm to the House his intentions to produce new guidance on free school meals for children with education otherwise than at school, and to set out timescales for that guidance and how his Department will work with parents to co-produce it? Finally, many parents of disabled children have raised the issue that they are unable to access the Government’s breakfast and holiday schemes. Will he commit to meeting campaigners from Contact and addressing this immediately?

We are living in a country where millions of children are suffering from hunger. Our fight for their right to food will continue. The Minister can make a huge difference right now to the lives of over 164,000 children in this country, without any change in legislation. This is such a simple fix. I and so many struggling families hope that he will do the right thing today.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Byrne]

I thank the Minister and everybody else for speaking in the debate. As was mentioned, it was over-subscribed, which will be a comfort to all the campaigners and to Contact itself. I thank the Minister for his response and for agreeing to update the current free school meals guidance so that it will avoid any confusion and make quite clear the duties of schools to make reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act. I thank him for his comments, and I will be keeping his feet to the fire. I will write to him about the HAF, and our beady eyes will be watching the progress of the commitments that have been made. We will be in constant contact over the issue. I thank very much everybody who has contributed.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered access to free school meals for children with special educational needs and disabilities.