Free Breakfast Clubs

12. What steps she has taken to roll out Best Start free breakfast clubs.

Every primary school in England will have a free breakfast club by the end of this Parliament, giving children a healthy breakfast and a great soft start to the day and improving attainment and attendance. Another 2,000 schools will open free breakfast clubs this year, including Pondhu primary school in my hon. Friend’s constituency.

I am delighted that Pondhu primary school in my constituency has been a trailblazer for not just our Government’s free breakfast clubs scheme, but investment in school nurseries, which has been a resounding success. What assessment has the Minister made of the positive impacts of our free breakfast clubs programme on children and their families?

It was a pleasure to spend time with my hon. Friend in his constituency recently, where he and I both enjoyed a range of activities with the brilliant Pinky, including our enthusiastic attempts at axe chopping. I know that my hon. Friend has worked really hard to support and encourage schools in his constituency to participate in our school-based nurseries and breakfast clubs programmes, and I thank him for that. In the south-west, we have opened 30 school-based nurseries and nearly 100 breakfast clubs, supporting thousands of children in St Austell and beyond to get the very best start in life.

The roll-out of free breakfast clubs and the Government’s wider child poverty strategy are supposed to be driven by data, yet the Department does not even hold information on which councils in England have implemented auto-enrolment for free school meals. If the Government do not hold that basic data, which would show that Devon has done so and given £1.5 million in pupil premium but that Plymouth has delayed doing so until 2026-27, how can the Government be trusted to roll out further taxpayer-funded support—such as free breakfast clubs—and how can they prove the impact that that has on child poverty?

All our programmes are evidence based. When it comes to breakfast clubs, we know the data shows us that they will drive up attainment and improve attendance for our schoolchildren.