European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Bassam of Brighton

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting
Monday 20th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, in Committee my noble friend Lord McNicol joined in the general support for the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. That support remains today from these Benches.

I shall not repeat the arguments that noble Lords have more ably made in this short debate, but I read the debate on the amendment carefully. The Minister probably feels he went as far as he could in trying to reassure the Committee that the Government were not about to pull the plug on support for Erasmus+. I am not sure that he has. First, the Prime Minister made a commitment that:

“UK students will continue to be able to enjoy the benefits of exchanges.”—[Official Report, Commons, 15/1/20; col. 1021.]


However, that commitment seems qualified by the comments made by the Secretary of State for Education, who has talked of developing

“our own alternative arrangements should they be needed.”—[Official Report, Commons, 14/1/20; col. 912.]

That rather suggests that our participation is still very much in flux, a point that the Minister underlined when he said that participation would be

“subject to our negotiations on the future UK-EU relationship.”—[Official Report, 16/1/20; col. 871.]

The Minister also repeatedly reminded us that the outline of Erasmus+ for 2021 to 2027 has yet to be finalised, so that there is not yet a programme to sign up to, but we know that the programme is set to double its expansiveness and cost over that period. In Committee, the Minister set out the Government’s ambition that by 2030 the UK would be hosting 600,000 international students and that the value of educational exports would by that point reach £35 billion a year.

Exactly how does the Minister expect to achieve those objectives and that ambition if we are not participants in the Erasmus+ programme? The start date for the next programme is 2021. We are now less than 12 months away from it kicking off. This is precisely when institutions make programme commitments and students begin to plan their study schedules. Both my daughters began to plan well in advance of their university exchange schemes. I hasten to add that they were not Erasmus+, but were programmes involving US universities. I know from experience that these things take time to set up and carry through and that the last thing that participants, whether they are institutions or students, want is uncertainty. It is the same with business: business wants certainty.

I think the Minister could this evening give a firmer commitment without compromising the Government’s negotiating position, not least because we are net beneficiaries from the scheme overall. Can he at least advise the House whether the Government have made financial provision for the next Erasmus programme and, if not, whether it will be included in the upcoming Budget? Can he at least give the House an outline of the Erasmus negotiation timetable so that universities and students have some idea of when these issues will be resolved?

Finally I take this opportunity to tweak the Minister on a point which my noble friend Lord McNicol raised in the previous debate about the Horizon 2020 research programme. To my way of looking at things, it is in a similar state of limbo with a fast- approaching cliff edge. Can we please have some news on progress on that programme? It is in many ways part of Erasmus+, because research and study travel are very much linked. I think the House deserves to know exactly where we are heading with both those policies.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to respond to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. Amendment 16 seeks to introduce parliamentary oversight requirements that the Government feel are unnecessary. I will try not to go over all the points we discussed last week in Committee.

I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, that the Prime Minister has already given a strong commitment at Second Reading in the Commons on 20 December. He said:

“Parliament will be kept fully informed of progress of these negotiations.”—[Official Report, Commons, 20/12/19; col. 150.]


That is extremely important.

I shall address the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Smith, about oversight. In the past few years both Houses have demonstrated that they have a wide range of tools at their disposal to scrutinise the Government, including through Ministerial Questions and debates. Indeed, as I am relatively new to these procedures, I asked my office to tell me how many tools were available for the oversight of a Government by Parliament and I was given a list of over 20. They might not all be applicable here but we heard some useful statistics on Amendment 15 from my noble friend Lord Bridges, and the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, made a similar comment—that there is a tremendous ability for oversight. I am sure that both Houses will continue to use these scrutiny tools to hold our Government to account and will pay close attention to the negotiation process, not least as the Government’s vision for the future relationship with the EU is already set out in the political declaration. There is therefore no need to set out in this Bill bespoke oversight requirements specifically for Erasmus+.

The Government have already been clear about their position on Erasmus+ and have stated that they remain open to future participation in the next programme. However, there are a number of important uncertainties that prevent them making firm commitments at this stage—not least that, until we see the final substance and text of the Erasmus+ programme and the regulations that are still under discussion in Brussels, we cannot be sure what the next stage of the programme will look like.

