Free School Meals and Child Poverty Motion made, and Question
proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(David Morris.) 4.18pm
Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab) On behalf of the
constituents of Liverpool, Riverside, I extend my heartfelt wishes
to the Queen and the royal family and wish her a speedy recovery. I
am grateful to have secured this Adjournment debate on free school
meals and tackling child poverty. This is a very urgent and timely
call to...Request free trial
Free School Meals and Child Poverty
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now
adjourn.—(.)
4.18pm
(Liverpool, Riverside)
(Lab)
On behalf of the constituents of Liverpool, Riverside, I extend
my heartfelt wishes to the Queen and the royal family and wish
her a speedy recovery.
I am grateful to have secured this Adjournment debate on free
school meals and tackling child poverty. This is a very urgent
and timely call to action for the new Prime Minister, calling for
the roll-out of universal free school meals. I believe no issue
is more important than making sure that no child goes hungry.
I congratulate the Minister on her new position and the new
Education Secretary—the fifth we have had this year. I hope the
Minister is serious about tackling the very real poverty crisis
that has exploded over the past 12 years of Tory rule. We know it
is likely to get worse over the coming months, which will be the
hardest winter for thousands of children growing up in
poverty.
When I applied for this debate before the summer recess, I had
intended to focus on how the benefits of investing in universal
free school meals would help to reverse the long-standing and
ever-deepening inequalities in health and educational attainment
between poorer pupils and their more affluent peers. But the
economic landscape has worsened significantly. Everything is
going up except incomes for the worst-off. The cost of living
crisis is set to plunge two thirds of the country into fuel
poverty and three quarters of a million children into poverty.
The call for universal free school meals has now become much more
urgent.
If the new Prime Minister is to prevent children from freezing
and starving this winter, rolling out universal free school meals
must be a key cornerstone of any emergency support plan. Instead
of a real living wage and a welfare system that supports people
out of poverty, we have a crisis of insecure work and poverty
pay, and a welfare system that drives people into destitution.
Make no bones about it, we are facing an unprecedented
humanitarian crisis. Inflation and interest rates are going up,
while the pound is plunging and a record rise in food prices is
pushing millions more into food insecurity.
As pupils head back to school this week, nearly a quarter will be
eligible for free school meals. That number has risen by nearly
50% since 2019 and is rising every single day. It is a clear
indication of the explosion in child poverty that this Government
have contributed to during the last 12 years of austerity. We
have seen attacks on the welfare system and under-resourcing of
the public sector. School pupils have already suffered setbacks
during the pandemic, with inequalities in educational attainment
widening, particularly between the north and the south. In my
constituency of Liverpool, Riverside, 11 children in every class
of 30 were already living in poverty before the current cost of
living crisis.
Classroom hunger drives the education attainment gap between
children from disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers, leaving
poorer children over 18 months behind their better-off peers by
the time they leave secondary school. A-level and GCSE results
this year showed regional and national disparities. The
attainment gap between the richest and the poorest pupils is more
pronounced than ever. Even before the current cost of living
crisis, Government policies failed to level up and instead
fuelled spiralling inequalities.
(Wythenshawe and Sale East)
(Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this Adjournment debate
on such an important matter. As a former primary school teacher
for many years, I know what she is saying: a child cannot learn
if they are hungry in school. Does she agree that the
announcement in today’s energy statement does nothing to assure
schools that are having to cut back their free school meal
service to young people that those young people will not be going
hungry in the weeks and months to come?
I do agree; children cannot learn on empty bellies. It is
scandalous that, even at this young age, the futures of the most
of them have already been decided. Their life expectancy, job
opportunities, salary, housing and so much more have already been
predetermined by their background—by situations that are outside
their control.
The National Education Union’s campaign, “No Child Left Behind”,
clearly identified child poverty as the biggest scandal of our
time, with 4 million already living in poverty and a further
three quarters of a million projected to be plunged into poverty
in the coming months. In a recent NEU survey, over eight in 10
teachers said that their students demonstrate fatigue and an
inability to concentrate as a result of poverty. Nearly three
quarters said that their students were unable to complete
homework and more than half said that their students had
experienced hunger or ill health. Millions of children are going
hungry every single day. The current restrictive eligibility,
complicated registration procedures and the stigma built into a
system that separates rich and poor mean that children are
already missing out on existing support.
