Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 193 in this group is also in my name. I say again how pleased I am that the Labour Government have broadened the eligibility for free school meals. However, much still needs to be done, particularly on the quality of the meals and the enforcement of the standards, which needed reviewing anyway—that was the subject of Amendment 190, debated last week—and to ensure that all eligible children get their meal. In recent years the whole issue of school meals has been left to flounder, despite their importance to children’s health, and I am pleased that the Government are now picking it up again.

Amendment 189 calls for an annual review, with the results to be laid before Parliament, of the barriers to all eligible children receiving their free school meal, and clarification of how many eligible children are missing out. The review must assess how many children are eligible, under whatever the current threshold is, and how many would be eligible if the threshold had been uprated since 2018. It must also assess how many would be eligible if the threshold were to be set at £20,000 per year after tax. Because of the inequalities that we know about, the review would have to cover regional and demographic disparities in take-up rates and the financial and educational impact on schools and local authorities, bearing in mind that a child on free school meals currently brings the pupil premium with him or her to the school for education purposes. That set of reviews would give us more information about how the system was working and would form a very useful underpinning for the development of policy in future.

Amendment 193 would ensure the auto-enrolment of all children eligible for free school meals and expand eligibility even further than the recent change to households whose income is less than £20,000 per year after tax. That would be yet another step in the right direction. I know that the Secretary of State, in making the recent announcement that all children in families on universal credit will be eligible for free school meals next year, claimed that this simpler system will make it easier for families to register. However, it is still not the same as auto-enrolment, and schools as well as families are losing out because they are losing the pupil premium that comes with FSM.

The evidence to the Food, Diet and Obesity Committee was clear that there are many children who would become eligible, under whatever threshold, who may not get their free school meal, such as it is, and that there are many children in poverty whose parents struggle to pay for a hot meal for their children. These parents or families, eligible but not registered for FSM, often send the child to school with a packed lunch of dubious nutritional value—we were given several examples—not because they do not care about their children’s health but because they cannot afford the price of a decent packed lunch or a hot meal. It is these unregistered families, and those just above the eligibility threshold, who suffer the most from regulations.

Free school meals, and breakfasts, are one of the most important levers that the Government have to ensure that, however poor the parents, however lacking their cooking facilities at home, whatever kind of food desert the family live in, the children can get two healthy meals every school day—if they also get a free breakfast—to ensure that they grow up strong and a healthy weight, with no rotting teeth and no wrong food preferences to take through life and make them susceptible to obesity. I hope the Government will agree with these amendments, and I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, Amendments 191 and 192 are in my name and are closely related to that already introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for offering her support to my amendments.

Amendment 191 is essentially a different way of getting to the same intention as Amendment 193. We are aiming to get auto-enrolment so that every child who is eligible for free school meals gets them, and surely that is something that the Government want to do. I have no particular opinion on whether Amendment 191 or Amendment 193 is the best way to do it; we can debate that after this point, although I would love to hear the Government say, “We want to do this and we’re going to do it, so you don’t have to worry about this on Report”.

The best stats on the previous form of free school meals, before the Government’s recent extension, showed that up to 250,000 children, or about 11% of those eligible for free school meals, missed out because it is an opt-in process. That is a point that my honourable friend Ellie Chowns in the other place has already highlighted, so I will not go through it in great detail. However, I will note that the Fix Our Food research programme showed that it is children from non-majority communities and lone-parent households who are more likely not to be registered for free school meals despite being eligible. Inequalities here multiply themselves time and again.

Reasons the charity give for this include parents struggling to fill out the complex forms, language barriers or that there may be a simple lack of awareness. There may also be stigma around free school meals. I hope the Committee will join me in saying there is no reason why there should be, but the practical reality is that we know there is. I also note that the Greater London Authority has put resources into auto-enrolment, showing that it is possible to make a difference, but around the rest of the country that is not available.

I come back to my point about stigma, because Amendment 192 would extend free school lunches to all primary schoolchildren in state-funded schools. I will quote a question that was put to me by a year 7 pupil from Lordswood Boys’ School in Birmingham this morning—and, no, I did not put him up to it; it was not prompted in any way. Some other questions identified me as a representative of the Government and I had to correct that misapprehension, but he simply said to me: “Why don’t we get free school meals?” That is something that shows a really high level of awareness. People feel the inequality and suffering that has come from the lack of those free school meals.

Amendment 192, which the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, has kindly backed, would not actually help that year 7 boy. This is me and the Green Party going for the moderate, middle-of-the-road option, because Green Party policy is free school meals for all school pupils, which would help that pupil in Birmingham. What we have here is simply an amendment for all primary school pupils, and part of the reason for that is the example from London of how positive it has been.

I note that an evaluation of this has been conducted already to see what has happened. There has been a lived-experience evaluation by the Child Poverty Action Group and an implementation evaluation as well. This policy, unsurprisingly, was really popular and had a very high level of take up—between 88% and 90% across three school terms. Among the positive outcomes, 84% of parents said it had improved the family budget. One-third of parents said that the policy meant they had less debt. Three in five parents said they were able to spend more money on food at home as a result. We talk so often in your Lordships’ House about our broken food system and how it is so difficult to get a healthy diet.

There are more positives. More than half of parents thought their child was trying new foods as a result of being exposed to them at school. This is the kind of thing we might not think about, but more than half of parents said that it saved them time in the morning that they had been forced to use making packed lunches. We all know that can make a real difference to families. More than one-third of parents thought their children were concentrating better in lessons as a result.

This is a moderate challenge to the Government to look at what has been achieved in London. We know the levels of inequality between London and the rest of the county. Let us break down that inequality and make it better, at least for our primary school pupils.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I was pleased to add my name to various amendments concerning free school meals. Much as I welcome the Bill’s provision for free breakfasts, there remains a strong case for complementing them with free school dinners. I will scrap half of my speech to save time.

This case was summarised well by the Food Foundation:

“School food has the power to enable not just better health and wellbeing, but improved attendance, better pupil outcomes and wider social benefits including reduced inequalities. Free School Meals can break down barriers to opportunity and level the playing field so that every child can have the best start in life”.


In a nutshell, children who have free school meals are healthier and happier and do better in school, as well as later in life.

The amendments would thus contribute to both parts of this Bill: children’s well-being and their ability to benefit from their education. I therefore warmly welcome the recent announcement of the extension of free school meals to all children in families on universal credit from next September, with transitional protection associated with the roll out of universal credit lasting until then.

I will ask one small question and, if it cannot be answered now, perhaps it can be answered in writing. I understand that, if someone is on universal credit at the start of the school year, they will retain entitlement for the whole of that school year, in recognition of the fluctuating circumstances of many on low incomes. Can my noble friend the Minister confirm that that is the case and also say whether someone whose parent comes on to universal credit during the school year will still be entitled? When we debated the Statement, my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti made an impassioned plea on human rights grounds that we might one day aspire to universal free school meals—an ambition that my noble friend the Minister noted.