I am afraid that I cannot give the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, a timetable because the cake is still in the oven—there is still a lot of uncertainty. Several noble Lords mentioned the sum of money involved. I was briefed that the amount could be anywhere between double and treble, and that is in the context that some €14.5 billion has been spent on the current scheme in the last seven years. Therefore, these are colossal sums of money.

I fully recognise that the UK’s potential participation in the next programme is of particular interest and importance to noble Lords. I assure the House that its voice and views are being, and will continue to be, heard. I reiterate our reassurance that this Government strongly value international exchange and collaboration in education as part of our vision for global Britain. We believe that the UK and European countries should continue to give young people and students opportunities to benefit from each other’s world-leading universities. I mentioned last week the increase in the number of foreign students coming here over the last three years. However, as mentioned, we are waiting to see the full details of the new arrangements.

On a personal level, my son attends a foreign university and is looking at his own exchange arrangements as we speak. We discussed last week the power of these exchange programmes for young people. I do not think that we are arguing about very much. The difference in the debate is that noble Lords are seeking stronger commitments to bind the Government than we believe we can agree to.

I trust that that explanation and our wider reassurance demonstrate why the amendment is not necessary at this time. I therefore ask the noble Lord, Lord Storey, to withdraw it.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton]

Can the noble Lord address my budget question? Is money in the current Budget committed to the future Erasmus+ programme, and is this something that the Chancellor will address in the upcoming Budget?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I am sure that noble Lords will not be surprised to hear me say that that is a matter for the spending review, which will take place in the summer. However, I would be very surprised if there were not a commitment to that kind of expenditure.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton]

In that case, perhaps the noble Lord would care to write to me on the budget that is currently set aside for Erasmus+ in the next financial year.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I am certainly very happy to share with the noble Lord any information that I get on the spending review when it is available, but I suspect that I will not be privy to that any sooner that he will be.

School Exclusion: Timpson Review

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Bassam of Brighton

Tuesday 7th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I will respond to the noble Lords, Lord Bassam and Lord Storey. On permanent exclusions, last year 85% of schools had none at all, so it is important to put the issue in some perspective. But we are not complacent in any way—that is why we commissioned Timpson last year to undertake his review.

That flows into the issue of off-rolling, which greatly concerned both noble Lords. The term has crept into usage only in the past two or three years, and when we initially commissioned Edward Timpson to undertake his review it was not in common usage, but he has expanded the report to deal with it. It is important to reassure noble Lords that off-rolling is an unlawful practice, so it is not something that a school can do legitimately. We are focusing on this partly through the changes to the Ofsted inspection framework, for example, which will come in in September, which will ramp up the inspection process to ensure that such things are not going on. Ofsted will look at children who have left the school roll and interrogate the school as to why they have left and where they are.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton]

I am grateful that the Minister has said that off-rolling is illegal, but have the Government actually challenged any of the schools that have off-rolled? Is there any data on that?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I am not aware of any specific data, but from this September, with the new Ofsted inspection framework, it will be very clear in any inspection that the issue will be under the spotlight in a way that is not the case at the moment. As we know, Ofsted has quite a lot of power to change behaviours in the system, so I am optimistic that we will see a change in behaviour. I also think that the public debate about off-rolling has changed behaviours already in those schools where it may or may not have been going on. One of the Timpson recommendations also asks us to look at the convoluted and complicated system of coding of attendance, which allows a lot of opacity—that will also help.

On funding, we are very aware that funding is tight in the system, but it is important to place on record that we have increased SEND funding from £5 billion in 2013 to £6.3 billion in the current year, and we have opened 42 AP free schools since the free school programme began.

