It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. It is a great honour to introduce this debate on free school meals—the first opportunity to discuss this important issue since the general election. Today’s debate was prompted by my conversations with primary school teachers in my constituency, who told me of their concerns at the lack of funding for free school meals and breakfast clubs. The number of children in our country going to school hungry is unacceptable, and that impacts families in my constituency of Eastleigh and across the UK. The chance to have the best start in life should be available to all children, regardless of background.
The cost of living crisis has driven countless families into hardship. The Government’s own figures estimate that 4.3 million children, or 30% of all children in the UK, are living in poverty, with the figure at 21% in my constituency. As of January 2024, 18.5% of pupils in Eastleigh—that is 2,426 children—were entitled to benefit-based free school meals, yet we know many more who would benefit from a free school meal do not meet the strict eligibility criteria and miss out. The Government must look at this issue with the urgency it requires, because those children are being failed.
While I was the leader of Wokingham borough council, I ensured that we funded free school meals during the school holidays for children who received them during term time. That was absolutely the right thing to do to ensure that children were not left hungry and at a disadvantage because of their background. The Times reports that 1 million children face losing their free school meals. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is troubling, and that the Government must ensure that children entitled to free school meals continue to receive them during school holidays?
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and I absolutely agree. I also congratulate him on the work that he did at the council to ensure that children did not go hungry in the school holidays. I wish more and more councils were able to do that.
How are children supposed to get good grades at school, engage in sports and achieve their dreams for a better future if they are hungry? Four in five teachers told the National Education Union that they see children unable to concentrate due to the impact of deprivation. Polling of 10,000 teachers across England conducted by School Food Matters showed that a quarter of teachers have used their own money to feed children. For families who are struggling, a free school meal would make a huge difference. When children are well fed, they perform better at school, are healthier, and have improved long-term outcomes.
I thank the hon. Member for securing this important debate, particularly as we might be about to receive the outcome of the child poverty strategy review. Does the hon. Member agree that we have a postcode lottery at the moment? Three schools in Liverpool posted postcards to the Prime Minister saying that we needed to do away with the postcode lottery, because if you live in London, Scotland or Wales, you receive free school meals. Do you agree that children going to school hungry in the sixth richest economy in the world is a scourge on this country?
The hon. Lady made an excellent point, and I trust the Minister will address it later in the debate.
One headteacher in my constituency who leads a school of over 600 pupils told me the only way he would be able to resource breakfast clubs is to extend the teachers’ directed time and remove some of the vital continuing professional development interventions and clubs that support disadvantaged pupils. He worries that he will have to cut back on those initiatives to free up time to run breakfast clubs.
Mrs Strong, headteacher at Chander’s Ford infant school, told me that, although the cost of school meals has increased, the funding schools receive has not kept pace.
My hon. Friend makes a point that I want to draw out. Gattons infant school in Burgess Hill in my constituency is paid £2.53 per meal, but the caterers charge it £3.15 per meal, so there is a shortfall of 62p per meal per child per day, which amounts to £7,839 over a year. Added to that, the caterers now charge the school an additional £2,000 per year to take away all the waste from the meals. That is a colossal amount of money for a small infant school to sustain. Does my hon. Friend agree that schools should be compensated for the true cost of free school meals?
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Schools are now being forced to subsidise meals from their already overstretched budgets, which takes away from vital resources such as staff salaries and school supplies.
For Chander’s Ford infant school, the cost of providing meals now exceeds Government funding by £1.11 per meal, forcing it to find another £31,468 out of its budget for the financial year. Schools should not be forced to cut services or make tough decisions to cover the cost of meals that should be fully funded.
My hon. Friend said that it is important that children are well fed, and I want to focus on the word “well”. Does she agree that this is about not just the amount of food that we provide for children, but the quality? It is really important that children receive highly nutritious content that releases energy slowly throughout the day and enables them to concentrate. Does she agree that, given that school face such difficulties with their budgets, there is an understandable temptation to look at less costly solutions for food, which is potentially very dangerous for children’s long-term health outcomes and ability to learn?
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I agree that it is essential that children have the best possible quality food, as well as a sufficient quantity.
I absolutely support the roll-out of breakfast clubs, but we must ensure that schools have the resources to provide them. The Government have talked about their plan for change, but addressing the core issues of funding for free school meals, the low threshold for eligibility and the way children are locked into appalling poverty is paramount. In England, only families earning £7,400 or less a year after tax and benefits qualify for free school meals. That threshold is far too low and excludes hundreds of thousands of children in need. The limit must be increased, so I was pleased to support a Liberal Democrat amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to increase the threshold to £20,000 a year after tax, which would expand eligibility to children who are currently missing out.
According to analysis conducted by the Child Poverty Action Group, 900,000 children living in poverty do not qualify for free school meals because the eligibility criteria are so restrictive. Those children are being denied a meal that they desperately need. That is a shameful legacy of years of underfunding.
