Free School Meals

Samantha Niblett Excerpts

Thursday 5th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Morgan]

This, of course, is the latest step in our plan for change to put extra pounds in parents’ pockets. It is a down payment on the child poverty strategy, as I mentioned earlier, building on our expansion of free breakfast clubs, our national minimum wage boost and our cap on universal credit deductions through the fair repayment rate. Those are real measures that will make a real difference to people’s lives.

[Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)]

I welcome wholeheartedly the announcement, not least because it means that almost 4,000 children in my constituency will benefit from free, healthy school meals, saving parents almost £500 a year. That is in addition to the breakfast clubs, of which we have two on the early adopter scheme. Does the Minister agree that as grateful as we are to wonderful people including the bean man, who can often be seen in Willington, Repton and surrounding areas collecting food for food banks, this is a step towards lifting people out of poverty so that we will no longer need food banks?

[Stephen Morgan]

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. I know that she will want to feed into the child poverty strategy to ensure that it is ambitious, but I assure her that that is our intention.