Free School Meals

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I inform the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

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[Gavin Williamson]

I give way to my hon. Friend.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. The Secretary of State has been incredibly generous with interventions, but there are 43 Members on the call list and we would like to get them in. There will be time limits, by the way, so please keep that in mind.

[David Simmonds]

Was the Secretary of State moved, as I was, by The Times “Red Box” article that Marcus Rashford wrote? Did he find it quite striking that the anxiety and difficulties that he described in growing up, with his mum’s worry about feeding the children, took place entirely under a Labour Government who claimed that eradicating child poverty was their front and central policy?

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[Gavin Williamson]

I do apologise, but Mr Deputy Speaker has been quite clear about wanting me to make progress, and I would best do so.

During the unprecedented and unpredictable period at the start of the pandemic, it was right that extra measures were taken to provide free school meals during the holidays, but we are in a different position now that we have welcomed all pupils back to school. We know that the long summer break is the time when families most welcome support, and when children will most benefit from engaging activities so that they are ready to learn when they return to school in September. For the past three years, we have supported disadvantaged children with free healthy meals and enriching activities through our holiday activities and food programme. This summer, the £9 million holiday activities and food programme supported about 50,000 children across 17 different local authority areas. We have also provided £63 million in welfare assistance funding to local authorities to support families with urgent needs. This funding was passed to councils in July to provide local access to funding for those who need support, including families facing financial challenge.

Education is the No. 1 route to opportunity and prosperity. We invest more in the education of disadvantaged children to give them the very best chance in life, both through the weighted national funding formula and the £2.4 billion annual pupil premium. We have invested £1 billion in the covid catch-up fund, including investing in the national tutoring programme, which will offer high-quality small-group tutoring to disadvantaged pupils who have fallen furthest behind. We are equally determined to encourage the continuation of high-quality childcare, which helps parents to work and is a critical building block in children’s development. We are proud that since 2013 the proportion of children achieving a good level of development at the end of reception year has gone from one in two to nearly three out of four.

However, we recognise that these are unprecedented and difficult times for some families, and that is why the Government have significantly strengthened the welfare net. We have put in place additional welfare measures worth around £9 billion in this financial year, including increasing universal credit and working tax credit by up to £1,040 for this financial year, benefiting more than 4 million households. These welfare measures sit alongside our extensive support package, including the income protection schemes that have so far protected 12 million jobs at a cost of almost £53 billion for England alone. This is one of the most significant interventions by any Government in the western world. We recognise how important it is to protect not only jobs but families, and that is why we have taken these interventions. Taken together, it is clear that the Government have taken significant and unprecedented action to support children and families at risk of hardship during this period.

Free school meals are, and always have been, about supporting children with a meal to help them to learn when they are at school or, indeed, currently at home learning. However, it is our support through universal credit and our comprehensive welfare system that supports families. I have outlined a significant series of actions from across Government to support families who may otherwise struggle in the light of a pandemic, including £9 billion in welfare, £53 billion for job support measures, £63 million for local authorities to help those with urgent needs and £350 million to help the most disadvantaged students to catch up at school. Those are just a few things that this Government have put in place to support those who are most disadvantaged. They represent a direct financial response to the pandemic and demonstrate that the Government are doing everything possible to support those who need help. I encourage Members from across the House to support the Government as we tackle this pandemic and the impact it has on people across society, and I commend our amendment to the House.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Before I call Brendan O’Hara, I should like to inform the House that the time limit will be five minutes for the Chairman of the Education Committee and four minutes thereafter.

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[Brendan O’Hara]

That is not really a question for me—I am not and never would aspire to be the Secretary of State for Education—but I take on board the hon. Member’s point, because it is about political choices. That is why I am so pleased that the Scottish Government have chosen to use the limited powers they have to support 156,000 of our children and young people by committing £10 million to ensure that those children who need it will continue to get a free school meal during this holiday and every holiday up to Easter 2021. In addition, the Scottish Government have announced £20 million of funding to be made available to local councils to help tackle financial insecurity. That funding will be sufficiently flexible for councils to be able to provide support to people who, shamefully, have no recourse to public funds and would otherwise be destitute and have no access to mainstream benefits.

Of course child poverty still exists in Scotland; no one could or would deny it. But the difference between what the UK Government are doing and what the SNP is doing in Holyrood is that the Scottish Government are doing what they can, with limited powers, to alleviate the worst effects of the Government’s policies, to try to improve the lives of Scotland’s poorest children. That was recognised by both the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty, who praised the Scottish Government for using what he described as their

“newly devolved powers to establish a promising social security system guided by the principles of dignity”.

