Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate his Department has made of the amount of profit made by Edenred through its delivery of the free school meals voucher scheme since the start of that scheme.

The department 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 do not comment on the commercial arrangements of third parties but can confirm that we are only paying for the face value of goods delivered, which in this case is vouchers.