Free School Meals (Automatic Registration of Eligible Children) Bill

Debate between Sam Rushworth and Mike Wood

2nd reading
Friday 14th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Crawley (Peter Lamb) on promoting this Bill so ably. The last Conservative Government massively expanded eligibility for free school meals, meaning that the proportion of children and young people eligible is much higher than was the case under any previous Government. The evidence here proves that the inheritance we left behind in this area last July was much kinder than that which the last Labour Government left us in 2010, with one in three children able to get a free school meal—as opposed to one in six when the previous Labour Government was last in office—despite a large fall in the number of workless households.

[Sam Rushworth]

We see in the bodies of children increased stunting, with the average 10-year-old 1 cm shorter than they were in 2010. How does that square with what the Minister is saying? We see a malnutrition crisis.

[Mike Wood]

When we look at dietary habits in recent decades, we see that that is not confined to parts of the income spectrum. There has been a deterioration in the quality of diets going back over several decades that is quite separate from issues of poverty.

As of January 2024, more than 2.1 million pupils were eligible for benefits-related free school meals, which amounted to 24.6% of all pupils. In addition, more than 90,000 disadvantaged students in further education received a free school meal at lunch time. Collectively, this supported the children and young people who needed it most to ensure that they could make the most of their world-class education, boost their health and save their parents considerable amounts that they could not afford.