Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 24 September 2020 to Question 91162, if he will provide an update on when his Department plans to publish the independent evaluation of the 2019 Holiday Activities and Food programme.

Last year, we commissioned Ecorys to carry out an independent evaluation of our 2019 Holiday Activities and Food programme.

The report has been delayed due to the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak but it is now in the final stages and is being prepared for publication. We will continue to work with Ecorys on this and we expect their report to be published in the near future.

This summer, our £9 million Holiday Activities and Food programme worked across 17 local authority areas, providing thousands of children with access to healthy meals and enriching activities, building on the success of the programme in 2018 and 2019.

Future policy and spending decisions will be set following completion of the current Spending Review.