Free School Meals

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Tuesday 16th December 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Boycott]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that schools’ core budgets in more deprived communities are not disproportionately used to meet the costs of providing free school meals.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education, and the Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government already spend £1.5 billion annually supporting the provision of free and nutritious meals for around 3.4 million children. We have set aside a further £1 billion over the multi-year spending review period to fully fund our significant expansion of free meals to all households in receipt of universal credit from September 2026. This new entitlement will mean that more than 500,000 disadvantaged children will begin to access free meals.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Government very much for extending the remit of free school meals—that is excellent news. I declare my interest as chair of Feeding Britain. One of our trustees, Professor Greta Defeyter, does a lot of research into how the economics of free school meals work. She has found that the caterers are charging so much that schools are being forced to raid their teaching and learning budgets—literally the budgets they need to buy books—to pay for this. In Wales and Scotland, the budget for school meals is 60p to 70p more. What will the Government do to close this gap, given that the bill will get much higher next September, as she just alluded to?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

As I have outlined, we are fully funding the expansion, with £1 billion additional funding over the next spending review period. We provide the funding for free school meals through the national funding formula, and it is within the ability of schools to be able to shift money around in order to fund this. I understand the noble Baroness’s point about the pressures that food inflation may be causing, but it is right to prioritise additional funding on broadening the entitlement rather than on funding caterers.