Schools: Modern Languages

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Bassam of Brighton

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, with Ofqual figures showing a drop of 7.3% in students taking foreign languages at GCSE and A-level, I invite the Minister to join me in congratulating our European partners, whose Governments are directly funding the teaching of Italian, German, French and Spanish in our primary schools. Will he tell the House what plans the Government have to encourage that continued economically viable support and commitment post Brexit, so that we can compete more easily in the global economy? Does he appreciate the irony of our seeking to leave Europe while our European partners are funding school posts at a time when we are cutting them?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I think the irony has to lie with the noble Lord opposite, because in 2004 the Labour Government removed the compulsory requirement for modern foreign languages at GCSE. It collapsed from 70% participation to 40% in 2010 and we have clawed it back to 46%. That is not enough, I absolutely accept that, and I give full commendation to the Italian Government who are helping with Italian in this country. The Goethe Institute is also helping with German and we have announced our own scheme, which has been running for three years with the Spanish Government, whereby we bring over young Spanish undergraduates to work in our schools.

Universal Credit: Free School Meals

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Bassam of Brighton

Thursday 21st February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bassam of Brighton]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to reconsider recent changes to access to free school meals following their decision to delay the roll out of Universal Credit.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, the continuing provision of free school meals to children from out-of-work or low-income families is of the utmost importance to this Government. Due to the generous transitional protection we put in place, no child eligible for and currently receiving free school meals will lose their entitlement as a result of the universal credit rollout. Even more children will benefit by retaining eligibility through the protection.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, it is estimated that there are 5 million children now living in poverty in the UK, so is it not time for the Government to consider using the pause in the rollout of universal credit to reconsider their mean-spirited free school meals policy? What assessments have they made of the number of families who are in work poverty who do not qualify for free school meals but for whom the cost of school meals causes genuine daily hardship?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I dispute the noble Lord’s assertion on the number of children living in poverty. The DWP estimates that 300,000 fewer children are in poverty now than prior to 2010. On eligibility he will know that, through the introduction of infant free school meals, another 1.5 million children are now in receipt of them. I give credit to our coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats—particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Garden—for helping to bring that in. We are in a better place than we have ever been before.

Schools: Funding

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Bassam of Brighton

Thursday 29th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I entirely accept that this is an extremely difficult subject that has been kicked down the road for a long time. Doing it at a time when there are not huge amounts of additional money makes it difficult, but the system puts a floor in the bottom so that no one loses out. Of course, the debate will always be about why we are not moving the bottom ones up quicker. I met a head from West Sussex only last week—

[Lord Bassam of Brighton]

The noble Lord is being extremely courteous and helpful to the House, but what he does not seem to be doing is explaining why it is that all these schools, in experiencing what he is saying are increases in budgets, are also experiencing reductions and losing the ability to provide the level of service that they have provided in the past. The Barnet study is a good case in point, because it is not just one isolated school; it is all the Barnet schools. While I am here, I recommend to the noble Lord that he uses Lockets next time, rather than worry about Tunes.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I thank the noble Lord for that very important piece of advice. There is a very complicated answer to the noble Lord’s question. It goes right back to the 1990s, to a system of training called COSMOs that was given to head teachers then. That training has not been continued and has lapsed, but what it showed senior leaders in the 1990s was how to most effectively allocate resources in their schools. A lot of those skills have been lost. I will cover some of the individual questions that have been raised—I have some figures for the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, on Barnet, for example.

I now turn to high needs. We recognise the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and my noble friend Lady Eaton about funding for children and young people with high needs. We are also concerned about provision for excluded pupils. We have produced a range of support for local authorities to help them best use the resources they have available, including a high needs benchmarking tool by which they can compare spending. We have increased overall funding allocations to local authorities for high needs by £130 million last year and £142 million this year. We will increase this further next year, by approximately £120 million. In fact, high-needs funding will be more than £6 billion next year and will have risen by £1 billion since 2013. Every local authority will see an increase to their high-needs funding per head of the population of two to 18 year-olds this year and next, with underfunded authorities receiving up to 6% more next year than in 2017-18.

The noble Lord, Lord Knight, and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, asked about mental health care for young people. We are very concerned about that—one would be callous to say anything else—and are putting more resources in. Our Green Paper last year set out proposals to support schools to put in place senior leads for mental health, to introduce new mental health support teams working in or near schools and colleges, and a trial of a new four-week waiting time for NHS children and young people’s mental health services. As came up in a Question earlier this week, the NHS itself is committing £2 billion more to mental health, which will include, over the next several years, adding 8,000 mental health professionals to the system.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, asked about improving teaching for, and increasing awareness of, the kind of challenges that he is so passionate about. We are increasing the level of resources available to help teachers support children with SEN. We have a special resource in the initial teacher training modules. We have online resources for teachers and the department has also contracted with the Whole School SEND Consortium to deliver a programme to equip schools to support children with SEND, which includes dyslexia.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, was also concerned about education, health and care plans. We carried out a survey last year that showed that 66% of parents are satisfied with the process. This is, of course, a new process and one we aim to improve.

