Asked by: Adam Dance (Liberal Democrat - Yeovil)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of ensuring free school meals provide (a) sustainable, (b) nutritious and (c) locally sourced food.
Answered by Olivia Bailey - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Education) (Equalities)
The action we are taking to extend free school meals to all children from households in receipt of Universal Credit will ensure that over 500,000 additional children will receive a free and nutritious lunchtime meal, pulling 100,000 children out of poverty.
We are consulting on proposed updates to the School Food Standards in England to ensure that all food served at school, including at breakfast and lunch, better reflects current nutritional guidance and support children’s health, wellbeing and learning. Details of this consultation are available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/school-food-standards-updating-the-legislative-framework We will consider guidance for the new standards in due course.
The government remains committed to our ambition that half of all food served in public settings is either locally sourced or certified to higher environmental standards and we are open to considering all lawful means of achieving this. We are working closely with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as they develop the Good Food Cycle vision.
Asked by: Adrian Ramsay (Green Party - Waveney Valley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Sutton Trust’s Selective Inclusion report, what assessment she has made of the extent to which low-income pupils with SEND are currently underrepresented in the top-performing comprehensive schools.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The School Admissions Code requires admission arrangements to be fair, clear and objective. A school must admit a child where it is named in the child’s education health and care plan.
The ‘Every Child Achieving and Thriving’ White Paper sets out the government’s commitment to developing new resources to support and encourage schools to use existing provisions within the Code, such as a pupil premium priority, to adopt more inclusive admission arrangements. We have also committed to strengthen scrutiny of all pupil movement including unacceptable off-rolling practice by developing a new, internal dashboard that identifies school level trends in how children move through the education system, paying particular attention to schools where special educational needs and disabilities, free school meals or demographic trends appear significantly out of sync with their local context.
Asked by: Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Labour - Clapham and Brixton Hill)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the publication of Trussell’s End of Year food bank stats, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that Universal Credit’s standard allowance covers essential costs.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government has taken important steps to improve the support available to help people with the cost of essentials and has legislated to deliver the first sustained above inflation rise in the basic rate of Universal Credit since it was introduced. In April 2026, the standard allowance rose by 3.8% in line with the Consumer Prices Index to September 2025, followed by a further 2.3%, meaning a single person aged 25 or over will receive around £295 more this year - over £110 more than if uprated by inflation alone.
Additional amounts are added to provide for individual needs such as housing, disability, and childcare costs. Each household will always have different requirements depending on their circumstances.
We will continue to consider evidence and insights from a range of organisations and people with lived experiences, to ensure the social security system provides the support people need.
The Government recognises that the level of household food insecurity in the UK is unacceptable. We have announced action to expand free school meals, support parents with the cost of healthy food in the school holidays with the Holidays and Activities and Food Programme and transform our food system to ensure it delivers access to affordable, healthy food. Over £600m has been confirmed for the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme for the next three financial years from 2026/27.
Government has also taken further action to support low-income households including through the increase in the National Living Wage to £12.71 an hour from April 2026.
On 1 April 2026 we launched a new Crisis and Resilience Fund. This longer-term funding approach aims to enable local authorities to provide preventative support to communities – working with the voluntary and community sector – as well as assisting people when faced with a financial crisis, to support our ambition to end mass dependence on emergency food parcels.
Asked by: Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Labour - Clapham and Brixton Hill)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he has considered commissioning independent advice, including from people with direct experience of living on a low income, on the adequacy of Universal Credit’s standard allowance.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government has taken important steps to improve the support available to help people with the cost of essentials and has legislated to deliver the first sustained above inflation rise in the basic rate of Universal Credit since it was introduced. In April 2026, the standard allowance rose by 3.8% in line with the Consumer Prices Index to September 2025, followed by a further 2.3%, meaning a single person aged 25 or over will receive around £295 more this year - over £110 more than if uprated by inflation alone.
Additional amounts are added to provide for individual needs such as housing, disability, and childcare costs. Each household will always have different requirements depending on their circumstances.
We will continue to consider evidence and insights from a range of organisations and people with lived experiences, to ensure the social security system provides the support people need.
The Government recognises that the level of household food insecurity in the UK is unacceptable. We have announced action to expand free school meals, support parents with the cost of healthy food in the school holidays with the Holidays and Activities and Food Programme and transform our food system to ensure it delivers access to affordable, healthy food. Over £600m has been confirmed for the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme for the next three financial years from 2026/27.
