School Food
(2 days, 22 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)
This Government are today taking another step to delivering our plan for change as we announce that all children in households in receipt of universal credit will be eligible for free school meals from September 2026. This unprecedented step will put £500 back into families’ pockets and lift 100,000 children across England out of poverty, to break down barriers to opportunity and tackle the scar of child poverty across our country.
Giving children access to a nutritious meal during the school day also leads to higher attainment, improved behaviour and better outcomes—meaning they get the best possible education and chance to succeed in work and life.
This new entitlement will apply for children in all settings where free school meals are provided, including schools, school-based nurseries and further education settings. We expect the majority of schools will allow parents to apply before the start of the school year September 2026, by providing their national insurance number to check their eligibility.
Since 2018, children have only been eligible for free school meals if their household income is less than £7,400 per year, meaning hundreds of thousands of children living in poverty have been unable to access free school meals.
The Government’s historic new expansion to those in receipt of universal credit will change this and comes ahead of the child poverty taskforce publishing its 10-year strategy to drive sustainable change later this year.
Families struggling with the cost of living are also benefiting from the significant steps the Government are taking to raise the national minimum wage, uprate benefits and support 700,000 families through the fair repayment rate on universal credit deductions.
To ensure quality and nutrition in meals for the future, the Government are also acting quickly with experts across the sector to revise the school food standards, so every school is supported with the latest nutrition guidance.
The Government are also offering more than £13 million in funding to 12 food charities across England to redistribute thousands of tonnes of fresh produce directly from farms to fight food poverty in communities.
The tackling food surplus at the farm gate scheme is helping farms and organisations to work collaboratively to ensure edible food that might have been left in fields instead ends up on the plates of those who need it, including schoolchildren. Schools and local authorities will continue to receive pupil premium and home-to- school transport extended rights funding based on the existing free school meals threshold.
This is the latest step in the Government’s plan for change to break the unfair link between background and opportunity, including rolling out free breakfast clubs to every primary school, expanding Government-funded childcare to 30 hours a week for working parents and legislating to cap the number of branded school uniform items.
From April 2026 until the end of Parliament, millions of households are set to receive a permanent yearly above inflation boost to universal credit. The increase, a key element of the Government’s welfare reforms to be laid before Parliament, will tackle the destitution caused by years of inaction that has left the value of the standard allowance at a 40-year low by the early 2020s.
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NHS Supply Chains: Eradicating Modern Slavery
(2 days, 22 hours ago)
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The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)
Modern slavery includes forced labour, human trafficking and exploitative labour conditions and it remains a significant global rights violation, with an estimated 50 million individuals affected worldwide. The UK Government are committed to eradicating the presence of this heinous crime in its supply chains, including those within the health sector.
The NHS is one of the UK’s largest procurers of goods and services, and as such has a significant role to play in combating modern slavery. The Government, supported by NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care, will send a clear signal that there is no place for goods and services linked to modern slavery in our healthcare system. I am pleased to announce that we are taking decisive action to eliminate modern slavery in NHS supply chains in England by proceeding to introduce robust regulations.
In my statement published on 21 November 2024, I confirmed DHSC’s pledge to create regulations to eradicate from the NHS goods and services tainted by slavery and human trafficking, as required by the National Health Service Act 2006. The Department has worked hard to ensure that regulations are fit for purpose and interact with the current legislation and updated policies.
The review of modern slavery risk in NHS supply chains published on 14 December 2023 found that 21% of suppliers are at high risk of slavery and human trafficking. The review recognised the need to improve and standardise the approach to modern slavery risk management. It recommended that DHSC proceed to introduce regulations to enforce and enable a consistent approach to risk management across the NHS.
