Free School Meals

Lord Hampton Excerpts

Tuesday 16th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

As I suggested earlier, the Department for Education is already providing advice to schools on how to procure their provision of school meals, and how to do it effectively and efficiently. We have to give schools the ability to make their own decisions about how they provide the free school meals that they are responsible for providing. Alongside that advice, that is the current position.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a teacher at a state secondary school with over 50% pupil premium. I assure noble Lords that the food I taught my year 8 students about was nutritious and was taught to a budget. Students are taught food in year 7 and year 8—it is part of the national curriculum —so they are very well-taught at that stage. I welcome the free school meals news, but I have heard a lot that breakfast clubs are very much a top-down, one-size-fits-all, cookie cutter approach, whereas heads are saying, “Could you just give us the money and we’ll sort out how it’s done?”

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I am sure the noble Lord provided excellent food education for the pupils he was responsible for. The rollout of breakfast clubs started originally with the 750 early adopters. That was precisely about being able to identify, in a range of different schools, how we best delivered and funded breakfast clubs. While I understand the noble Lord’s call for more flexibility, and we would certainly want to maximise that where possible, we are clear that there are standards around breakfast clubs for the quality of the food provided and the period of time that club operates for. This is about food, but it is also about childcare and a good start to the school day, which have to be set centrally. Within that, I am sure as much flexibility as possible will be offered.