Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment he has made of the number of children living in poverty in (a) Easington constituency, (b) County Durham and (c) the North East who are unable to access the provision of free school holiday activities and food.

Since 2018, the department has invested £11 million of funding to provide free healthy food and activities to children and families in some of the most disadvantaged areas during the summer school holidays, including thousands in the North East.

The department has announced our programme for 2020 where we will again invest £9 million to support children and their families. Officials are currently processing the bids received and we will announce the outcome in due course.

The department has also commissioned an independent evaluation of the 2019 programme, which will report on the number of disadvantaged children who accessed the clubs across the country, including our work in the North East. This will be published in 2020.