Free School Meals

Baroness Smith of Malvern Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to make it more straightforward for parents to check their children’s eligibility for free school meals.

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

My Lords, we want to ensure that all families who need it get the support they are entitled to, which is why we make claiming free school meals simple through the provision of an eligibility checking system to local authorities to assess claims for meals. This system is being improved to allow parents to check their own eligibility for free meals, which has the potential to support more families in taking up their entitlement.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for her Answer, but the bureaucracy involved in registering is proving a barrier for many families. As a result, a considerable number of children are losing out on the free school meals to which they are entitled; the current estimate is about a quarter of a million across England. Does my noble friend agree that this is not just about the children? Local authorities are losing out on the pupil premium that is triggered as soon as registration takes place, and these are vital funds for many schools. I am not asking for more money: the money is already in the system. Rather, I invite my noble friend to suggest how that money can be released as fully as it has been in the local authorities that have introduced automatic enrolment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend makes an important point about how we can smooth the process to ensure that people are able to gain their entitlement. We recognise—as my noble friend does—the vital role played by free school meals both in supporting individual children and identifying where additional support needs to be provided to schools.

To reiterate what I said previously, we are working to improve the eligibility checking system, making it available to parents, for example. We are also working with stakeholders to better understand some of the barriers to the take-up of free school meals. The improvement of data sharing could also help to ensure that local authorities have the information they need to work more closely with the families who could, and should, be entitled to free school meals. That is why we are working with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to explore legal gateways that could enable data sharing to improve that ability, giving local authorities access to that data and enabling them to take action to ensure that more families who are entitled are getting their free school meals.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, there is a history of underclaiming of benefits running through the whole system. It is not to do with this Government or even the last one; it has been there for a long time. Will the Government look at how to increase the number of people who claim what they are entitled to in the new Bill that is coming before us on 1 May, as that would seem to be a good opportunity?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

We are already taking action, as I suggested, through widening the ability of people to use the eligibility checker, by ensuring that there is better sharing of data with local authorities. On the point about reducing the friction in the application process, we are working with DWP to consider how we can more closely link applying for universal credit with entitlement to free school meals. There is a variety of activity that the Government are already undertaking. I am sure we will have the opportunity to discuss that in more detail and length when we bring forward the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to the House.

[Baroness Hazarika (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure we all agree that we want our children to be well fed at school. Hungry children cannot learn. Picking up on the comments, particularly from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, there is still a lot of stigma around enrolling for this. Could AI not help local authorities and others to identify families who could qualify for free school meals and auto-enrol them?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I suspect that there are ways in which AI could help. As we talk to stakeholders and others who are involved in trying to encourage the full take-up of free school meal entitlement, there are also some less technological ways in which, for example, those who work closely with families, let us say in local authorities, on other areas of their benefits—housing benefit, for example—can be facilitated through the sharing of data that I have talked about to make the links for those families to the sharing of free school meals. There is a whole range of other areas of stigma, as my noble friend outlined, where sometimes work, both in schools and at a local level, can help to overcome those barriers and make sure that children and their families are getting what they are entitled to.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister mentioned DWP. She will be aware of the concerns about the loss of entitlement to free school meals when those on legacy benefits migrate to universal credit. The estimates I have seen are as high as 1 million children. Could she say what assessment the department has made of this? If she does not have the figures, perhaps she could write to me and put a copy in the Library.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is talking about the changes to the transitional protections: as she knows, phase one has now come to an end. To reassure families, no pupil will feel any change as a result of the move to phase two of the protections until after the summer. I can assure the noble Baroness that, as with all government policy, we will keep our approach to free school meals under review. I am happy to write to her with the figures for those who have had transitional protections and how they will be supported until the end of this school year. Then, we will bring forward more information about what will happen at that particular point.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I was told before the election that this was a GDPR issue, but it became very clear that it is not. Now that that is clear, every single one of the 23 local authorities in the north-east is now engaged in auto-enrolling every eligible child for free school meals. In Newcastle alone, within the last year, that is over 2,000 additional children, and of course the schools also benefit. Will my noble friend join me in congratulating every one of those 23 authorities, but also really push to make sure that other local authorities just get on with it?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend makes an important point, and makes the case that I was trying to outline about the way in which local authorities are often very well placed to ensure that children are getting what they are entitled to, but often need the data and the information to be shared with them in order to be able to do that—although I know my noble friend thinks that they could have done it more easily. But we will facilitate the sharing of that data and I share her view that, where some local authorities have already made enormous progress in enrolling more children in free school meals, others should look to their example and ensure that they do that as well.

[The Lord Bishop of Southwark]

My Lords, will the Minister consider the scheme funded by the Mayor of London, by which all state primary school children receive free school meals, with the undoubted benefits that brings, and will she consider extending that nationally?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

One of the things about devolving responsibilities is that it enables in this case mayors to make decisions about how they want to spend their resources. As I said, at the moment we are focused on ensuring that all those who are entitled to free school meals under the current criteria are able to get them. Decisions about how and whether to extend that entitlement more broadly will of course be dependent on much wider decisions about the resources that are available and where as a Government we think we need to focus them to get the best possible results for children.

[Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My Lords, unlike other young students from poor backgrounds in further education who can qualify for a free meal, apprentices from poor backgrounds do not. Given that we want to encourage every young person from every background to go for an apprenticeship, will my noble friend the Minister consider looking again at the eligibility criteria for further education institutions to allow more young people from poor backgrounds to get and stay in apprenticeships?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I certainly want to ensure that we right the decline in young people starting apprenticeships that has happened over the last few years. As my noble friend knows, if you are in an apprenticeship, you are essentially in a job with training, spending perhaps one day a week in a further education college, so I am not sure that free school meals would be the best way of encouraging people on to those apprenticeships. But I certainly want to consider how we can enable more young people to get the benefits of an apprenticeship, particularly at that early age, where we have seen such a fall-off in the numbers.