Government has also taken further action to support low-income households including through the increase in the National Living Wage to £12.71 an hour from April 2026.
On 1 April 2026 we launched a new Crisis and Resilience Fund. This longer-term funding approach aims to enable local authorities to provide preventative support to communities – working with the voluntary and community sector – as well as assisting people when faced with a financial crisis, to support our ambition to end mass dependence on emergency food parcels.
Asked by: Adam Jogee (Labour - Newcastle-under-Lyme)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to reduce the number of people living in relative poverty in a) Newcastle-under-Lyme, b) Staffordshire and c) England.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
We are committed to tackling poverty and we know that good work can significantly reduce the chances of people falling into poverty. The Get Britain Working White Paper set out plans to reform employment, health and skills support to tackle rising economic inactivity levels, support people into good work, and create an inclusive labour market based on the unique needs of local communities, in which everybody can participate and progress in work.
Through our plan to Make Work Pay, we will, improve job security and boost living standards. From April, the National Living Wage increased by 6.7 per cent to £12.21 an hour, boosting the pay of 2.4 million workers. This represents an increase of £900 to the gross annual earnings of a full-time worker on the National Living Wage.
Universal Credit has a critical role to play in tackling poverty and making work pay and we have already taken steps to help those in need. The Universal Credit Act 2025, which came into force on 6 April 2026, delivered the first sustained, above inflation rise in the basic rate of Universal Credit since it was introduced. And the introduction of the Fair Repayment Rate in Universal Credit, from April 2025, means that around 1.2 million of the poorest households will retain more of their award, on average £420 a year.
The Child Poverty Strategy has looked at how the government can boost families' incomes through employment and the social security system, drive down the cost of essentials so parents can meet their children’s fundamental needs, and strengthen local support to ensure families can access vital services when they need them. The removal of the two child limit will lift 450,000 children out of poverty, rising to around 550,000 alongside other measures set out in our Strategy, such as the expansion of free school meals. These interventions will lead to the largest expected reduction in child poverty over a Parliament since comparable records began.
We have also introduced the new Crisis and Resilience Fund with £842 million per annum (£1 billion including Barnett consequential) to reform crisis support in England from 1 April 2026. This longer-term funding approach aims to enable local authorities to provide preventative support to communities as well as assisting people when faced with a financial crisis. We have allocated £28.2 million to Staffordshire over three years, (£9.3 million in 2026/27, £9.3 million in 2027/28 and £9.5 million in 2028/29) alongside £451,295 in 2026/27 to support heating oil households, with funding covering both the County and District Councils.
Asked by: Chris Curtis (Labour - Milton Keynes North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the factors affecting pupils’ readiness to learn and recurring barriers to early-morning preparedness in primary schools.
Answered by Olivia Bailey - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Education) (Equalities)
The Schools white paper makes clear our commitment to ensure every child can achieve and thrive by getting the most from the school day.
This is why we are rolling out free breakfast clubs in every state-funded school with primary-aged pupils in England, so that all children, regardless of background, can have the best start in life and begin the school day ready to learn. Since April 2025, we have funded 750 schools to offer a free breakfast club as early adopters, delivering 8.5 million meals so far. Following the success of the early adopters, we have rolled out clubs in an additional 500 schools opening their doors this week. Backed by an investment of £80 million, we will fund breakfast clubs in around 2,000 schools between April 2026 and March 2027, benefitting around half a million more children.
Asked by: Adam Dance (Liberal Democrat - Yeovil)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to reduce rates of child poverty in working families in (a) Yeovil constituency, (b) Somerset and (c) England.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The latest statistics for 2024/25 show that over seven in ten children in poverty are in working families. ‘Our Children, Our Future: Tackling Child Poverty’, published in December 2025, sets out Government’s commitment to tackling child poverty, including in working households.
Measures include the removal of the two child limit in Universal Credit, which will lift 450,000 children out of poverty. Alongside other measures set out in the Strategy, including extending Free School Meals to all children in households in receipt of Universal Credit, will reduce child poverty by 550,000 in the final year of this Parliament, the largest reduction over a Parliament since comparable records began.
This comes alongside raising the National Living Wage to £12.71 an hour to boost the pay of 2.4 million workers, tripling our investment in breakfast clubs to over £30 million and investing £39 billion in social and affordable housing.
Providing the right employment support can help parents progress in work. That is why the UK Government is driving forward labour market interventions that will deliver a step-change in support and help parents to enter and progress in work.