Included in that new security system is the Scottish child payment, which will pay the equivalent of £10 a week per child to families with eligible children who are currently in receipt of low-income benefit. From November, the fund will be open to families with children under the age of six, recognising that, of all children in poverty, almost 60% live in a family where a child is under six years old. Although there is no cap to the number of children per family, it means, for a family with two children under six, £1,040 a year extra in their pockets. That is expected to alleviate the worst excesses of poverty for 194,000 children, and it is a significant investment by the Scottish Government.

I understand that the Government intend to vote against the motion tonight. I hope the Whips have done their arithmetic, because I understand that at least one group of Conservatives will be voting with the Opposition this evening—the Scottish Conservatives. It was less than a month ago that the new leader, the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross), declared that providing free school meals, breakfast and lunch to every primary school pupil in Scotland was to be his flagship policy in next year’s Scottish elections. He said:

“I have seen myself the difference that providing free meals can make. I just want to make sure no-one falls through the cracks and by giving this to all primary school pupils we can make sure the offer is there for everyone.”

Given his words, it is absolutely inconceivable that he and his colleagues would do anything other than vote for the motion tonight and provide the same level of support for the 1.5 million children in England who will benefit from school meals. That is why, despite being wholly devolved, we will be in the Lobby this evening alongside, I believe, every single Scottish MP when the House divides this evening.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

It will be five minutes for the Chair of the Education Select Committee and four minutes thereafter.

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[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; I will come to that later. I am asking not for huge amounts of new money from the Treasury, but for the redistribution of the proceeds of the existing sugar tax, which disproportionately hits those on low incomes, back to those on lower incomes through free school meals and food programmes.

The Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast a 13.2% rise in unemployment, meaning that 336,500 more working adults could face food insecurity. Now is the time for a long-term plan on combating food hunger from the Government, rather than a series of patchwork solutions.

First, I urge the Government to collect and publish proper data on child food insecurity. The most recent DFE estimate of the number of children eligible for free school meals, provided to me in a recent letter from the Children’s Minister, is 1.4 million. The figures are from January 2020, and we know that since then the world has been turned on its head. The Food Foundation suggests that the figure is now more like 2.2 million children, with 900,000 newly registered.

To the Government’s credit, there are a number of schemes to relieve food hunger, but what is being done to ensure that they are working? In September, for example, just 47.3% of eligible mothers were receiving healthy start vouchers, and those uptake figures are in decline. Much more could be done to boost awareness of those schemes, digitise healthy start vouchers and ensure that all those eligible for free school meals are registered quickly.

Secondly, free school meals should be extended over the school holidays temporarily for as long as the big effects of the pandemic continue to be felt. I would only support that temporarily. If we acknowledge that children risk going hungry in term time by providing them with free school meals despite the provision of universal credit and the other things that have been mentioned by the Government, we know that they risk going hungry in the holidays too.

Thirdly, as the report by the House of Lords Select Committee on Food, Poverty, Health and the Environment, “Hungry for change: fixing the failures in food”, recommended, when calculating universal credit allowances, the Government must consider the cost of buying and preparing healthy, nutritious meals under its own Eatwell scheme. Fourthly, the Government should implement the private Member’s Bill introduced by the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) on school breakfasts and give all disadvantaged schools the funding to provide a free school breakfast to children at risk of hunger. We know that that increases educational progress by two months, and average GCSE achievement goes up for those children who have a regular breakfast.

Fifthly, we need a programme of holiday activities not just over the summer, but over every school holiday, to offer academic catch-up, as well as mental health and wellbeing support. I have seen that work in my constituency of Harlow, with children getting fed. Of course, I understand there are significant financial constraints on the Treasury right now, but these proposals do not need new money. It is also time for prominent retailers, suppliers and manufacturers to take on a much bigger role and match fund Government investment in tackling child food insecurity. It is no good just ticking a virtue-signalling box on a taskforce—they should actually act. We should ring-fence the £340 million a year in revenue from the tax on sugary drinks to cover the cost of these proposals.

The sugar tax, as I mentioned, hits families on lower incomes. Why should we not redistribute the revenue to fund these policy proposals, helping those same families facing food insecurity? Kellogg’s has found that hunger in the classroom costs the English economy at least £5.2 million a year. All the evidence shows that if we feed children properly, we increase educational attainment and boost life chances. It is a no-brainer. I urge the Government to set out a serious long-term plan to combat childhood hunger, and—at least until we are over the coronavirus—keep free school meals going through the winter and Easter holidays.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

While I personally rather like the new artistic screen displays, I have been assured that technicians are on to it so that they do not distract too much. I call Paul Maynard with a four-minute limit.