It is also unacceptable that thousands of children entitled to free school meals are not receiving them due to administrative barriers. The Liberal Democrats believe that auto-enrolment is the solution, which is why my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) tabled an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to implement that change. A report by Policy in Practice in 2024 estimated that 471,000 children missed out on free school meals due to a complex application process. Auto-enrolment been proven to work. When it was introduced in Durham, nearly 2,500 additional children gained access to free school meals, leading to a £3 million boost in pupil premium funding for the local council.
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I hope that smile is because you are pleased to see me, and not because of Liverpool’s defeat on Sunday—[Laughter.] I thank the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis) for securing this important debate.
In January, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published its first report on UK poverty since the new Labour Government took office. The report laid bare the horrific inheritance of the Conservatives. They departed office with three in 10 children in Britain living in poverty. The number of children growing up in the deepest form of poverty, defined as a household that cannot afford basics such as heating and eating, has more than doubled in the previous five years. In The Big Issue today, a survey of findings from frontline workers reports that 85,000 children are living in destitution—an increase of 21% since 2021—with 53% of families being supported unable to afford enough food for basic nutrition.
I see that in my own constituency each week. Teachers and social workers on the frontline tell me that things are getting worse for the families they know are struggling, and this has played out in the reports from both the JRF and The Big Issue. Shockingly, the JRF report states that at the end of this Parliament, child poverty is set to be higher than it was at the beginning. For a Government with a mandate for change from an electorate tired after 14 years of austerity, and with a huge majority to put transformative policies into legislation if they wish, that would mark a catastrophic failure and a huge missed opportunity. We cannot afford for that to happen, and I know the Minister would not want it to happen.
I am here to talk about one policy that would tackle that injustice. First, I again want to put on record my opposition to the central driver of rising levels of child poverty: the two-child benefit cap. As the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has said, if we want to combat poverty, we must abolish the two-child benefit cap. But that is not the only tool at our disposal to tackle child poverty. I am here to talk about another: universal free school meals.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis) on securing this debate.
I absolutely support the call for universal free school meals, but it needs to be accompanied by a call for proper funding because at the moment schools are simply not getting the support they need. In my constituency, the local council is unable to provide a catering service any more; it is simply not financially viable. Over the years, more and more schools have opted for private firms, so councils have lost the economies of scale and are no longer able to provide that service. Now, of course, those private firms are charging schools more than they would have been paying previously. Not only that, but on a practical level teachers are being expected to do more work as part of providing catering. The practicalities of delivering free school meals, even in the current situation, are fairly grim for schools.
The Government have announced they will introduce breakfast clubs. One school I spoke to in my constituency said it was expecting 67p per child for non-pupil premium children and 88p for pupil premium children. It currently runs a breakfast club, and that non-pupil premium figure represents less than 15% of the break-even cost. The only way the school could fund a reasonable quality of breakfast and provide the support staff need would be to take money from many other important things it does. The school is also worried about the quality of food it will be able to provide. It currently provides a wide range of food, such as fruit, yoghurt, toast and cereals, and the children have plenty of choice. They also have the opportunity to have protein, which keeps them feeling full for longer. All of this gives them a balanced diet, but the school cannot see how it can provide more than a slice of toast on the funding that is proposed.
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A system designed to support the most vulnerable should not be so complex that it prevents children from accessing the help they need. It is not just parents who are struggling with the administrative burdens, but teachers. My constituent Mrs Beckett, the headteacher of Nightingale primary school in Eastleigh, told me that the need to continuously justify how pupil premium funding is spent is one of the ongoing frustrations for schools. In reality, that funding allows them to provide additional support that benefits every child. Given that free school meals eligibility is a key driver for pupil premium funding, she questioned whether there had been any discussion about reducing the bureaucratic burdens on schools in this area. It would be more beneficial for the Government to acknowledge the broader support impact of the funding than to expect schools to repeatedly demonstrate its effectiveness, which is not a good use of staff time.
Beyond the bureaucratic hurdles that families and schools face, many families simply cannot afford to provide their children with nutritious meals, leaving schools on the frontline of a food insecurity crisis. A survey conducted in January 2025 by the Food Foundation found that 18% of households with children reported experiencing food insecurity, compared with 12% of households without children. That is deeply concerning, not least because of the growing child obesity crisis. According to NHS England, almost one in 10 children are already obese by their first year of school, and by year 6 it rises to 22.1%. Schools should be part of the solution, ensuring that every child has access to healthy, balanced meals that support their growth, learning and wellbeing. If the Government are serious about raising the healthiest generation ever, they must go beyond rhetoric and ensure that free school meal funding is high enough to provide the right meal for every child who needs one.
