Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they plan to allow colleges to provide free meals transactions on individual student smart cards.

We published guidance for further education funded institutions, including colleges, on 16 April setting out full details of the requirement on institutions to provide free meals to their disadvantaged 16- to 18-year-old students from September 2014.

Exactly how those requirements are met is for individual institutions to determine, and will depend on current practices and systems already in place. Institutions have the flexibility to be able to provide either a meal or a voucher or credit for the student to exchange for a meal. Smart cards would be an ideal way to make such provision.