(Stockport) (Lab)
I thank my good friend for giving way and congratulate her on
securing this important debate. I also paid tribute to her for
organising an event with the National Education Union earlier
this week in Westminster Hall to highlight the issues in our
schools. The former Prime Minister preached to us about the
benefits of levelling up, but one easy way to level up the north
and the south, and also address the educational attainment gap
and the lack of productivity, would be for the Government to make
a universal free school meal offer to everyone so that our
children are not segregated between rich and poor at our
institutions.
I thank my hon. Friend for the intervention and I definitely
agree that universality is the way forward for free school
meals.
(York Central)
(Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing the debate. In York
in 2021, 25.3% of children were in poverty, and that number will
have gone up substantially in the last 12 months. One thing that
really struck me about the event that my hon. Friend the Member
for Stockport () is talking about was the
stigma that children experienced because they were different from
other children. For that reason alone, surely we should have a
universal offer of free school meals for children, so that they
have the same stature as their peers and are not marked out as a
child needing free school meals.
I thank my hon. Friend for the intervention and will come on to
the point about stigma later.
More than 200,000 children are eligible for free school meals but
are currently missing out. At my free school meals event with the
National Education Union on Tuesday in Parliament, which received
cross-party support, we heard some heartbreaking testimonies from
youth ambassadors for the End Child Poverty coalition.
Liv, Emilia and Naomi, who have lived experiences of food
poverty, spoke passionately about their personal experiences of
being singled out in front of their friends and watching their
parents skip meals to ensure that they were fed. They spoke about
the long-term impact on their mental health, on their
relationship with food, and on their responses to the current
pressures of the cost of living crisis, and about the trauma
response that growing up with such pressures has instilled in
them. One said that having free school meals was like having a
badge pinned to their blazer that read “Poor.” That stigma often
worsens in secondary school and can be incredibly alienating for
children struggling to fit in and thrive.
Data from the Child Poverty Action Group has shown that 800,000
children currently living in poverty are not eligible for free
school meals, and miss out on holiday support and other benefits.
That number is increasing every day, with many families falling
into debt with school lunches. Crucially, children are denied a
meal if they are more than two weeks in arrears.
On the steps of Downing Street on Tuesday, the new Prime Minister
said that
“we have what it takes to tackle those challenges”
and that we can “ride out the storm”, but the energy price
guarantee announced this afternoon will not support families
already in crisis. They will be paying far more, not less.
A recent report from the Food Foundation revealed that about 2.6
million children live in households that missed meals or
struggled to access healthy food. Levels of insecurity in
households with children have risen by more than 40% since the
start of this year alone. We are one of the richest countries in
the world, yet so many low-paid workers, including public sector
workers, rely on food banks. Nearly 70% of food bank providers
say, however, that they may need to turn people away or shrink
the size of emergency rations due to a completely unsustainable
surge in demand that will prevent them from feeding the hungriest
families this winter.
The Government-commissioned national food strategy, authored by
Henry Dimbleby, calls for the extension of free school meals for
all under-16-year-olds in households earning under £20,000, to
help to tackle the nutritional gap between rich and poor in this
country. Children in the most disadvantaged areas are now being
diagnosed with Victorian diseases such as rickets, scurvy and
scarlet fever—and that was even before the cost of living
crisis.
Four councils have rolled out universal free school meals for all
primary school children. Southwark pioneered that flagship
initiative a decade ago in response to the so-called
once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis. The results speak for
themselves. Pupils made four to eight weeks’ more progress than
expected. The schools have seen a massive improvement in
attainment over the last 10 years and have gone from being fourth
bottom to more than 90% being rated good or outstanding by
Ofsted. Nearly a quarter more children were eating vegetables at
lunch time, and there was an 18% reduction in children consuming
crisps and soft drinks. Hammersmith and Fulham has seen a 60%
increase in secondary school children on free school meals since
2018, and it is now piloting universal free school meals for
secondary pupils.
Universal provision contributes to family food security. It
improves pupils’ concentration and behaviour. It improves
attendance, which is also a key aim of this Government’s Schools
Bill. It increases the amount of fruit and vegetables and reduces
the amount of sugar and salt consumed by pupils at lunch time.
Crucially, it also reduces the stigma that many children who
receive free school meals feel when they are singled out from
their peers.
Often, stigma and mental health are overlooked in Government
policy discussions—poorer children are expected to put up and
shut up, and be grateful for their handouts—but the reality is
incredibly damaging. It can cause long-term trauma and problems,
and makes the means-tested policy far less effective. Yes,
universal free school meals will cost. Yes, they should be
understood as an investment in our future. However, these are
children, and everything we do should allow them to flourish and
thrive. Their bright futures should be our priority. We cannot
lose sight of the human impact of not feeding our children, or of
choosing an arbitrary threshold to decide who deserves to go
hungry and who deserves to be fed.
