Free School Meals

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend makes a very reasonable point, and he is right to draw attention to the Prime Minister’s view on this matter, because Downing Street said just the other day:

“It’s not for schools to provide food to pupils during the school holidays.”

I cannot believe I have to spell this out: it is the Government’s responsibility to ensure that children do not go hungry, and they do not stop being hungry just because the school bell rings for the end of term. Surely our constituents send us to this place as Members of Parliament to vote to ensure that the children who most need our help at any time of year are protected.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

The hon. Lady is making a passionate and thought-through speech. Does she agree that the holiday periods are always a difficulty—whether or not there is a pandemic—for those children from families on free school meals? They always need that support, and that should be something we are doing irrespective of the pandemic. In my constituency, 40% of the entire workforce are on furlough. The cliff edge is coming in a few days’ time, when the number of people desperate for support will increase massively. Is it not therefore right that we take action today?

[Kate Green]

That is right. The debate this evening is urgent. Let me say to Members on the Government Benches: please put party politics aside tonight and for the sake of our children vote to extend free school meals. After all, since the summer holidays, exactly as we have just heard, the situation has got worse and more desperate for millions of families.

While the provision of free school meals is being closed, the gravy train is still open for business—with £7,000 a day for consultants working on a test and trace system that does not work, £130 million to a Conservative party donor for unsafe covid testing kits, £160 million of profits for Serco and an increased dividend for its shareholders, because the Government threw good money after bad on a test and trace contract that is robbing the public. Yesterday, a Business Minister said that extending free school meals was not as simple as writing a cheque, but why is it that the money only runs out when it is hungry children who need it?

I am surprised there is not greater recognition on the Government Benches that families across the country are finding it very difficult to manage. It was, after all, only a matter of weeks ago that national newspapers were full of briefings from friends of the Prime Minister reporting anxiety about how he had to provide for his family. He had a new baby and, with the loss of his lucrative newspaper columns, his friends said it was a strain to manage on his £150,000 salary as Prime Minister.

It is frankly contemptible that the kind of concern we read in the national newspapers for the Prime Minister’s finances is not extended to the millions across this country who are genuinely struggling. Imagine being a parent of one of the more than 3,000 children in the Prime Minister’s constituency who benefits from free school meals. To read one week about how hard it is to make ends meet on £150,000 a year and then to see the provision of a free meal for your child taken away a few days later is utterly inexplicable.

The fact that we need to have this debate is a sign of repeated failures on the part of the Government—a failure of compassion, a failure of competence, not recognising the challenges that parents face and not giving them the support they need to provide for their children.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Williamson]

The hon. Lady will probably remember that it was a coalition Government that the Liberal Democrats were part of. We are proud that the UK Government have provided free school meals to those who have needed them for over a century. They are an essential part of our education system, supporting 1.4 million students from the lowest-income families to learn and to achieve in the classroom.

This Government have always recognised the importance of free school meals. That is why it was the Conservatives, in coalition with the Liberal Democrats—the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) may want to intervene at this point—who, in September 2014, extended free school meals to disadvantaged further education students for the first time ever. Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, schools have continued to receive their expected funding to cover both free school meals and universal infant free school meals.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I was not going to make that point, but it was actually another example of a policy that you guys definitely did oppose, and which we managed to persuade you to do. But that is not my point.

My point is about support for children, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds, when it comes to their learning. It is clear that young people who have no access to learning technology at home fall further behind than those who do have access to wi-fi, laptops and larger screens. There are 2,300 children living in poverty—below the poverty line—in my constituency, yet only 116 PCs were delivered to support them. Should not the Secretary of State look at that provision again, so that people from poorer backgrounds do not fall further behind at school?

[Gavin Williamson]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point about learning for children. He has the privilege of representing a beautiful and rural part of the world, and he know some of the challenges that come with that. Beauty can often disguise some of the poverty that sits behind it, and he is right to mention some of the challenges around how we support schools. We have extended the laptop scheme, making more available. In total, close to 500,000 laptops will be made available for schools, and we continue to work with the sector to do everything we can to support schools in the delivery of remote education.