I remind hon. Members that there have been some changes to normal practice in order to support the new hybrid arrangements. Timings of debates have been amended to allow technical arrangements to be made for the next debate. There will also be suspensions between each debate.
I remind Members participating physically and virtually that they must arrive at the start of debates in Westminster Hall. Members are expected to remain for the entire debate. I remind Members participating virtually that they must leave their camera on for the duration of the debate, and that they will be visible at all times both to each other and to us here in the Boothroyd Room. If Members attending virtually have any technical problems, they should email the Westminster Hall clerks, at westminsterhallclerks@ parliament.uk.
Members attending physically should clean their spaces before they use them and as they leave the room. I would also like to remind Members that Mr Speaker has stated that masks should be worn in Westminster Hall
That this House has considered support for the education of children from low-income families.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I rise to speak on this issue as a parent and, like all of us here today, as someone who wants the best for our schoolchildren, and to ensure that they are not limited by their background or their parents’ income.
I stand in awe of the incredible work teachers, school staff, parents and early years practitioners have put in over the past 15 months to ensure that children in school do not miss out. They have adapted to social distancing measures in classrooms, regular testing and isolation periods, all while ensuring that children feel safe and can learn. Sadly, we have not seen the same commitment from the Government.
In common with almost all other Government Departments in their response to the pandemic, there has been a catalogue of Conservative failures in education, including school closures without an effective plan for distance learning; a promise to primary schools that they would return before the summer holidays last year, then backtracking on that promise; and preventing families from accessing food vouchers during school holidays, only to do a screeching U-turn after outrage and condemnation from across our nation. How could we forget the exams fiasco for both A-level and GCSE students, leaving thousands distressed about their future? In addition, the Conservatives presided over legal action to force schools to stay open, only to shut them weeks later; in their catch-up plan, they provided less than £1 per day when children were out of school; and they ignored the advice from the expert adviser, Sir Kevan Collins, to allow children to properly recover from the pandemic, forcing him, unfortunately, to resign. As one Slough headteacher, commenting on Government behaviour on education, noted:
The debate can last until 4 pm. I am obliged to call the Front-Bench spokespeople no later than 3.27 pm and the guideline limits are 10 minutes for the Scottish National party, 10 minutes for Her Majesty’s Opposition and 10 minutes for the Minister. Then the mover of the motion will have three minutes to sum up the debate at the end. But until 3.27 pm, we are in Back-Bench time and our first contributor will be Siobhain McDonagh.
Thank you, Mr Hollobone, for calling me to speak. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) on securing this incredibly important debate.
Right now, there are 385,500 pupils off school and isolating because of coronavirus, some of them for the second, third or even fourth time. That means weeks of lost learning after their already missing months of school through the lockdowns. For many of these children, being sent home means a return to remote learning, joining their isolating classmates behind a computer screen, but children on the wrong side of the digital divide will be isolated not just from their classroom but from their education. Why does this matter? It matters because those who were the furthest behind before the pandemic have fallen even further behind their peers during the lockdowns, with every click widening the attainment gap. Sir Kevan Collins has indicated that in September, 200,000 children will make the transfer from primary to secondary school unable to meet their reading age or target.
The Minister and her colleagues have regularly pointed to the Government’s tech roll-out—the Secretary of State for Education did so yet again in the answer to today’s urgent question—but that roll-out was so ineffective that almost a year after schools first closed, the Daily Mail had to run an emergency campaign to secure more laptops for the children who were being failed by this Government. Before the Minister points to the success of the roll-out, may I remind her of the utterly damning National Audit Office conclusion that the Department for Education did not even aim to provide equipment to all the children who lacked it? Meanwhile, the latest data reveals that 80,224 of the devices provided in the roll-out arrived after schools had reopened in March.
With hundreds of thousands of school pupils now isolating, the problem of the digital divide has clearly not gone away. In my constituency, the children in year 6 at Saint Mark’s Primary School have all been off school from Friday because of coronavirus, but 23 of them are still without the kit and connectivity required to log in and learn from home. How does the Minister expect these pupils to join their classmates in remote learning? The answer is simple: they will not; they will simply fall even further behind.
2:45 pm
Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) on securing this hugely important debate.
