Free School Meals
Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Damian Hinds(7 months, 2 weeks ago)
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The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)
It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Betts. I join colleagues in congratulating the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) on securing this important debate. I thank everybody who has taken part alongside her: the hon. Members for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter), for West Ham (Ms Brown), for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne), for York Central (Rachael Maskell), for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), and for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana), and the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms). I also thank the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), who spoke for the SNP, and the spokesperson for the official Opposition, whose speech contained a short section on free school meals. This is an important subject on which we have heard striking and compelling speeches from Members, and the debate has been important and useful.
The Government are determined to ensure that every child, regardless of their background, has the best start in life, and nutrition and school meals are important in that. Not only do they support the development of healthy eating habits that can pave the way to lifelong wellbeing, but they help pupils to concentrate, to learn and to get the most from their education in the immediate term. For those reasons, the Department for Education spends more than £1.5 billion annually on policies to deliver free and nutritious food to children and young people; that is on food provision alone. On top of that, we allocate money to schools to support the education and opportunity of disadvantaged children that is driven by their free-school-meal status, such as through the pupil premium and the deprivation factor in the national funding formula.
I am proud that this Government have extended eligibility for free school meals more than any other. We spend over £1 billion per annum delivering free lunches to the greatest ever proportion of school children: over a third. That is in contrast to the one in six who were receiving a free school meal in 2010. This change is despite unemployment being down by a million, more than 600,000 fewer children being in workless households since 2010 and the proportion of people in low hourly pay having halved since 2015.
Mrs Hodgson
I just want to point out that that is, of course, because of the introduction of universal infant free school meals, which, it has to be said, was a coalition Government policy; the Conservatives cannot really take full credit for that because I doubt it would have happened without the coalition Government.
Damian Hinds
When the hon. Member for Twickenham was on her feet, she claimed that the 2014 Act was entirely due to the Liberal Democrats. Of course, it was not; it was a coalition Government at the time. The hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West is partly right. There have been multiple extensions to free school meal eligibility, including the provision of free school meals to disadvantaged children in further education colleges. The big factor has been the extension of protections under universal credit, which of course has happened since the coalition Government.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Damian Hinds(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Damian Hinds
My hon Friend is so right. In topical questions, I do not have the time to start to unpack all the different things I would like say, so I will not. Suffice it to say that brilliant companies are providing training opportunities.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
I have written to the Secretary of State about the tragic case of my young constituent Gregg McGuire. He has agreed to meet with me and I am very grateful. Does his Department have any plans to reassess the current rules which mean that victims’ families are unable to appeal sentences for those convicted of causing death by careless driving?