Since September 2025, eligible working parents of children from 9 months old living in England have been able to access 30 hours of Government-funded childcare. Working parents on Universal Credit can receive 85% of childcare costs and 100% of any upfront costs and, we announced that childcare support through Universal Credit would be extended to help with the childcare costs for all children, rather than being capped at two.
Asked by: Neil Duncan-Jordan (Labour - Poole)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what is the scope of the baseline report on child poverty; and whether it will outline what reduction in child poverty his Department aims to achieve for the 10 year strategy period.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The baseline report will provide further details on our approach to monitoring and evaluating the Child Poverty Strategy, as initially set out in the Monitoring and Evaluation Framework published alongside the Strategy, alongside the latest statistics and evidence.
Our Child Poverty Strategy fulfils our commitment to reducing poverty this Parliament, lifting 550,000 children out of poverty, and sets out our ambition to tackle its structural drivers as part of a long-term, 10-year strategy. This Government has taken decisive action, with the interventions in the Strategy set to lead to the largest expected reduction in child poverty over a Parliament since comparable records began.
From the very beginning of our time in government we have done what is needed to tackle child poverty – we have increased the minimum wage, expanded Free School Meals, invested in social and affordable housing, funded more Best Start Family Hubs, and removed the two-child limit.
Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool Riverside)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps are being taken to reduce childhood obesity rates among children in areas of high deprivation.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
As set out in our 10-Year Health Plan for England, we are taking decisive action on the obesity crisis and creating the healthiest generation of children ever. We are restricting junk food advertising targeted at children on television and online and have given councils stronger powers to block new fast-food outlets near schools. We have announced changes to the Soft Drinks Industry Levy and consulted on our proposals to ban the sale of high-caffeine energy drinks to children. We will go further by introducing mandatory reporting on the healthiness of sales for all large food businesses and strengthening the existing advertising and promotions restrictions by applying an updated definition of ‘less healthy food and drink’.
We recognise that obesity is highly unequal and we are taking appropriate steps to support people to access healthier food. Through the Healthy Start Scheme, we are encouraging a healthy diet for pregnant women, babies, and young children under four years old from very low-income households and, in April 2026, we will be uplifting the value of weekly payments by 10%. The Government is committed to reviewing the School Food Standards so that these reflect the most recent dietary recommendations, free school meals will be extended to all children from households in receipt of Universal Credit from September 2026, and phase 1 of the free breakfast clubs programme will commence from April 2026, which will see a further 2,000 new schools delivering free breakfast clubs.
We are also committed to breaking down barriers and getting more people moving, especially those living in more deprived areas. We will do this through delivering the new Physical Education and School Sport Partnerships network, continued investment in grassroots sport, and cycling and walking infrastructure. We have already teamed up with Joe Wicks and launched 'Activate’, a series of animated, fun five-minute workouts to help families and schools tackle inactivity among children.
Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool Riverside)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps are being taken to ensure that children from low-income households can access healthy food and regular exercise opportunities.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
As set out in our 10-Year Health Plan for England, we are taking decisive action on the obesity crisis and creating the healthiest generation of children ever. We are restricting junk food advertising targeted at children on television and online and have given councils stronger powers to block new fast-food outlets near schools. We have announced changes to the Soft Drinks Industry Levy and consulted on our proposals to ban the sale of high-caffeine energy drinks to children. We will go further by introducing mandatory reporting on the healthiness of sales for all large food businesses and strengthening the existing advertising and promotions restrictions by applying an updated definition of ‘less healthy food and drink’.
We recognise that obesity is highly unequal and we are taking appropriate steps to support people to access healthier food. Through the Healthy Start Scheme, we are encouraging a healthy diet for pregnant women, babies, and young children under four years old from very low-income households and, in April 2026, we will be uplifting the value of weekly payments by 10%. The Government is committed to reviewing the School Food Standards so that these reflect the most recent dietary recommendations, free school meals will be extended to all children from households in receipt of Universal Credit from September 2026, and phase 1 of the free breakfast clubs programme will commence from April 2026, which will see a further 2,000 new schools delivering free breakfast clubs.
We are also committed to breaking down barriers and getting more people moving, especially those living in more deprived areas. We will do this through delivering the new Physical Education and School Sport Partnerships network, continued investment in grassroots sport, and cycling and walking infrastructure. We have already teamed up with Joe Wicks and launched 'Activate’, a series of animated, fun five-minute workouts to help families and schools tackle inactivity among children.