Time and again, children and young people have been failed by this Government. The UK is one of the world’s richest economies, but 4.3 million children and young people are growing up trapped in poverty, with 30% of children, or nine pupils in every classroom of 30, having to combat hunger and stress before they even arrive at school. In my constituency, nearly half of children—almost one in every two pupils in every school—suffer from poverty. That is a damning indictment of this Government’s failure to provide a stable foundation for our children and young people to flourish. Poverty has a lasting damaging impact on the life chances of children and intensifies systematic inequalities.
This has only worsened during the pandemic. A recent National Education Union member survey found that more than half of respondents have seen an increase in child poverty at their school or college since March 2020. The Resolution Foundation predicts that by the next general election, 730,000 more children and young people will be caught in poverty’s vicious cycle. Poverty is holding too many children and young people back, limiting their life chances and creating barriers to their accessing education. A recent survey found that three quarters of teachers said their students had demonstrated fatigue or poor concentration in school as a result of poverty. Shockingly, more than half of surveyed teachers said their students had experienced hunger or ill health because of poverty, while more than a third said their students had been bullied as a result of it. Children accessing free school meals are also 28% less likely to leave school with five GCSEs graded A* to C than their peers from wealthier households. The coronavirus pandemic has increased the pressure facing families on low incomes. A fifth of UK schools have set up a local food bank since March 2020, while 25% of teachers report personally providing food and snacks to their pupils to ensure that they have eaten during the school day.
It is vital that we recognise how young people of all ethnicities have repeatedly been failed by this Government. That is why I was deeply alarmed by the report published last week by the Education Committee, which used selective data to support a preconceived and divisive conclusion that attempts to pit working-class communities against one another. It is true that poor white children struggle academically, which requires urgent focus, yet the Education Committee’s decision to attribute that to use of the term “white privilege”, rather than a decade of Conservative cuts to the services that children and young people rely on, obscures the reality of how class and race intersect in our education system. One only has to look further to see that racial disparities exist across educational attainment, school discipline and university admissions. Poverty disproportionately impacts children and young people of black African, Caribbean and Asian backgrounds, 46% of whom are trapped in poverty. Instead of attempting to create unhelpful divides among children based on their race, we must honestly accept that children from all working-class backgrounds have been badly let down by decades of neglect.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) on securing today’s important debate.
Over the past decade, the Conservative Government have inflicted the largest cut to school funding in 40 years. As a result, they are failing to tackle poverty and ensure that a quality education is accessible to all. According to End Child Poverty, 37% of children in my constituency are living in poverty—the Government should be ashamed that that figure has increased by 3% since 2014—and this is having a real impact on their learning. In 2019, a National Education Union survey found that more than three quarters of respondents stated that their students had demonstrated fatigue or poor concentration. That is because of poverty.
The fact is that the Government are failing children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Children eligible for free school meals are 28% less likely to leave school with five A* to C GCSE grades than their wealthier peers. Before the pandemic, the estimated learning gap in Luton between disadvantaged students and their peers in early years was three months; in primary school, it was seven months, and in secondary school it was 17 months. The pandemic has exacerbated inequality and the attainment gap.
By the end of the pandemic, and as a result of the lockdowns, most children across the UK will have missed more than half a year of in-person schooling. We know that lost learning disproportionately impacted children from disadvantaged backgrounds who did not have the necessary digital equipment or study space for remote learning. It was the Government’s responsibility to prevent disadvantaged young people from suffering digital exclusion due to the restrictions. Instead, excellent charities such as Luton Learning Link had to step in to make up for their failure to distribute enough digital devices.
Thank you, Mr Hollobone. You are always very kind, and I appreciate your kind thoughts. First of all, may I say how pleased I am to make a contribution to this debate, and that I congratulate the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) on having secured it? He is a very active MP in this House. Certainly when it comes to questions in the Chamber or debates in Westminster Hall, he is always there, so I wanted to come along and support this debate and my Opposition colleagues.
As a father, I feel very strongly about this issue. My boys are now young men in their 20s and early 30s, and the education of my own children was always very important to me. We as parents know that we would do all we can to see our children succeed, because that is what parents do: we want to see our children do well. We want to see them settled and in a job, and we want them to have happy lives. I am very fortunate that my three boys have achieved that, although I must give credit to my wife Sandra for the rearing of the children and the supervision of their education. I was not there often enough to have the input that I should have had, but certainly my wife was.
