Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment his Department has made of the effects of food poverty on children and young people's physical, emotional and educational well-being.

The government supports the provision of nutritious food in schools, which ensures pupils are well nourished, develop healthy eating habits and can concentrate and learn. We encourage a healthy balanced diet and healthy life choices through school funding, legislation and guidance. Under the benefits-based criteria, around 1.1 million of the most disadvantaged children are eligible for and claiming free school meals – saving families around £400 per year. Benefits-based free meals were extended to disadvantaged further education students in September 2014. A further 1.5 million infants receive free nutritious meals under the universal infant free school meals scheme.

We are also investing up to £26 million to the National Schools Breakfast Programme. This money will kick-start or improve breakfast clubs in over 1,700 schools and target the most disadvantaged areas of the country, including Opportunity Areas. Healthy breakfast clubs can play an important role in ensuring children from all backgrounds have a healthy start to their day so that they enhance their learning potential.

In addition, in 2018 the government announced a programme of work to explore how to ensure disadvantaged young people can access healthy food and enriching activities over the school holidays. We awarded £2 million to 7 organisations to deliver free healthy food and enriching activities to disadvantaged children during the 2018 summer holidays. In November 2018, we announced details of a £9 million fund for summer 2019 to set-up local coordinators of free holiday activities and food provision in summer 2019 in a number of local authorities.