- Report (3rd Day) (Continued)
- 9:50 pm
- Amendment 98
- 98: After Clause 27, insert the following new Clause— “Free milk entitlement: child minder agencies(1) The Secretary of State must, using powers under section 175 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 (regulations, orders and schemes), amend regulation 18 of the Welfare Food Regulations 1996 (milk or dried milk for children in day care) to ensure that children provided with daycare by childminders registered with child minder agencies are entitled to free milk.(2) The Secretary of State must make regulations under subsection (1) within six months of the day on which this Act is passed.”
- My Lords, this is a very different topic from what we were discussing before the dinner break—we move to nursery milk. Only in your Lordships’ House could one say those words.My Amendment 98 would bring childminders who are registered with a childminding agency into the scope of the free nursery milk scheme. As your Lordships know, the nursery milk scheme provides a free portion of milk every day to any child under the age of five attending a registered childcare setting; it is a long-standing initiative dating back to the 1940s. The legislation underpinning the scheme was written before childminder agencies—CMAs—came into existence, and a later drafting oversight meant that milk subsidies were not mentioned in the legislation that created CMAs in 2014. For a decade, childminders registered through CMAs have been unable to claim milk subsidies, while those registered directly with Ofsted can; that is despite the fact that all childminders are Ofsted regulated and operate under the same regulations.The loophole has been widely acknowledged as a clear legislative oversight. Two successive Governments, including my own, have pledged to fix it, but sadly no action has been taken. As a result, more than 10,000 children are currently missing out on free milk. As CMA-registered childminders make up a growing share of the workforce, the number of children affected increases every year. A simple legislative update would close this loophole and restore parity across the early years sector. I hope that the Minister can do better and go further than previous Governments—including my own—and commit not only to addressing this but to giving the House a “no later than” date for doing so. I beg to move.
- My Lords, I have two amendments in this group. The purpose of Amendment 104 is to ensure that no eligible family misses out on the Healthy Start payments, as there is evidence that many families have not been aware of this important extra support and have therefore not applied for it. I have tabled this amendment again because I was not content with the Minister’s response in Committee, but I thank her for her subsequent letter.During that debate, the Minister said that she could not accept my amendment because the Healthy Start programme requires an eligibility check as the funds come in the form of a prepaid card. This, she said, is a financial product and therefore requires the recipient to accept the terms. Will the Minister please note that my amendment, in proposed new subsection (3), takes note of that fact and requires that the eligible person must be able to opt out of the scheme if they wish. That, of course, implies that they also opt in.This could be done by rejecting the terms of the card offered, rather than accepting them. However, the Minister went on to say that to increase uptake, which she agreed is important, the NHS Business Services Authority will write to those eligible to encourage them to apply to the scheme.Three questions arise from that answer. First, if the NHS Business Services Authority is going to write to those who are eligible, it must have already found out who is eligible. If that is the case, why can those people not be enrolled, informed that they have been enrolled and, finally, given the chance to opt out if they wish? I cannot imagine that many will.Secondly, now that the Minister has laid Amendments 111 and 112, which I am sure she will explain in a few minutes, it is clear that government departments will now be able to share information for the purpose of ascertaining eligibility for free school meals. I hope we can assume, therefore, that the NHSBSA will also be able to get information from other departments to ascertain whether the families are eligible for Healthy Start. If the NHSBSA is going to write to eligible people, will it at least enclose an application form and prepaid envelope to make it very easy to apply and accept the terms? There should be no need for the recipient to have to supply any further evidence of their eligibility, because the NHSBSA will already have established that, or it would not have written to them in the first place. What possible further checks are needed?
- 10:00 pm
- The Minister mentioned building on the compliance pilot. This took place with the Food Standards Agency in 2022-23 and focused on the ability of local authority food safety officers to ask questions about the standards of the food rather than just inspecting food hygiene in school kitchens. It was found that, yes, they could carry out this role given clear guidance, but that more work needed to be done to respond to the findings of schools that were failing. We now have consultations about reviewing the school food standards and bringing them up to date, but no plan to inspect or enforce the new standards or to help schools to comply; nor am I aware of any plan to review whether some schools are being disadvantaged by how FSM allowance is calculated, particularly small schools in disadvantaged areas, as I just mentioned.
- A wider review will be required as soon as we have the new standards. It is also relevant to note that we are awaiting the updated nutrient profiling scheme. I would have thought that this would also affect the new school food standards. There are several interacting policies here. While we are waiting for the Government to act, the very effective All-Party Group on School Food led by the Minister’s very determined colleague, Sharon Hodgson MP, has outlined a plan for an in-depth inquiry into school food. It will have the benefit of an expert advisory board and will call witnesses, including head teachers, local authority and private caterers, other experts, NGOs, academics, pupils and industry representatives to ensure that it benefits from a clear picture of the situation and, most importantly, how to fix it. We are not just talking about money here, though there may be recommendations about how it is allocated.
- Sharon Hodgson and I are hoping to meet Minister Bailey from the Department for Education, who is now responsible for school food, to discuss our plan for the inquiry. If the Minister can assure us that the Government are going to do a similar root-and-branch overhaul of school food, there may be no need for the all-party group to go ahead with this inquiry. However, if she prefers to wait for the recommendations of the all-party group inquiry, I hope that she and the Minister can assure us today that the Government will take whatever action is necessary to implement the inquiry’s recommendations in the interests of our children’s future health. She will know that all-party group inquiries are cross-party and can be enormously helpful to Governments, since they are close to the grass roots of the problem that they are looking at. You have only to look at how helpful the All-Party Group on Smoking and Health has been to the Government in devising the Tobacco and Vapes Bill currently before Parliament.