Although circumstances can sometimes get in the way of this happening, it is crucial that as policy makers in this House, we do all that we can to support those families who are struggling. The education of children should be a priority for us, and we should not forget about low-income families—that is what this is about. I always think that my job—I believe that others subscribe to this as well—is to look out for those who have no one to look out for them. In this House, we bring forward issues on behalf of our constituents in such a way that the Government can perhaps respond and help in all the ways we would like them to, and take additional steps to make our constituents’ lives easier. As the Minister knows, I am pleased to see her in her place: she has a deep and sincere interest in this subject, and I am very confident that she will be forthcoming with the responses that my Opposition colleagues hope to receive.
Thank you for reminding me, Mr Hollobone. I was just trying to remember that while on my feet. The right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) has grasped the issue. We have that problem in Northern Ireland and it is very clear that it has become a problem for education here as well. I thank him for raising it.
In today’s Education questions in the Chamber, it was encouraging to hear the Secretary of State thank the former Education Minister Peter Weir for his work back home, and to hear that the Secretary of State has a good, strong relationship with the regional and devolved Administrations—in particular with my colleague Peter Weir.
“A Fair Start” wholeheartedly engages with teachers and pupils to focus on early education, while maximising the potential for all pupils across Northern Ireland. A recent report has shown that £180 million will be needed to tackle underachievement in Northern Ireland over the next five years. I know that the Minister cannot respond to that, but money for education is given out across the United Kingdom and we get a part of that through the Barnett consequentials. It is vital that additional funds are allocated to the devolved nations in order to tackle this issue, as there is little more important than the future of our children.
I praise the work of our local food banks, an issue that other hon. Members have also mentioned. I have a wonderful working relationship with the food bank in my constituency, which has been instrumental in supporting low-income families who are going through difficulty. They tell me that the first Trussell Trust food bank in Northern Ireland was in Newtownards in my constituency and that it has received more referrals than any other in Northern Ireland.
In the financial year 2020-21, more than 1.5 million emergency food bank parcels were distributed across the United Kingdom—48,000 of those in Northern Ireland. The Trussell Trust, which works through the Thriving Life Church in Newtownards, has done incredible work. It has worked very closely with my office throughout the pandemic to provide food parcels, as well as other assistance. It also does debt assistance and has a clothes bank and a toy bank. Do you know what that shows me, Mr Hollobone? It shows me that the crisis of the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic has brought out the good in people. That is what I have noticed. I can see the negatives and the problems, but I also see the positives, and the positives are that good people came together. The churches, community groups and Government bodies came together, and collectively they were instrumental in ensuring that assistance for struggling low-income families was available. Notably, most were struggling financially because of the pressures of furlough and job losses. I want to put on the record my thanks to the Thriving Life Church food bank for all it has done.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) on securing today’s very important debate. I know that in parts of the UK children are still in school for another few weeks. In Scotland our children are already on summer holiday. Many of the issues we are discussing today apply not just to the UK but to the world at the moment. I believe that the pandemic has hit children and young people hardest of all, particularly when we look at food inadequacies and things such as limited access to technology in order to undertake their digital learning.
We need to look at how advantage has made a difference. The attainment gap exists everywhere between advantaged and more disadvantaged children. Do we treat the symptoms or try to cure it? Countries that have more radical, socially just policies have seen the attainment gap narrow, and that is what we should look at. It is pretty sad that it took a footballer, the fabulous Marcus Rashford, to press the Government into taking more action for children’s free school meals.
We have heard about various concerns this afternoon. The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) talked about the Ofcom report and specifically about accessing digital technology and broadband. Even when young people have the kit, if they cannot afford the broadband connection there will still be problems. Unfortunately, we are hearing that many children did not have the kit that they needed to start with. Earlier in this Session, I was pleased to support the Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) seeking social tariff for broadband, because that is what we need to be looking at. We need to be considering broadband as an essential service to every single home. If people cannot afford it, something has to be put in place to ensure that they can.
3:15 pm
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“Communication is last minute, it’s ill thought-out and it hasn’t included our voice in the whole process.”
Schools have had to cope with all that in the space of just over a year. It would be almost comical if the impact of this incompetence was not on our children’s futures. Each delayed or poor decision has resulted in worse outcomes for a generation of schoolchildren who have been left to suffer. The impact of these decisions is real, and the consequences are even more severe for those who were already disadvantaged and come from low-income families.
The most recent figures show that since October 2020 the number of pupils eligible for free school meals has increased by over 100,000. At the same time, support and funding for such pupils has fallen, with the Government moving eligibility for pupil premium support back from January to October. Schools, which have already been left bruised by cuts to their resources since 2010, therefore miss out on additional funding for any child who began claiming free school meals after 1 October 2020, leaving them short-changed to the tune of millions.
