Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to ensure that funding allocated to schools for free school meals is not used for other purposes.

The department spends around £1.5 billion annually on free lunches for 2.1 million school pupils under benefits-based free school meals, over 90,000 disadvantaged students in further education, and around 1.3 million infants under universal infant free school meals. In addition to this, eligibility for free meals drives billions of additional pounds in disadvantage funding.

Schools have autonomy to allocate their budgets to comply with their duty to provide free meals in line with nutritional guidance set out in the school food standards.

As with all government programmes, including free school meals, we keep our approach under continued review.