- The Minister will note that Amendment 113 says in the very first proposed new subsection that the scheme I propose should support schools and caterers to help them feed our children more nourishing food. However, we need to know where we are now so that we can focus more help on those who need it most. Monitoring and compliance are vital parts of the amendment. Can the Minister shed more light on all the factors at play here, and assure me that she and her ministerial colleague in another place will work with the all-party group led by Sharon Hodgson MP as we share a common aim to improve school food?
- My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend Lady Barran and to associate myself with Amendment 104 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, whom it is a pleasure to follow.The Welfare Food Regulations 1996 lay out in astonishing detail the importance of milk to those who were entitled to it for the early years. While there are different regulatory regimes in Scotland and the rest of Great Britain, it is clear that certain children in certain circumstances are entitled to dried milk or fresh milk in prescribed portions per week, be it according to age; to those whose families are on financial assistance for low income; to the Healthy Start, which would include expectant mothers and those with children otherwise under four—and, of course, some people of any age, including children, but not necessarily children, with certain physical and mental difficulties.I think it is common ground on all sides of this House that the provision of milk as part of a healthy diet is a good thing. But the regulations provide for this milk to be dispensed, if I can use that word, in maternity and healthcare centres, as part of the National Health Service, but also in other welfare and food distribution centres. But the world has changed, and these settings are no longer the only places where people access help.The NHS, which may work from nine to five, or a food distribution centre, which may open for only a few mornings a week, are not necessarily the only places nowadays where people can access the help they need. Those settings are just not as thick on the ground as they used to be at times that are convenient to families.I do not deny the good work of those settings, but others are available under the same regulations, and some of them are even paid for by the state. My noble friend Lady Barran laid out the importance of childminders and childminder agencies as a part of the mix that helps provide time and space for families to get into work so they can earn and improve their family circumstances, with the flexibility to take different jobs, which may be available on a part-time, out-of-hours or seasonal basis.
- My Lords, I support both amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, in particular Amendment 113 on the school food improvement scheme. I am incredibly glad to see how many steps the Government are taking, but there are still things we need to work on. The noble Baroness referred to Professor Defeyter’s work on the finances and how, with big schools versus small schools, a lot of the money gets lost. It also happens with councils that are so cash-strapped that they sometimes take some of the money.We are still living in a country where we have a postcode lottery on food. Some schools do amazing jobs with limited resources and some schools really do not. Nobody can now dispute the fact that the free school lunch, or any school lunch, is incredibly important to children. Yet we hear too often about schools that allow only 20 minutes for lunch, in which time you are meant to play, make a call, go to the toilet and have lunch, which is clearly going to be seen as a secondary part of a school.It is also secondary in that the school catering departments at the moment get very little training. I wonder whether the Minister is aware of a scheme in the department being run by Chefs in Schools and a lot of philanthropic organisations to actively train chefs to go into schools and work with them to improve the quality. For the same amount of money, you can have really good quality and transform children’s lives.Finally, nursery is equally important in getting kids eating the right stuff right from the beginning. I absolutely support that we need milk, but children also get fed there and those meals tend to fall outside of anything right now, as far as I can see. I would be interested to know what the Government will do.
- My Lords, the amendments in the third group cover free school meals, the nursery milk scheme, the Healthy Start scheme and school food. Ensuring that every child has access to nutritious food and support is fundamental to their health, development and ability to learn. We know that good nutrition starts early and that simple measures, whether access to milk or balanced school meals, can make a lasting difference.I turn to government Amendments 111 and 112. Last year the Government announced that from September 2026, every child in a household receiving universal credit will be entitled to free school meals. This decisive action will lift 100,000 children across England out of poverty and save families around £500 per child each year. The amendments will enshrine this crucial commitment in law and ensure its successful delivery.A child is currently eligible for free school meals if they attend a state-funded school in England, their household is in receipt of universal credit and the household’s income is less than £7,400. Government Amendment 112 creates a new category of free school meals, to be known as expanded free school meals, which will apply to that cohort of children in receipt of universal credit but with a household income greater than £7,400. This will ensure that free school lunches are provided on request to all pupils from households in receipt of universal credit and that state-funded schools in England will be under a duty to provide meals to those eligible children.We will support over half a million more children in this way. Providing the most disadvantaged children with a healthy lunch each school day will help secure their education and improve their future prospects.Government Amendment 111 will deliver the practical implementation of the free school meals expansion. The Department for Education relies on the provisions of the Education Act 2005 to process income and benefits data from other government departments so that it can check and confirm a child’s eligibility for free school meals. The scope of this power is, however, limited. This amendment will amend the 2005 Act to enable the department to identify whether a child is eligible under the current free school meals criteria or the expanded free school meals criteria and then communicate this to local authorities, parents and schools so that they in turn may determine whether a child is also eligible for other education benefits and funding.
- 10:15 pm
- This amendment will for the first time also allow parents and schools to check a child’s eligibility for free school meals by giving them access to the eligibility checking system. This is the digital portal currently used only by local authorities to verify whether a child meets the eligibility criteria for free lunches. Giving parents and schools access to it will simplify and accelerate eligibility checks.
- A further change will allow the Department for Education to check eligibility for pupils who are granted free school meals through government guidance or grant. By this, I mean children with no recourse to public funds and children receiving education otherwise than at school who do not meet free school meal eligibility criteria set out in legislation. There is instead an expectation set out in guidance that local authorities should provide them with free school meals. This measure will simplify free school meal eligibility checks for these children and remove administrative burdens on local authorities and schools.