Free School Meals

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I hope you will forgive my heckling earlier—I could not resist when Sunday’s football match was mentioned. I am married to a proud Geordie and Newcastle United fan, and it was a day of high emotion in the Wilson household—although I am a Londoner and therefore a Spurs fan., but the less said about that, the better. I hope the Chair will indulge my teasing the hon. Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne).

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis) on securing this important debate, especially as we head into the second day on Report on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. We will be talking about free school meals and breakfast clubs later.

I am incredibly proud that the Liberal Democrats have a very strong record of championing and delivering free school meals. Let us not forget that universal infant free school meals were delivered as a result of Liberal Democrat efforts in the coalition Government. If not for our presence, it is clear that they would not have happened—Labour Members have previously put that on the record. I am proud to continue my party’s campaign to ensure that more children benefit from free school meals.

Frankly, as many hon. Members have said, in this day and age, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, we should not have to campaign on this issue. It is shocking that the Food Foundation has reported that one in five schools runs a food bank, and that as of January 2025, 18% of households with children live in food insecurity, meaning that family members are skipping meals or having smaller meals because they simply cannot afford to put enough food on the table.

I want to make the case for why more children should receive free school meals, both through the eligibility threshold and auto-enrolment, and for ensuring that is properly funded, given the challenges our schools face.

Why are free school meals so great? Well, as my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers) powerfully outlined, we know that well-fed children have better educational outcomes; children who took part in universal primary free school meal pilots in east London and Durham achieved on average two months more progress in their SATs. We also know that children’s concentration and behaviour improve. Behaviour is a real challenge at the moment for teachers up and down the country. We know that children end up eating healthier, because packed lunches tend to have more calories from fat, as opposed to carbs and other sources of calories, and they are higher in sodium and sugar. We know that free school meals help parents to save time and money—on average £10 per week—and, as we have heard from the hon. Member for Liverpool West Derby and my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester, analysis by that well-known left-wing think-tank PricewaterhouseCoopers shows there is a huge economic benefit: for every £1 invested, there is £1.38 return.

Why do we need more children to be eligible for free school meals? We know from the Child Poverty Action Group that some 900,000 children living in poverty are currently missing out on free school meals. The threshold that is used at the moment—£7,400 of family income—is shockingly low. It was last uprated in 2018; we are now in 2025, and we all know about the inflationary pressures and the cost of living crisis that we have faced. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones), who is no longer in his place, mentioned in his intervention, about a million children are set to lose out on free school meals as a result of the migration of legacy benefits to universal credit. The temporary extension to the arrangements is due to expire at the end of this month. I really hope that Ministers will take urgent action on that, because we cannot afford to see yet more children losing out on free school meals.

I recognise that I happen to represent a relatively affluent constituency, but that does not mean that there is no poverty there; in fact, it is often in more affluent constituencies that pockets of poverty tend to be hidden and overlooked. I was moved to tears a while back when a mother came to see me at my surgery. She had fled an abusive relationship and, as a result of the domestic abuse she had suffered, she was on mental health medication. She told me, “I have had to forgo my medication so that I can use the money I would have spent on a prescription to enable my daughter to have lunch when she goes to college.” Those are the sorts of decisions, dilemmas and choices that families up and down the country are having to face so that children and young people are well fed and can focus on their studies. That cannot be right.

I support the ambition, which a number of hon. Friends and other hon. Members have set out, of offering free school meals for all primary school children, but the Liberal Democrats recognise that money is tight at the moment. Therefore, extending free school meals to all primary school children is probably unachievable at the moment, and we should take a more targeted approach. That is why we are strongly committed to delivering the recommendation that Henry Dimbleby made to the last Conservative Government in his food strategy that the eligibility threshold for free school meals should be increased to £20,000, for children in both primary and secondary school. Let us remember that hunger does not end at the age of 11 and, where we have scarce resources, target them at the most needy children and young people at both primary and secondary. Welcome though the breakfast clubs are, we have heard time and again, not least from the children’s charities that gave evidence to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee, that there are concerns that the most needy children will miss out and not take up the breakfast club offer.