Modern slavery is a complex issue that cannot be tackled through a singular legislative measure. There are existing measures in place to tackle modern slavery both in terms of criminalising it and addressing it through commercial levers. The Modern Slavery Act 2015 provides a legal framework for punishing those committing modern slavery offences. These provisions do not regulate public bodies or provide a framework for public bodies to address modern slavery in their supply chains. The Procurement Act 2023 provides a single framework for the rules and procedures that public procurement bodies must follow. It includes grounds for the mandatory or discretionary exclusion of suppliers from a tender process where modern slavery offences have been committed. Procurement of healthcare services for the NHS in England—approximately £60 billion—are not in scope of the Procurement Act 2023. They are covered by the Health Care Services (Provider Selection Regime) Regulations 2023, which give NHS decision-makers flexibility to arrange services in the best interests of patients, the taxpayer and the population. We aim to introduce a single, enforceable approach to modern slavery that sets a standardised risk management approach across the NHS, covering all the supply chains for goods and services provided to the NHS.
These regulations will require all public bodies to assess modern slavery risks in their supply chains when procuring goods and services for our health service in England. We are then asking public bodies to take reasonable steps to address and, where possible, eliminate the modern slavery risks when designing procurement procedures, when awarding and managing contracts, and when setting up frameworks or dynamic markets.
Reasonable steps may include: ensuring robust conditions of participation and assessment criteria are built into procurement processes; using specific contract terms to monitor and require mitigation where instances of modern slavery are discovered; and monitoring suppliers’ compliance and reassessing risk throughout the life of the contract.
We invited views and contributions from a wide range of stakeholders through extensive engagement and public consultation. We sought and considered input from public bodies, suppliers, trade associations, interest groups and the public. This has been a valuable step in the development of our regulations, which we intend to lay before Parliament soon.
The public consultation ran from 21 November 2024 to 13 February 2025. We are pleased to announce that the Government’s response to feedback received has now been published.
This is a step towards strengthening the Department’s leadership role in championing ethical procurement, setting a benchmark for other sectors beyond health. Modern slavery is an abhorrent crime that exists everywhere, not just the UK or within supply chains of the health sector. It demands a collective international response. DHSC has a duty to eradicate the use of goods and services tainted by modern slavery in NHS supply chains. We have a continued commitment to work across Government and sectors to ensure our efforts align with these priorities and uphold the responsibilities of public bodies within our jurisdiction.
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Remote Attendance and Proxy Voting
(2 days, 22 hours ago)
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The Minister for Local Government and English Devolution (Jim McMahon)
Today we have published the Government’s response to our recent consultation on remote attendance and proxy voting in local authorities. The Government have previously set out our intention to reset the relationship between central and local government, and to establish a partnership that delivers better outcomes for the communities we represent. Key to this partnership is providing the sector with support and tools to modernise democratic engagement and make elected roles more accessible for more people.
In-person debate, discussion and the opportunity for residents to engage with their representatives are core aspects of local democracy. At the same time, we know that it is not always possible for elected members to attend local authority meetings in person. The Government response sets out our intention to permit local authorities to meet remotely, and to require them to develop their own remote attendance policies if they do. Local authorities vary in size, location, responsibility and make-up, and we want to ensure that they can develop appropriately responsive policies.
On proxy voting, we plan to require all principal—unitary, upper and second-tier—councils in England to implement proxy voting schemes to provide consistency for members who are absent when they become a new parent, or for serious or long-term illness. We plan for this requirement to apply to meetings of full council. For all other meetings, proxy voting may be used but will not be required, and substitute or pairing schemes may be more appropriate. We plan for other local authorities not listed above to be enabled, but not required, to implement proxy voting schemes for any of their meetings, in the context of member absences for serious or long-term illness or becoming a new parent.
We are keen to reflect feedback from the current make-up of councils, and the demands and requirements we have heard in that process, and to lead the way in opening up elected office for a broader range of candidates, including those of working age, those with caring responsibilities, and those with disabilities or other personal circumstances who would benefit from modernised democratic practices.
We plan to collaboratively develop guidance with the sector on both policies to ensure that they are supportive of members and officers.
We believe that these reforms will improve the experience of elected members serving their communities and encourage more people to consider locally-elected office.
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