Universality provides far greater opportunities to improve
educational attainment across the board and to reverse the
ever-growing inequalities. Investing in our children now will be
better for everyone in the long term. Prevention is better than
cure. Doing nothing now will reduce the productivity of the
future workforce. It will put greater pressures on the NHS. It
risks a generation suffering from poor mental health and poor
physical health, and being trapped in a never-ending cycle of
poverty.
My hon. Friend is being generous with her time. I very much want
York to adopt free school meals for all primary school children,
and then to look at rolling that out to secondary school
children. However, I also want to ensure that children in my
constituency have access to a hot nutritious meal in their
stomachs every day through the school holidays. I take it that my
hon. Friend will also be campaigning against the school holiday
hunger that we still see in our constituencies.
I thank my good friend for her contribution, and I definitely
will be promoting food security during holiday periods. It is not
just about children having a hot nutritious meal; in reality, it
means so much more. It sets the foundations for improved
behaviour and improved attainment. It means better health, better
jobs, higher salaries and higher life expectancy—in short, the
chance to break the vicious cycle of poverty.
UK food prices have hit the highest levels since 2008. Children
are going hungry right now. They simply cannot afford to wait for
this Government while they are dragging their feet. The last time
the Tories tried to resist helping hungry children, there was
public outrage—
Rightly so.
Yes, rightly so, and the campaign fronted by Marcus Rashford
forced a U-turn within a matter of weeks. I hope the Minister can
confirm that her Government will learn from past mistakes and act
immediately to prevent unnecessary and unimaginable suffering for
millions of children and their families. We will not allow this
Government to continue to bury their head in the sand. On the
steps of Downing Street this week, the outgoing Prime Minister
claimed that the Tory party is a compassionate party. If that is
truly the case, the new Prime Minister and the Education
Secretary should take urgent steps to roll out universal free
school meals as a priority.
4.33pm
The Minister of State, Department for Education ()
It is a pleasure to be here this afternoon, but I too would like
to express my best wishes to Her Majesty the Queen and her family
at this difficult time.
First, I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside () for securing this important
debate at a crucial time, and I ask for her understanding as I
was appointed merely a few hours ago. However, I will start by
saying that I came into this role with great excitement, because
I too care about my constituents and the young people in my
constituency, and I absolutely agree that young children should
go into school without experiencing hunger to be able to learn. I
can assure the hon. Lady, immediately, that I look forward to
working with her and others across the House as we move
forward.
All Members have constituents who are struggling right now with
the rising cost of living. It does not matter which side of the
political spectrum we are on, we all know people who are
currently finding it difficult. Like many hon. Members, one
reason I came into politics was to change things for the better
and help people, particularly in our constituencies. There can be
no more deserving cause than making sure that a child has enough
to eat. In this day and age, no one should accept the prospect of
a child turning up, and trying their best to learn at school but
being distracted by hunger. Children cannot learn properly if
they are hungry, which is why plenty of safety mechanisms are in
place to make sure that does not happen. I assure the House that
the Government are totally committed to helping and supporting
people who need support. That is part of our greater levelling-up
ambitions.
Let me spell out in more detail what we are doing to support our
most disadvantaged children and families. Free school meals are a
vital means of ensuring that children get a decent meal if they
come from families with parents who are out of work or on low
incomes. Just under 2 million schoolchildren receive a free meal
at lunchtime, under the benefit-related free school meal policy.
That will relieve pressure on their families, and ensure that
children get at least one healthy and nutritious meal a day. A
further 1.25 million infants are also getting a meal through the
universal infant free school meal policy. That brings the total
proportion of schoolchildren getting a free meal at lunchtime to
around 38%.
I said earlier that we all care about ensuring that children are
well nourished, and thanks to cross-Government work we have
permanently extended free school meals to children from all
families with no recourse to public funds who meet certain income
thresholds. That came into effect after Easter this year. The
Department’s priority is to provide targeted support to pupils
from disadvantaged backgrounds who are most in need. Extending
free school meals to all pupils would carry a significant
financial cost. We are confident that the current provision
enables children to benefit, and is still affordable and
deliverable for schools. That is currently the right approach in
England, targeting those who need it most. As I said, we spend
around £600 million per year ensuring that around 1.25 million
infants enjoy a free, healthy, and nutritious meal at lunchtime,
following the introduction of the universal infant free school
meal policy in 2014. All Members here will have heard arguments
from some quarters that we should roll out free school meals for
all, but it is right that provision is aimed at supporting the
most disadvantaged.
