Free School Meals

Baroness Smith of Malvern Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, we very much welcome the Minister’s Statement. As we heard, over half a million more children will benefit from a free, nutritious meal every day. The Government have estimated that this will put £500 back into parents’ pockets. In the coalition, as we heard, we introduced a free meal for every key stage 1 pupil and prepared to extend this to key stage 2. This is excellent news for parents and their children.

As a primary school head teacher, I was always concerned that the number of pupils’ parents who did not take up the free school meal entitlement was quite alarming. Despite numerous personal letters to those parents, newsletters and all the rest, they still did not take up their entitlement. That is why auto-enrolment of free school meals at a national level ensures that every child gets the meal they are entitled to. Will the Government now follow the example of many successful local authorities and introduce auto-enrolment for meals, and if not, why not?

As we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, many vulnerable children spend many weeks each year not in school during the holidays. Will the Government take the opportunity to end holiday hunger and perhaps look at the feasibility of funding for meals during school holidays?

Children on free school meals, particularly those in more affluent areas, often feel embarrassed and stigmatised, and are sometimes bullied, because they are having free meals. Will the Minister assure the House that confidentiality will be maintained at all times for those who are entitled to a free meal?

I realise that the Statement was about free school lunches, but can the Minister update us on the number of children receiving breakfast and the timescale for rolling this out to more schools? The Minister is probably aware of the letter from a whole host of children’s charities about the problems of free breakfast for those children with special educational needs, which I have no doubt will come up during the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

We on these Benches have been pushing hard for the provision of free school meals in schools; it was in our manifesto. It is a victory for thousands of passionate campaigners, and the Government have listened.

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

My Lords, when this Government came into office there were 900,000 more children living in poverty than there had been when the Labour Government left office in 2010. This was a stain on our country. It was a terrible way for those children to live, preventing them having what they needed day-to-day and limiting their opportunities for the future. That is why this Government have announced the biggest expansion of free school meal eligibility in England in a generation, because we can and we must end the scourge of child poverty.

That is why we will give every child whose family is in receipt of universal credit the entitlement to free school meals. That means not simply meals in mouths but, crucially, money back into the pockets of parents and families on an unprecedented scale. It means that 500,000 more children per year will be entitled to free school meals. In response to the noble Baroness’s question, it means that, over the course of this Parliament, 100,000 children will be lifted out of poverty.

I commend the approach of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, to asking questions to gain some confidence and elucidation from me—an approach very different from that of the shadow Education Secretary, who did not allow the facts to get in the way of her tweeting completely erroneous information about the Government’s proposals. I will respond to the specific questions raised by the noble Baroness.

First, we have been clear that transitional protections will now be extended to 2026, when all children whose families are in receipt of universal credit will be entitled to free school meals. At that point, we will bring to an end the transitional protections that were put in place to protect entitlement as universal credit rolled out.

Secondly, the Government will continue to spend £3 billion on pupil premium and disadvantage this year. In 2026, the total will remain the same, on the basis of the level of those who would have been entitled to free school meals. Over the longer term, we will take action to consider the most appropriate way to distribute the funding necessary to respond to disadvantage and support schools in a range of ways, so that they can use it to help ensure that all children can succeed, regardless of their disadvantage.

The holiday activity fund will also remain at existing levels. It will enable local authorities to have, as they already do, the flexibility and funding to ensure provision for children who need it.

The entitlement to home school transport will remain the same, based on the current eligibility criteria post 2026, so no children will lose their entitlement to extended home school transport.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, talked about take-up. First, it is likely that the simplicity of now basing the entitlement on universal credit means that it will be much clearer to families, when they claim universal credit, that they are automatically entitled to free school meals. In addition, the Government are also improving the ability for not only local authorities but parents and families to check their eligibility more clearly than they have been able to until this point.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

If we find that that is not having the take-up that we hope for, will the Government look at auto-enrolment?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The Government are extending the entitlement to free school meals because we want children to benefit from them. We will keep under review the extent to which those free school meals and all the benefits that come with them are being taken up.

The noble Lord made a point about the stigma that some children and families feel. I know that many schools are—all schools should be—very careful about the way in which they identify which children are eligible for free school meals and which are not. We have moved some way from the terrible times when those children eligible for free school meals had to sit at separate tables and all the awful things that I know some people have experienced or certainly heard of. Schools will work hard to make sure that there is confidentiality and that that stigma is removed.

On the point about breakfast clubs, we have ensured that, from this April, there are 750 early adopter breakfast clubs across the country, having significantly increased the investment in those breakfast clubs to £30 million. As the noble Lord says, we will be able to consider this and the further rollout of breakfast clubs in more detail when we come to that part of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which will put the Government’s intention to ensure that all children in primary schools can benefit from breakfast clubs into legislation.