Providing universal free school meals for primary school children is a good social and economic policy. Research from Sweden found that children who receive free school meals earn 3% more in lifetime earnings, rising to 6% for the poorest children. Expanding free school meals would be an investment in our future. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s analysis has shown that without additional action from the Government, poverty and deep poverty will remain largely flat until January 2029, with child poverty in the same terrible state. The Liberal Democrats would extend free school meals to all children living in poverty across both primary and secondary schools, with the goal of providing them to all primary school children when public finances permit. The Government must use targeted support, starting with more free school meals and establishing a fairer social security system that lifts families out of poverty, removes cruel policies such as the two-child benefit cap, and provides a proper safety net. I have consistently called for the two-child benefit cap to be scrapped, which is the quickest and most cost-effective way to lift children out of poverty.
No family should have to choose between paying bills and putting food on the table. No teacher should have to worry about making sure that pupils have had enough to eat so that they can learn, and no child should have to struggle through the school day. I hope the Government will act with urgency and step up for the children who desperately need their support.
The case for universal free school meals is overwhelming and undeniable. Free school meals for all will ensure that every child has a hot, healthy meal each day, allowing children to eat, learn and grow together. That would tackle child poverty and disproportionately help working-class families, alleviating hunger and freeing up money for other essentials. That is why universal free school meals are a central demand of the Right to Food campaign, which I am proud to lead in Parliament.
As colleagues will know, eligibility for free school meals is incredibly restrictive. Household incomes must be less than £7,400 to qualify, which means that almost 1 million children in Britain are living in poverty but are not eligible for free school meals. When the Right to Food campaign ran a consultation across the country during covid, so many parents said they were just above the threshold, living in struggling, difficult times.
Those were my reflections when we drew up the Right to Food submission for Henry Dimbleby, but the picture varies across the country. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Riverside (Kim Johnson) touched on, universal provision ends after year 2 throughout the rest of England, but in London and Wales, and up to year 5 in Scotland, all primary pupils are entitled to free school meals. The evidence showing the benefits of that is growing by the day.
After universal free school meals were rolled out across London’s primary schools thanks to Sadiq Khan, 84% of parents stated that the policy significantly helped to manage family finances. Studies show that free school meals improve children’s concentration, behaviour and academic attainment, benefiting children from deprived backgrounds most of all. Research from Sweden shows that free school meals improve children’s lifetime earnings. It is a no-brainer.
There are also benefits outside the classroom. There are wards in my constituency with the highest child obesity rates in the country, and they are also some of the most economically deprived. That link between poverty and obesity is most clearly seen in children. Children in the most deprived fifth of the population are more than twice as likely to be living with obesity than those in the richest fifth.
Children with free school meals consume more fruit and vegetables. Studies have shown that universal provision leads to reduced rates of obesity and health inequalities. I will put that fact to the Minister when I meet him later this month, with other MPs and the leader of Knowsley council. Councillor Morgan and the chief executive of Knowsley council have committed their borough to any pilot scheme with the Government to tackle this public health issue.
If we fix this in Knowsley, we can roll it out nationwide. I hope the Minister listens to our arguments for a universal free school meal pilot in Knowsley when we meet him in a couple of weeks. If we add up the benefits, the economic case for universal free school meals is straightforward. According to research by PricewaterhouseCoopers, for every pound invested, there is a £1.71 return. Unlike tweaking eligibility rules, universal provision combats the stigma attached to those receiving free school meals.
Later today, MPs will vote on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. I warmly welcome the Bill’s introduction of school breakfast clubs, but I am supporting amendments to go further in tackling child poverty. I have tabled an amendment to put the holiday activities and food programme on a statutory footing, ensuring that children from the poorest households continue to have access to meals in school holidays into the future. I am also supporting an amendment to make free school meals for all primary pupils a reality throughout England.
I finish by saying this to the Minister. When the country finally voted to get rid of the Tories last summer, it was not voting for child poverty to continue to rise; it was voting for change. The change this country desperately needs includes transformative policies such as universal free school meals. I urge the Government to get behind those amendments and this policy. That would positively change the future chances of millions of working-class kids, giving them a chance to live a long, healthy and productive life. Surely, Minister, that was what the Labour party was created to do, and it is certainly why I am in this job.
There is also a question of the physical constraints. The school I visited currently has to have two sittings for lunch and it has one of the larger school halls in the area. It is trying to work out the practicalities of delivering this service, given the constraints on space. Schools simply do not have the funding to extend their buildings.
In speaking to the motion, my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh raised the restrictive eligibility for free school meals. More children risk missing out in future when parents on legacy benefits are forced to move to universal credit. Existing transitional protections run out at the end of this month.
To conclude, it is important to children’s learning that they are well fed—by which I mean fed with good-quality food. I am concerned about the deliverability of the Government’s breakfast club proposals and the shortfalls that schools are already facing with free school meals.