I congratulate the Minister on her appointment. Will she comment
on the point about stigma when it comes to means-tested free
school meals? We do not have a means-tested system for schools in
this country, but the Government test the means of the parents
for free school meals. There is stigma that comes with poorer
children being offered the free school meal option when others
are not, and my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside
() spoke about the nutritional
gap between children from wealthier families and those from
poorer families. Will the Minister comment on that stigma, and on
that productivity and nutritional gap?
I absolutely get the point about stigma, and I know that schools
work incredibly hard to overcome it. Free school meal eligibility
will be under review, and in this post I look forward to getting
into the detail and speaking to stakeholders, schools, parents
and children, as I do already in my constituency. I look forward
to widening the scope of that.
I, too welcome the Minister to her new position. Richard Titmuss
famously said that services to the poor are poor services. As we
look at that divide, we know that many parents do not claim free
school meals because of stigma, so children go hungry and
without. Of course, parents often make sacrifices, too. Will she
look at the equation again and at how we can bring greater
equality into the lives of our young people?
I thank the hon. Lady for that point. As I said, I, like all
Members of Parliament, absolutely care about our young people in
school and want them to thrive, have great lives and enjoy their
school years, and we must ensure that stigma does not exist for
them. In my role, I will look at many things, and I am more than
happy to look at that further. We do not have plans to extend the
universal provision in England, but, as I said, we will continue
to keep free school meal eligibility under review to ensure that
those meals are supporting those who need it most.
Let us look at some of the detail. We currently have an earnings
threshold of £7,400 for families on universal credit, but that
does not include income from benefits—those payments are not
included—so household incomes can be considerably higher than
that threshold without children being excluded from a free school
meal. Extending free school meals to all families on universal
credit, for example, would carry a significant financial cost,
quickly running into billions of pounds, and yet some of those
households have incomes exceeding £40,000 a year. Those are
clearly not among the most disadvantaged, and other households
would have a greater need of our support.
As every family knows, it costs more to put a healthy meal on the
table than it did even just a year ago, and it is no different
for free school meal provision. We have therefore increased core
funding for schools. This year, the free school meals factor in
the national funding formula has increased to £470 per pupil to
take into account inflation and other cost pressures that schools
face. We are also providing extra core funding through the
schools supplementary grant, which represents a significant
increase of £2.5 billion for the 2022-23 compared with last year.
We are also spending £600 million on universal infant free school
meals each year as well as about £40 million on delivering free
meals to around 90,000 disadvantaged students in further
education. In addition to that, we will provide more than £200
million a year for the next three years to deliver healthy food
during holiday periods through our holiday activities and food
programme. We are also funding breakfast clubs in more than 2,000
schools, and the school fruit and vegetable scheme and Healthy
Start vouchers add further support.
The Government are committed to a sustainable, long-term approach
to tackling poverty—especially child poverty—and supporting
people on lower incomes. There are currently about 1.27 million
job vacancies across the UK, and we believe that the best and
most sustainable way of tackling child poverty is to ensure that
parents get the right sort of help and support to move into work.
We know that employment—I am talking primarily about a full-time
job—offers the best chance of reducing the risks of poverty. Our
multimillion-pound plan for jobs has protected, supported and
created jobs, and will continue to help people across the UK to
find work and develop skills to progress their careers and
increase their earnings.
I thank the Minister for giving way. She makes the point about
work being the route out of poverty, but as I pointed out in my
speech there are vast numbers of parents who are working and are
ineligible to apply for free school meals. Work is not the route
out of poverty, and some work needs to be done on that.
I thank the hon. Lady for her comments. In my new role, I have
already committed to keeping eligibility under review.
Today, the Government set out decisive action to support people
and businesses with their energy bills, tackling the root causes
of the issues in the UK energy market through increased supply
and ensuring the country is not left in the same position again.
Under plans for the new energy price guarantee, a typical UK
household will pay no more than £2,500 a year on its energy bills
for the next two years from 1 October, saving the average
household £1,000 a year from October, based on current energy
prices. That support is in addition to the £400 energy bill
discount for all households. Together, they will bring costs
close to where the energy price cap stands today. The new
guarantee will apply to households in Great Britain, with the
same level of support made available to households in Northern
Ireland. The action will deliver substantial benefits to the
economy, boosting growth and curbing inflation by between four to
five points, reducing the cost of servicing national debt. This
historic intervention comes after a failure to invest in
home-grown energy and to drive reform in the energy market.