As the Lawrence report proved last year, children on free school meals are already at an economic and educational disadvantage. That factor has a real and profound impact on pupil attainment across all ethnicities. In 2019, just 25% of pupils who had been eligible for free school meals, or who had been in care or adopted from care, received grades 9 to 5 in GCSE English and maths, compared with 50% of other pupils. After brutal cuts and the cynical moving of deadlines, is it any surprise that disadvantaged schoolchildren are struggling?
One Slough parent who lost their job and was reliant on food vouchers expressed their turmoil to me, saying:
“My daughter has been left out by the very government that we rely on to keep us and our loved ones safe.”
Instead of investing to ensure that families in Slough have adequate support to ensure that their children are clothed, fed, and can attend school, the Government have continued to cut the support on which they rely so heavily. The move from legacy benefits to universal credit means that just half of the children in the poorest fifth of our population are able to get free school meals. Sadly, this Government seem intent on savings, rather than on investing the potential of future generations.
While that neglect of our poorest families continues, the gap between them and their peers widens. In my constituency of Slough, the learning gap between disadvantaged pupils and their classmates is 2.4 months for early years, almost six months in primary schools, and in our secondary schools it has reached more than 11 months. Those tragic facts were set in motion way before the onset of the pandemic, and we have yet to see the long-term impact that the pandemic may have on our children. Researchers from the Education Policy Institute have identified that the increasing proportion of disadvantaged children who are in persistent poverty has contributed to the lack of progress in narrowing the learning gap.
Ensuring that parents get the proper financial support that they deserve is essential to children’s attainment and achievements in later life. A Slough mother contacted me recently to attest to that. She was living on just £120 a month and was unable to properly feed or clothe her children. She was desperate for empathy from the Government and adequate support to better the lives of her family. If children experience difficulties at home, they are in no position to be ready to learn.
We must give children the resources to thrive, not leave them to struggle through a pandemic, like the thousands who were unable to get the devices that they needed to access their schooling when the Government’s laptop allocation promise was slashed by 80%. Back in January, Labour’s calls to get every child online fell on deaf ears. As I mentioned earlier, 100,000 pupils have not returned to school full-time following schools reopening. All along, there has been no plan for the education of the most vulnerable in our society.
I am a great believer in the power of education, and in Slough we have some of the best schools in the country. Without support from the Government in what has undoubtedly been the most difficult time for education and disadvantaged families in recent years, the opportunities that a good education can deliver are being missed. We should be realistic about the dire and lasting impact that continued Government inaction will have. A Royal Society report suggests that the impact of school closures on 13 cohorts of students has the potential to affect a quarter of the entire workforce for the next 50 years, and disadvantaged pupils are particularly at risk of falling into poverty.
It is possible to turn the tide with a properly funded catch-up plan, not one that will reach just 8% of pupils, less than half of whom are on free school meals. We need action proportionate to the serious times ahead to ensure that children from low-income families do not miss out even more and to improve the outcomes of future generations, ensuring that they are better off than their predecessors and that they can access and achieve their ambitions, not be held back. The Government will never improve the prospects of our nation by leaving disadvantaged children behind
We know that it is not just Mitcham that is affected. The front page of TheDaily Telegraph today unsurprisingly reveals that youngsters in the most disadvantaged areas are almost twice as likely to be forced to self-isolate as their peers in wealthier areas. However, these children are also the most likely to be on the wrong side of the digital divide, with 8% of children aged between five and 15 not having access at home to a desktop computer, laptop or notebook that is connected to the internet. I ask the Minister in her winding-up speech to specifically address what support is available for the children in year 6 at Saint Mark’s today, and indeed for any children who are self-isolating and who do not have the kit or connectivity required to log in and learn from home.
This is not just a problem for the 10 days of self-isolation. The days of pen and paper are long gone and the technological age that we now live in is here to stay. Homework, research, resources, catch-up—so much is now online. The consequence for children on the wrong side of the digital divide is that they are now even more disadvantaged than before. Today’s debate is on support for the education of children from low-income families, and I am calling for every child entitled to free school meals to have internet access and an adequate device at home. Free school meals may not be a complete measure of need, but I believe it is the best measure we have. This would be a huge step forward in closing the digital divide across our schools. Social mobility, levelling up—call it whatever you want, but surely the pandemic has taught us that no child should miss out on their education in our tech-reliant society simply because they are on the wrong side of the digital divide.
