Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent estimate he has made of the number of children affected by changes to eligibility for free school meals under universal credit.

We estimate that around 50,000 more children will benefit from free school meals (FSM) by 2022, compared to the previous system.

No child will lose their entitlement to FSM because of these changes. As well as the additional 50,000 pupils mentioned above, hundreds of thousands more children will benefit from the generous protections we will provide.