Breakfast Clubs: Early Adopters

Iqbal Mohamed Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

I am delighted to hear about the good news for St John’s. I am sure that the Minister for Early Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan), and I will receive lots of invitations to visit fantastic breakfast clubs across our country. We will do our best to service those invitations, but with more than 750, it might be a bit of a stretch. We will try our very best. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey) is right to identify the need to develop learning and understanding about what works across the early adopters. That is why the schools taking part in this pilot cover a range of settings and serve communities with a range of different needs—both rural and urban—and of different kinds, so that we can ensure a fully representative sample ahead of full roll-out.

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for her statement. As a child brought up on free milk and free school meals, I very much welcome and support the Government’s plans to set up universal breakfast clubs in all primary schools. However, concerns are reported among headteachers, unions and charities that the plans will not be properly funded and will lack the flexibility required to be successful. This weekend, the independent publication Schools Week highlighted how some headteachers in primary schools, while enthusiastic about the aims, refused to take part in the early adopters pilot scheme as volunteer schools, because only 60p was being provided by the Government per pupil. The budgets of schools in my constituency of Dewsbury and Batley, as well as those across the country, are already stretched beyond breaking point. Will the Secretary of State therefore confirm that adequate funding for healthy foods, as well as the necessary flexibilities, will be provided to all primary schools for the breakfast clubs? Will she guarantee that schools will not be left out of pocket?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I am confident that the funding being made available to schools will be sufficient to deliver on this programme. The hon. Gentleman quotes the daily per pupil funding rate, but alongside that, as I set out earlier, there will be start-up costs, as well as lump-sum payments to cover the costs of running breakfast clubs, alongside a higher daily funding rate for special schools and a higher daily funding rate based on the proportion of FSM6 pupils at the school.