It was not “white privilege” that cut youth services by 73% since 2010; that was the Government. It was not “white privilege” that cut school funding per pupil by 9%; that was the Government. It was not “white privilege” that closed more than 750 youth centres, more than 800 libraries and more than 1,000 Sure Start centres; that was the Government. It was not “white privilege” that scrapped education maintenance allowance and maintenance grants, and trebled tuition fees; that was the Government. It was not “white privilege” that announced a catch-up funding package that is a tenth of what the Government’s own education adviser said is necessary to make up for the disruption of the coronavirus; that was the Government.
The Government’s neglect of children and young people is a generational betrayal, yet they are now determined to distract from the rampant racial and class inequality that their policies have exacerbated with a trumped-up culture war that is designed to stoke the flames of division. We must oppose this damaging agenda and fight for a future in which all children receive the tools to build a happy and secure life.
Learning from home has also increased the economic burden on low-income families. Additional outgoings, such as high bills for electricity or mobile data, have hit families at the same time as economic insecurity in the labour market has increased. In Luton, as a consequence of the pandemic and the particular impact on the aviation and hospitality industries, the claimant count has increased from about the national average to the fifth highest in the country, and the proportion of children receiving free school meals has increased from 21% to 27%. Those children deserve to have the same education as those in wealthy families.
Tackling the educational attainment gap as part of our recovery must be the Government’s top priority. No child should be left behind, but the Government’s current measly offer will not provide the ambitious recovery that is needed. Although others have spoken about the level of funding required, I will focus my remarks on where the funding should be allocated.
Children’s ability and confidence in spoken language is the bedrock of their learning and social and emotional wellbeing. The pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on oracy—speaking well. A report by the all-party parliamentary group on oracy found that two thirds of primary teachers and nearly half of secondary teachers say that school closures have undermined the spoken language development of their most disadvantaged students, compared with one in five teachers saying that it impacted their most advanced pupils.
An increased focus on oracy is an opportunity to accelerate the academic progress of children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Education Endowment Foundation states that
“pupils who participate in oral language interventions make approximately five months’ additional progress over the course of a year”,
rising to six months for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. I have seen examples of this, such as the impact of the Level Trust’s SMASH summer scheme on building the confidence and creativity of children in Luton, and I was lucky enough to give out those awards last summer. Alongside a comprehensive strategy to fund schools properly and expand support services, Labour’s education recovery plan would contribute to developing children’s oracy by expanding school facilities to deliver breakfast clubs and after-school activities, from arts and sports to book clubs, board games, learning through play and communicating.
Expanding access to creative education for children from low-income backgrounds would also help to reduce the attainment gap. Creative subjects can improve a young person’s cognitive abilities by up to 17%, supporting their development in other subjects, such as English and maths. Young people who do not have access to arts and culture are disadvantaged both economically and educationally. The arts should not only be for privileged young people from wealthy families, so will the Minister explain in her closing remarks how the Government intend to fully integrate oracy into all stages and phases of education to help close the educational attainment gap, and whether she agrees that the Government should urgently invest in improving access to creative education, in order to contribute to reducing that gap?
I understand that the Minister does not have responsibility for Northern Ireland, and therefore any comments I make are not for her to respond to, but I want to add to this debate a perspective on life in Northern Ireland, and perhaps reinforce and replicate the issues to which hon. Ladies and Gentlemen have already referred. I want to highlight the struggles that many have faced, especially in my constituency of Strangford. Over the duration of the covid-19 pandemic, those struggles have been at an all-time high. I am very fortunate to have the former Education Minister Peter Weir in my constituency back home, so I have been able to work alongside him to try to address some of these issues, but it has been difficult throughout the covid-19 pandemic to know how to respond and know what the right things to do are.
I want to highlight some of the things that the community has done to help, in partnership with others. Many residents have contacted me about the struggles of at-home education, a feeling of helplessness because of lack of income, and the pressures of having to stay at home either because they have to self-isolate or because the rules mean that they are not able to got out as often as they would like. I am not quite sure whether that is a sign that not enough has been done. I think that the Education Minister back home probably did try to respond wisely, ever knowing that the covid-19 coronavirus and how to respond to it was a complete unknown. However, the education of the children of our nation should be at the forefront of our priorities.
