Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much funding Edenred has received to deliver the national free school meal voucher scheme in 2020.

The Department for Education made an award of a contract to Edenred pursuant to Regulation 32(2)(c) Public Contracts Regulations 2015 to provide extremely urgent deliverables as part of the response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The contract was let as a direct award using the terms of an existing Crown Commercial Service framework. The Department does not comment on the commercial arrangements of third parties but can confirm that we have only paid for the face value of goods delivered (in this case, vouchers).

Our supplier, Edenred, reported that over £380 million worth of voucher codes had been redeemed into supermarket eGift cards by schools and families through the scheme as of 19 August 2020.