Again, the money being made available will not target the most
vulnerable, because we know there are thousands still in crisis
who are likely to pay an extra £500 on top of what they were
already going to pay. We know that the most disadvantaged who
have payment meters often have to pay more than those who have
direct debits. How will the Government address those major,
urgent issues for the vulnerable at this time?
Ahead of today, we had already announced a significant package of
support for those most in need—I outlined the extra £400. Local
authorities also have the household support grant scheme, which
is accessible by people who are in need and is an opportunity for
those who have fallen through certain gaps to access funding they
may require.
We need to invest in home-grown energy and drive reform in the
energy market to secure the UK’s supply. Putin’s weaponisation of
the energy supply has exposed the UK’s vulnerabilities to the
volatility of global markets, coupled with a regulatory framework
no longer fit for purpose which is driving up bills and holding
back economic growth. A new six-month scheme for businesses and
other non-domestic energy users, including public sector
organisations like schools, will offer equivalent support to that
being provided for consumers. That will protect them from soaring
energy costs and provide them with the certainty they need to
plan their business. After the initial six-month period, the
Government will provide ongoing, focused support for vulnerable
industries. There will be a review in three months’ time to
consider where that should be targeted to make sure that the most
in need get support.
Let me bring the Minister back to the debate about free school
meals, because that is really important and I want to make sure
that we make the most of this time and opportunity. One of the
issues that I raised was holiday hunger and the fact that many
children go without food during the school holidays, and that
still continues. What steps will she take to ensure that all
children who experience food poverty get access to a hot meal
every day?
It was important to mention the announcement today about help
with energy costs, because those costs are playing a large role
in the pressures that all households face, and that absolutely
feeds into this debate.
The hon. Lady raises an important question about free school
meals over the summer period. For families who have been eligible
for that support, the Government are investing more than £600
million in our holiday activities and food programme over the
next three years. That funding is being distributed through 152
local authorities. This summer, our holiday activities fund again
provided healthy meals, enriched activities and free childcare
places to children from low-income families. That benefited their
health, wellbeing and learning and contributed to the recovery
from covid-19.
Over the summer of 2021, we reached more than 600,000 children
and young people in England through the holiday activities fund,
including more than 495,000 children who were eligible for free
school meals. That meant that hundreds of thousands of children
from low-income families benefited from healthy food and
increased activities.
The Minister is being very generous with her time. The figure of
£600 million will effectively be significantly lower now, with
inflation and the cost of living crisis. Will she address the
need going forward, rather than sharing the Government’s numbers
from last year, because £600 million will be a lot less—given
that the rate of inflation is over 10% now—than it was last
year?
I thank the hon. Gentleman. However, one of the benefits of the
holiday activities fund is that the decision making is given to
local authorities, so that they can design systems that meet the
need in their areas and make sure that they design tailored
programmes and deliver services to meet the individual needs of
the people they serve. He should understand that the amount is
£600 million over three years, so there is £200 million a
year.
In my constituency in other roles that I held, I spent a lot of
time working with families and young children before I became a
Member of Parliament. I am very passionate about this role and am
looking forward to working with Members across the House. I do
not have children but I have nieces. However, someone does not
have to be a parent to find the idea of a hungry child plain
wrong, as I think we all agree across the House. We can do—and
are doing—something about it and I promise hon. Members that
child wellbeing and nutrition is right at the top of my
priorities.
I welcome the Minister to her position. Having worked with her on
the transport brief at the start of the pandemic, I know that she
will be diligent in the role.
Even though my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside
() is a Liverpool fan, she
mentioned Marcus Rashford—one of the most famous child hunger
campaigners in the country, and a famous son of Wythenshawe in my
constituency. He grew up just down the road; one of us is a great
footballer, one of us is a great politician, and I am neither. If
it were offered, would the Minister be prepared to meet him in
her new role?
As the hon. Gentleman knows, I very rarely refuse a request for a
meeting. I am hoping to have many months to meet stakeholders,
interested parties and people who feel as passionate as I do
about these areas.
I am confident that the safeguards we have in place mean that
once a child is through the school gates in the morning, the one
thing that they should never have to worry about is where their
next meal is coming from. I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool,
Riverside for her patience with my being new to the post, and I
look forward to working with her.
Question put and agreed to.
|