I acknowledge the work that has already been done by the Departments for Education here on the mainland and back in Northern Ireland. Free school meals and uniform grants have been instrumental in helping parents. More than 1.4 million children in England are eligible for FSMs. We have to give credit where it is due, and I give credit to the Education Departments for the things that they have done correctly. I also gently encourage them to address other things in the same way. They have allowed for additional nutritional meals for pupils during school time. I am very pleased to say that that has been extended in Northern Ireland until Easter 2022. We are taking it into next year back home, which is an indication of the importance we attach to the issue.
I would like to make hon. Members aware of the work done by my colleague back home, former Education Minister Peter Weir MLA. He introduced the “A Fair Start” report, which examined the links between educational underachievement and socioeconomic background. The Chair of the Education Committee referred to that issue last week when discussing his Committee’s report, which I was very impressed with. I am sorry but I cannot remember the name of his constituency—I referred to him yesterday in the education debate.
It is crucial that action is taken to maintain a level of support for the education of children from low-income families, whether it is through free school meals or underachievement strategies. The children of this nation are the future. I say that as a grandfather of five. It is a good generation to deal with because at 7 o’clock at night you can give them back and not have them for the rest of the night, which is probably an advantage. At different periods in our lives we have children and then grandchildren. I have become very conscious of the future in the past few years as the grandchildren have come along. We want them to succeed and to have the opportunities that my boys had. I want them to have opportunities for the future as well. We are really privileged to have the job here in this place to plan strategies and lobby Government and Ministers to ensure that these things can happen.
I again thank the hon. Member for Slough for initiating this debate. I very much look forward to engaging with Ministers and Members on further action that we can take to improve the education of our young people. As I said earlier, they are our future and we have to do our best for them.
The hon. Members for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe) and for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) talked about specific issues with child poverty in their constituencies and how they had seen that increase during the pandemic. Certainly I can join them in that, because in Glasgow North West and across Glasgow, we also saw some of the issues with child poverty being made more acute. I will speak more about that in a moment. And we had, of course, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), talking about his ambitions for his children as a parent and, now, as a grandparent. He gave a lot of credit to his wife, but I am sure that some credit also has to go to him for the raising of his children.
The Ofcom report that talked about the number of young people without access to digital technology was pretty stark. It showed us how big an issue that is. In Scotland, we have tried to tackle it. I would like to see the UK Government taking more action. Every child in Scotland was provided with a digital device, and many were given mobile wi-fi devices to ensure that they could actually access wi-fi as well. I know teachers around Glasgow who actually hand-delivered these devices to young people in the constituency. This has been really important.
The Scottish Government have also acted quickly to try to alleviate issues that have been reinforced by the pandemic, such as by providing free school meals to all primary children. That is what we need to be doing—providing not just free school lunches for some people, but breakfasts and lunches for everyone so that there is no stigma, that it is just what happens at school, and that we know that all young people going to school are fit to learn because they have food in their stomach. The Scottish Government are going further, because they will enshrine in law that right to food. During the summer holidays, which we are now in, in Scotland, young people and children in Scotland will be supported by a £20 million Scottish Government fund that will create opportunities for them to socialise, play and reconnect with one another, because their health and wellbeing is of equal importance to their academic progress. We need to ensure that that is right, so that they are ready to start the next school term come August.
The UK Government must ensure that there is more support for children in low-income families who need it. As of May 2020, more than 6,000 households in Scotland had their benefits capped, with those households losing, on average, £2,600 a year. Just over 4,000 of the households included lone parents and children. The Scottish Government will tackle that head-on with the Scottish child payment. That is a world-leading payment, but we are going further because it will be doubled to £20 a week for every eligible child. These are major steps, and steps that the UK Government should be mirroring. Of course, the universal credit uplift, which has been an absolute lifeline, must be kept in place. Removing that will wipe out much of the benefit that the Scottish Government are putting in place with the Scottish child payment.
The Scottish Government have acted quickly to provide the learning tools and access to technology, but we need the UK Government to do more, so I have a few questions for the Minister. First, I would like to hear what discussions she has had in her Department about a social broadband tariff, because that would be transformational for children who are learning at home—not just in pandemic times, but in other times. I would like to hear about discussions she might have had with the Treasury about retaining the universal credit uplift, which has been a lifeline for parents and families. Finally, I would like to hear what plans she has to mirror the Scottish child payment, which is going to go up to £20 a week per eligible family.