Even with the current low eligibility threshold for free school meals, far too many children are missing out, but, shockingly, we do not know how many are missing out, because the last time the Government assessed how many children who were entitled to free school meals were actually taking them up was 2013—12 years ago. We know that at that point 11% of children eligible for free schools meals were missing out. Based on current numbers, the Liberal Democrats estimate that around 230,000 eligible children are missing out today. In a report published last week, the Education Policy Institute notes that those least likely to register are younger primary children, typically from the most deprived local authority areas. Although there are universal infant free school meals, it is still really important that parents register if their child might be eligible, because, as we have heard, that brings with it pupil premium funding for our schools.

I beg the Minister to look seriously at auto-enrolment. Last week, the House considered a private Member’s Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Crawley (Peter Lamb)—a Labour Member—that would introduce auto-enrolment. The Education Committee has strongly recommended auto-enrolment, and at least two amendments on it, including a Liberal Democrat one, have been tabled to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and will be debated this afternoon. In Liberal Democrat-led Durham county council this academic year, as a result of auto-enrolment, 2,500 more children are getting a free school meal and £3 million of pupil premium funding—money to help support our most deprived children to learn and thrive in their schools—has been delivered to schools in Durham.

In responding to Friday’s debate on the private Member’s Bill, the Minister said that he was talking to colleagues in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology about data sharing to enable more auto-enrolment at local authority level, but children cannot afford to wait. There are all sorts of challenges with data sharing, but this can be done nationally. If the Government are going to persist with the changeover from legacy benefits to universal credit, with more children missing out on free school meals as a result, this is one mitigation they can take right now.

Before I finish, I want to touch on funding. My hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh and my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett), who is no longer in her place, touched on the fact that we have to fund free school meals properly where children are eligible for them. I welcome the Government’s recent uplift in funding for universal infant free school meals, but it has increased by only 28p, or 12%, since the Liberal Democrats introduced the universal infant free school meal policy in 2014—at that point it was funded at £2.30 per pupil per meal; it is now £2.58—since when food prices have increased by 29%.

For most of that time, the funding stayed static. In the last Parliament, I and many other hon. Members campaigned hard for an uplift in per-meal funding. I was very pleased when Nadhim Zahawi finally moved a little bit on that, but the funding is still lagging behind inflation. Schools are having to find cost savings in other budgets to fund universal infant free school meals, which they have to deliver by law. As a London MP, before the Mayor of London introduced free school meals for all primary pupils, I heard from many of my primary schools that they were charging juniors more per meal in order to subsidise infant meals, because the Government were not giving them the requisite funding. If we want high-quality, nutritional meals for our children, they need to be funded properly. That is a very important lesson to learn as breakfast clubs are rolled out.

As my hon. Friends the Members for Eastleigh and for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young) have pointed out, there are alarming stories of schools picking up costs of between 60p and 80p per breakfast. That is just not sustainable. Schools do not have the extra money to subsidise breakfast clubs. We need breakfasts that have nutritional value. I asked in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee whether breakfast club breakfasts will consist of just a piece of toast and a glass of water, or whether they will actually be nutritionally valuable for children.

We know that there are big logistical challenges for small schools of delivering breakfast clubs. My hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) mentioned children who cannot get to school in time, particularly those in temporary accommodation. Families in temporary accommodation travel from Croydon, Slough and further afield to Twickenham, and some spend two hours each way travelling. Those are the children who most need a breakfast, and they are the most likely to miss breakfast club.

In conclusion, providing a hot, healthy meal in the middle of the day for every child in poverty is the right thing to do both morally and economically. The Government have the opportunity to do the right thing today by supporting new clause 7 tabled to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill by me and my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh. If they are serious about spreading opportunity—they tell us most weeks that they are—they have the chance to step up today to improve educational outcomes for the most disadvantaged, to boost their health and nutrition, and to help every child, no matter their background. If the Minister wants to deliver on that mission, I hope to see Labour Members marching through the right Division Lobby tonight when we call a vote on new clause 7 to raise the eligibility threshold for free school meals and auto-enrol every child that meets it.