Turning to efficiency and the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, on high pay, I completely share his concern about high pay in academies. The very first thing I did when I took on this job just over a year ago was to tackle it. We went after about 213 trusts, I think it was—more than 200 trusts—and since then 56 have stopped making those sorts of payments, for various reasons. That is a campaign that I will continue. I completely support the noble Lord in calling out those who do that.

On school resource management more generally, we recognise that schools have faced cost pressures. I want to be clear to the House that we are not in denial about that. The idea that I operate in a citadel is a dream that I can aspire to, but the real world is rather different, and that is why we are providing extensive support to schools to help get the best value out of every pound. We recently launched a strategy setting out the support, current and planned, that we have designed to help schools reduce costs. It provides practical advice on how to identify potential savings from their non-staff spend that can be put back into teaching to get the best value. To put that in perspective, we have a non-staff spend of about £10 billion a year, and we believe that £1 billion of that could be pulled out of the system over the next three or four years.

We know that marketplaces can be complex, leading to schools facing higher costs than they need to. The initiatives in our schools buying strategy aim to reduce this complexity when procuring goods and services. For example, we recently launched an agency supply teacher deal to provide schools with greater transparency on costs. We now have 34 national deals to help schools save money on items they buy regularly.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, referred to my comments at the Schools & Academies Show last week—he is obviously very thorough in his research. The reason I used a somewhat strong or controversial approach there is that, for a year now, I have been going round forums such as that show giving endless speeches pointing out that we have these deals available for schools. In the audience for the address he referred to were 200 head teachers and chief executives. I asked those who had used our deals to put up their hands. Out of the 200, five put up their hands. When I arrived in this job a year ago, I wrote to 1,300 chief executives of trusts and told them about the deals that were in place. I said, “If they are no good, please tell me”. How many responses did I get? I did not get one response. I understand the pressures in the system, but the system also has to respond to us. Since we are trying to help them improve efficiency, they need to tell us how we can help them more. That is why I made those comments the other day: it was not to be glib. I am a huge fan of spreading best practice and if there were schools in that audience that were doing interesting, innovative things, I want to let other schools know about that. It is important to put that into context because the trade magazines made fun of me, which of course is grist to the mill in this job.

We have created a benchmarking website for schools. This allows them to compare their spending with that of similar schools elsewhere in the country. We continue to improve this service and recently introduced a trust-to-trust comparison functionality. This will help school and trust leaders to identify if and where improvements can be made.

I am conscious of time. On teachers’ pay and pensions, we have recently responded to recommendations made by the School Teachers’ Review Body to confirm the 2018 pay award for main scale teachers. It is our aim that schools continue to attract high-quality recruits—I take on board the many comments about recruitment challenges—and this award will support them to do that. We will see a 3.5% uplift to the main pay range, 2% to the upper pay range and 1.5% to the leadership pay range. In the main pay range, it is important to stress for noble Lords, this is the biggest percentage increase since 2011.