This considerable investment in our children is a significant sign of this Government’s commitment to tackling the scourge of child poverty. It is, as the Prime Minister says, a “down payment” on the Government’s child poverty strategy and it is symbolic of the difference that a Labour Government make.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I warmly welcome the extension of free school meals. It is important for children and for parents in poverty. I very much welcome what my noble friend has said about it being a down payment on the child poverty strategy, but I echo my Commons colleagues who argued that it cannot be a substitute for the abolition of the two-child limit on universal credit. Given that the real benefit of the free school meals extension will not be felt until September 2026, that it is estimated that over 100 children are falling into poverty every day that the two-child limit continues, and that parents and children are really struggling now, will my noble friend please impress on the Chancellor and the Prime Minister the need for urgent action on the two-child limit?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I say to my noble friend that, as I think she has conceded, this considerable investment in our children is urgent action on tackling the issue of child poverty—as have been the Government’s investment in breakfast clubs already; our plans to limit the cost of school uniforms; the increase in the national minimum wage, adding an additional £1,400 to the income of those poorest families; the extension of the entitlement to free childcare; the uprated benefits this year; and the way in which the Government has supported 700,000 of the poorest families by introducing a fair repayment rate on universal credit deductions. But I agree with her that there is more to do. That is why the child poverty task force is currently looking at all the levers that could be used to support children out of poverty, including income, housing, energy costs and the availability of work for our poorest families. This is, as I have already emphasised, the latest step to put extra money into people’s pockets, building on action that this Government have already taken. It is a down payment on our child poverty strategy, where work continues, and the Government will have more to say.

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, I quote from the Statement that

“it is an investment in our children’s futures. It sets them free from the worries and strains of growing up in poverty”.

Does the Minister agree that, if this is the Government’s aim, there should be compulsory financial education in schools about pensions? A £50 pension contribution every month from the age of 18 can produce £363,000 at retirement age. The excellent brief last year from the House of Lords Library stated that there were

“concerns have been raised that financial education is not being adequately provided”.

How will the Government ensure that education on pensions is being properly taught and help to end poverty?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

On Thursday, I think I will have the opportunity to answer a Question in this House on financial education in schools. Of course, I agree with the noble Earl that it is important that children develop the mathematical and business skills to understand the decisions that they then need to make about their own and their family’s money, and he makes an important point about pension contributions —notwithstanding his argument that young people should start them from the age of 18. I am not quite sure whether, in primary school, you can embed in a child’s mind the significance of that, but he makes an important point about ensuring that people understand the importance of pensions. Of course, hopefully, those children will look to their grandparents and the additional funding that they will receive as a result of this Government’s ability to maintain the triple lock, and they will see that investing in a pension is a good thing to do.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I very much welcome this Statement. It really is good news. I particularly welcome the look at nutritional standards. We talked about resources in, but, in education, we use free school meals as a measurement not only for money going into the school but for attainment levels, and that has become quite a considered and important way of monitoring performance and improvement. Have the Government given any thought to how having so many more children entitled to free school meals will affect that set of statistics, and does more work need to be done on that?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend makes two important points. First, she is right that, alongside this announcement, we have also said that we think now is the right time to review the nutritional standards for school food. My ministerial colleagues have already begun work with stakeholders on scoping out what will happen there and how those standards can be brought up to date. It is an important point that quite often accountability measures—analysis and monitoring of attainment—is based on a proxy of free school meals for disadvantage. The department will look at other ways of measuring that disadvantage and the way in which that can then be used to ensure attainment. Even more importantly, as I am sure my noble friend will have noticed, the Secretary of State is absolutely clear that the most disadvantaged groups need to have a better deal and to be supported to perform better in our schools than has been the case until this point, and she will do everything necessary not only to measure how effective that is, but to ensure that it happens as well.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I very much welcome this announcement, as others have done, because, in the words of the Statement, it is not just anti poverty but pro learning. As chair of the E-ACT multi-academy trust, I see the context of too many children’s lives coming through our school gates every day. I also note the disconnection with pupil premium and free school meals eligibility. What advice does the Minister have for schools wanting to run registration campaigns for pupil premium without the literal carrot of free school meals?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend is right of course about the importance of the contribution to learning. I think it is hard to envisage how children can focus on the learning that needs to happen without having nutritious, good food inside them both first thing in the morning from our breakfast clubs and of course at lunchtime as well. The important point about the pupil premium, as my noble friend will know very well, is that, while it has been allocated and designated on the basis of individual pupils’ entitlements, it is spent within schools on a range of different activities. It is not attached to a single pupil. That is why I think the Government will want to undertake some serious thinking about how to maintain and improve the support that is available for ensuring that children who come from disadvantaged backgrounds get the support in schools that they can, without depending in the long term on the link to entitlement for free school meals. Of course, in the short term, not least because free school meal entitlement based on the current criteria lasts for six years, there will be a considerable amount of time when that could be used to allocate pupil premium, but there needs to be work on ensuring that funding for disadvantage can continue for students to be used as effectively as possible by schools.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I join the congratulations to my noble friend and the Government. This is very good news at a time when good news is particularly welcome. I also welcome the welcome from the Lib Dem Front Bench and the very responsible and sincere questions about how many children will benefit from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. Does my noble friend agree that compulsory education for primary and secondary school children was one of the greatest things about the post-war, cross-party human rights consensus? Does she also agree that we would not dream of charging children or parents for heating, security and pencils during the compulsory school day and therefore it was always a little odd that food was charged for? Given the concerns about the number of children who benefit, stigmatisation et cetera and all the obvious logic that we have heard from noble friends about the learning benefits as well as the anti-poverty benefits of nutrition in school, might we one day, with this level of consensus, aspire to—my noble friend chuckles because she knows where I am going with this—universal free school meals for every child or young person in compulsory education?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

One of the things I have noticed about this House is the ambition of noble Lords. They are not satisfied with the status quo. In fact, they are not satisfied with the next stage of development; they push for more.

My noble friend will understand that this big increase in entitlement represents a considerable financial investment in children by the Government. There is, of course, entitlement to universal free school meals for infant-aged children. For the time being, we will have to celebrate, and ensure that we properly implement, this increase in entitlement, but I note the ambition of my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti and other noble friends on this issue.