Grammar Schools

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Bassam of Brighton

Wednesday 27th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bassam of Brighton]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the findings of Professor John Jerrim in his paper The association between attending a grammar school and children’s socio-emotional outcomes, published in May, that grammar schools do not promote social mobility; and what continuing benefit they anticipate from the increased funding recently announced for grammar schools.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, the paper attempts to explore emotional outcomes of selective schooling and finds little difference between grammar school pupils and their peers at 14 in terms of well-being. It draws no conclusion about social mobility. Other research indicates that a grammar school education significantly reduces the attainment gap for disadvantaged pupils. It is a condition of approval under the selective schools expansion fund that schools seek to admit more disadvantaged pupils.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, the £50 million extra for selective schools comes at a time when cash-strapped schools are asking parents for donations to make up funding shortfalls. Given that the noble Lord conceded in a written reply to me that there were no set numbers of places reserved for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, can he explain how the funding will benefit disadvantaged students? Does he also agree that, since the money provides just 4,000 extra places, it would be better spent reversing cuts to teaching assistant posts in primary schools, where research shows that the money would make a difference to social mobility?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, the amount of capital allocated to the grammar school expansion fund is, as the noble Lord says, £50 million against the context of over £1 billion allocated to the mainstream state system, so the sums are not big. However, we should discriminate between capital and revenue funding. While there is some pressure on schools on revenue funding, they receive 6.5% more per pupil in real terms than under the highest level of Tony Blair’s regime.

Schools: Free Lunches and Milk

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Bassam of Brighton

Tuesday 27th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, we must look at our Government’s broader track record since 2010. As I said when summing up the debate introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, last week, we have intervened in a number of areas for the most disadvantaged children in our society: 15 hours for disadvantaged two year-olds, 30 hours for working parents, early years pupil premium, disability access fund, tax-free childcare and shared parental leave. None of those are designed other than to help the most disadvantaged members of our society. I urge noble Lords to look at universal credit and free school meals in the context of all that we have done over the past eight years.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, if that is the case, why did a recent report point out that 1 million more children would be in poverty by 2020? How does the Minister justify the policy and answer that question?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I am not familiar with those figures. However, we have done more than previous Governments to ensure that families are taken out of poverty—and we know that the route out of poverty is through work. The items on the list I gave a moment ago are all aimed to help parents become working parents and not to be exposed to poverty.

Free School Lunches and Milk, and School and Early Years Finance (Amendments Relating to Universal Credit) (England) Regulations 2018

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Bassam of Brighton

Tuesday 20th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, on securing this important debate. I also thank many noble Lords for their contributions today. I will attempt to deal with the important points raised. This Government are committed to providing a healthy free school meal to the most disadvantaged children. I reassure the House that, contrary to some reports, no child will lose a meal as a result of these changes. In fact, more children will benefit by 2022 compared to the previous system.

Let me discuss the technicalities behind these regulations. As your Lordships will be aware, we are reforming the welfare system to ensure that work always pays by replacing a complex and fragmented system with one benefit—universal credit. Since April 2013, all families receiving universal credit have been entitled to free school meals. As my noble friend Lord Lexden said, we have on several occasions flagged up that this was a temporary measure—for example, in the Social Security Advisory Committee report on passported benefits in March 2012 and as repeated in April 2013. As the national rollout of universal credit accelerates, we are replacing this temporary measure with clear eligibility criteria for free school meals to ensure that they continue to be targeted at disadvantaged families.

Under the new eligibility criteria, we have estimated that by 2022 around 50,000 more children will benefit from a free school meal. I want to address the concern expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, that this included population growth—it does not. In addition, our protections will ensure that no child receiving free school meals now, or gaining them during the universal credit rollout, will lose their entitlement until the end of the rollout, and beyond that until the end of their primary or secondary education. Children protected in this way are in addition to the 50,000 I have just mentioned.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton]

I am interested in this phasing argument. Say you are in primary school now, and get free school meals. If you fall outside the eligibility criteria, am I right in thinking that when you go to secondary school, in maybe two or three years’ time, you will then lose entitlement to that free school meal?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The protections are in place until 2022. It is the longer of the period of being in a phase of education or 2022.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton]

So if you go to secondary school in 2023—which is quite possible if you are in primary school now—you will lose your free school meal. Is that what the noble Lord is telling us?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, it will depend on the circumstances of the family at that time.

I turn to the comments about the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, which published a briefing which assumed that the number of 50,000 more pupils who will benefit from free school meals does not take into account population growth. This is incorrect. Our analysis compares 2022 under a universal credit system to 2022 under the legacy benefits system, and population growth is by definition captured within this comparison. Furthermore, the Government have just published an updated equalities impact assessment, on 7 February. The majority of respondents to the consultation agreed with us that there would be no adverse impact on those with protected characteristics.

It is important to add that the £7,400 threshold relates to earned income. It does not include additional income through universal credit. A typical family earning around this threshold, depending on their exact circumstances, would have a total annual household income of between £18,000 and £24,000 once benefits are taken into account.

I take this opportunity to bust a myth. Some have claimed that these reforms will take away free school meals from 1 million children. This is simply not true. As my noble friend Lord Patten said, Channel 4 made this clear in its FactCheck article. It highlighted that this claim is based on an entirely hypothetical scenario in which universal credit was to continue being an automatic eligibility criteria. This was never going to be the case. Contrary to some people’s claims, this Government’s plan will result in more children benefiting, not fewer, and is more generous than the old system.

I also acknowledge the report published by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee on 1 March this year. We have listened to the committee’s comments and have responded to its report requesting that we publish the methodology supporting the modelling of the 50,000 children who will benefit by 2022. This has been published as part of the report.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, expressed concern about fluctuating income. We recognise that some households see their earnings fluctuate on a regular basis and have written into regulations that earnings should be checked over a period lasting up to three months, where the assessment period data is available. We are also exploring ways to ensure that families with very low incomes can receive free school meals during the initial assessment period for universal credit.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I am happy to relay those concerns and to take the matter away for further consideration.

Finally, I would like to highlight the five key improvements made by this Conservative-led Government for early years and child care. I give credit to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, as part of his party’s involvement in these important reforms, but I believe that it is incredibly important to put these into context. First, there is the 15 hours a week of free early education for disadvantaged two year-olds, which did not exist before 2010. Secondly, there is the universal 15 hours a week free childcare for three and four year-olds, now with the early years pupil premium. Thirdly, there are an additional 15 hours a week of childcare for working parents. Fourthly, through universal credit, up to 85% of childcare costs can be reimbursed, which is a higher percentage than was ever available under tax credits. Finally, nearly 1 million more families will gain support through tax-free childcare than through the existing voucher scheme.

I hope these five elements exemplify the efforts this Government have made to support vulnerable families. The continued provision of free school meals to children in households that might not be able to afford them remains of the utmost importance, and I would stress that—the utmost importance. Free school meals have always been provided to children who need them most, and we want to make sure that as many eligible children as possible continue to claim them.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that rousing conclusion. I have not really heard anything that convinces me that the Government have got their policy on this right. The Minister failed and ducked the issue of the cliff-edge point that was so eloquently addressed by my noble friend Lady Sherlock and others. The Minister actually supplemented and aided my argument on phasing when he said that, yes, it would depend on the individual’s circumstances in 2023, but if they move from one phase of education to the other then of course there would be an issue about whether they continue to have eligibility for free school meals.

I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Patten, for reminding us about fact-checking because, for me, he added to the confusion about figures. Part of the argument that we have been pushing over these last few weeks about free school meals is that nobody has quite got to the bottom of the Government’s policy because nobody can be absolutely certain about the data on which it relies. I was very heartened to hear the noble Lord, Lord Freud, express some concern about the waterfall and cliff edge, because that cuts to the core of the issue. We just do not know.

I have tabled a lot of Written Questions on this issue; most of them have not yet been answered. Most of them were directed at trying to find out at what stage of the rollout of universal credit we can expect to have hard numbers and data about the overall impact. I find that most worrying and troubling because the Government have not done a poverty assessment in this whole process. We do not know what the real impact will be of taking away free school meals from people, or what impact the new system will have on populations in the future. The failure to do a proper poverty assessment fatally flaws this new system.

I agree with the Minister and I agree with other noble Lords on the Benches opposite when they say that work should always pay. That is a laudable objective of universal credit, but I am not convinced that the levels are right or that the policy is set in the right direction. I am grateful to my noble friends Lady Lister and Lady Sherlock, the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, the noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Kirkwood, and my noble friend Lord Watson for their support in this debate.

I have done a bit of a fact check since I have been sitting here. The noble Lord, Lord Patten, went to Wimbledon College; the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, went to Framlingham College; the noble Lord, Lord Freud, went to Whitgift School and the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, went to Rugby. I bet there were not too many free school meals at those schools. This evening we should stand up for those who benefit from this, and I therefore wish to test the opinion of the House.