Remote Education and Free School Meals

Steve Brine Excerpts

Monday 18th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House believes that families need more support during school and college closures; and that those eligible should be guaranteed to receive the full value of free school meals for the duration of the school year, including during all holidays; and calls on the Secretary of State for Education to set a deadline to ensure that every learner has the resources required to learn remotely, and provide a weekly update to Parliament on implementing this.

Today, and at least until February half-term, millions of children have not attended school and will instead be studying at home. No one wants to be in this situation—we all believe that school is the best place for children’s learning and wellbeing—but for now, faced with a rising coronavirus infection rate, we understand that many children need to study at home. They, their families and hard-working school staff deserve to know that the Government are doing all they can to support them.

That is why we have brought forward a motion this evening that asks two fundamental questions: first, are the Government doing everything they can to support pupils to keep learning remotely; and secondly, are the Government doing everything they can to ensure that children do not go hungry when they cannot get a free meal in school? If the answer to those questions is no, which I believe it is, then Members, whatever their party, should vote for our motion.

These should be matters on which we can all agree. I am sure there is nobody in this House who does not believe that children should receive a world-class education and that every family in this country should be able to provide their children with nourishing meals, but the reality is that the Government have not done enough—too slow to secure digital access for those who need it, while overseeing yet another scandal in delivering free school meals to children in need of them. The Prime Minister and, indeed, the Secretary of State claimed to be outraged by images of food parcels they saw on social media last week, but I and my party are outraged at Ministers’ consistent and unforgivable failure to stand with children and families throughout this pandemic. Pupils and parents deserve a Government who are on their side. They deserve better than this Government.

I pay tribute to everyone who has gone above and beyond to keep children safe and learning throughout the pandemic—the teachers, leaders and support staff across our education system who have worked hard in extraordinary circumstances to keep children learning safely; and the parents who face the unenviable task of balancing work, educating their children and childcare, too often without the support they needed.

At the beginning of this pandemic, 1.8 million children did not have the devices or internet connections they needed to work from home and, in that first national lockdown, many of those children struggled to access remote learning. Despite the best efforts of teachers, school leaders and support staff, some children fell behind their peers because they lacked the basic resources to continue learning when they could not be in the classroom. The Secretary of State rightly started to provide some devices to some of those children. He set a target of providing 230,000 devices by the end of June last year. Not only did that fall far short of the number of children who needed them, but he did not even deliver all those devices on time. Perhaps he could have learned a lesson from the Labour Government in Wales, which repurposed existing orders and were supporting pupils with devices by the end of May, according to the independent Education Policy Institute.

Being less prepared than the Welsh Labour Administration may have been understandable at the beginning of the pandemic, but the Secretary of State’s inability to learn from his failures and from their success is inexcusable. Instead of redoubling his efforts to get devices to all the pupils who lacked digital access as quickly as possible, the Secretary of State waited until the new national lockdown this month to up his target and accelerate delivery, leaving hundreds of thousands of pupils not only out of the classroom, but out of learning. So I ask him: why were these laptops not being rolled out on this scale months ago? Why was he once again too slow to act to secure children’s education in the face of huge disruption?

Today, we have reached about 700,000 devices delivered against a target of 1.3 million. It does seem that the Secretary of State is finally beginning to learn from at least one of his mistakes. This time, he has decided not to set himself a deadline that he will simply miss, but he cannot shy away from his duty to those children, so can he tell the House now when all the devices will be in the hands of the pupils who need them? Can he guarantee that when that is done, every single child who was locked out of remote learning will be able to participate fully when they are not in the classroom?

This is not just an issue in schools. In colleges, we have heard of adult learners struggling to access remote learning and not being eligible for Government support. Universities UK, ucisa, GuildHE and Jisc have written to the Secretary of State in just the last few days to request urgent action to support the thousands of university students who are still unable to access their education online due to digital and data poverty. Will he tell us what he is doing to address this?

I would like to move to the second part of the motion on free school meals. The images of food parcels that we saw last week were scandalous. Ministers have said that they are outraged by them, but they refused to accept that responsibility for those images is a direct result of their own policies. They pushed for a food parcel-first approach and set guidance for parcels worth only a fraction of the £15 made available to providers for families to feed their children. They cannot devise and publish a policy and guidelines and then be appalled when they are implemented. Will the Secretary of State now take responsibility for what occurred and apologise to the parents who received those unacceptable food parcels?

The Secretary of State then managed to outdo himself, with not just one but two free school meals scandals last week. Only days after we all saw those images, it was reported that schools will not be providing free meals over the February half term. Of course, the Secretary of State voted against such a measure in October. We thought he had learned his lesson, but now he is letting down hungry children again. I know that he will cite the winter support scheme, but that scheme does not guarantee that every child eligible for a free school meal will get one every day of the holidays, and he cannot guarantee that no child will go hungry when they are out of school this half term.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

I am listening to the hon. Lady carefully. I am sorry that she has not picked up the tone of her shadow DWP colleague, the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) —he got the tone right; she has not—but does she agree that there is clearly a long-term conversation to be had in this country about school holiday food for families in receipt of free school meals? It is something that never happened during the 13 years of the last Labour Government and that, to my knowledge, the Opposition have not pushed this Government on during the last almost 11 years of their being in office. Does she agree that there is a conversation to be had, sensibly, across the Dispatch Box and without the partisan nonsense, about the long-term provision of holiday food for some of the poorest children in our country?

[Kate Green]

I am aware that a number of organisations, representing food charities, anti-poverty organisations, educationalists and so on, have written to the Prime Minister suggesting a full review of that subject. I welcome that, and I hope that he will respond with the offer of the review that they are seeking. However, I point out that not only are we in the middle of the first global pandemic in 100 years, but that it is against the backdrop of rapidly rising child poverty. That is why the push to address the hunger that children are facing now has become more acute than ever.

I have a simple solution for the Secretary of State to the problem of holiday hunger, one that could solve the problem at the touch of a button: sack the companies that are providing a substandard service and just give parents the money—secure family incomes by using the existing social security infrastructure and put £15 a week into the bank accounts of the parents who need it to feed their children. He should put his trust in mums and dads, because we know that parents will do the right thing.

Anyone who has thought about these issues—I do not know about Government Members, but I have spent a large part of my career thinking about them—knows that cash transfers work. They improve outcomes for children, they remove stigma for families and they ensure that the full value of support provided goes to children. I know that there are some people—in October we discovered some of them on the Government Benches—who believe that parents cannot be trusted to use money responsibly to feed their children. That is wrong in every possible way. It is morally wrong to condemn families to insecurity and stigma. It is economically illiterate not to provide cash to families who most need it, and instead to slash their incomes in the midst of the worst recession that most of us will know in our lifetimes. And it is factually and empirically wrong to suggest that this money would not be spent by parents on food for children. So I ask the Secretary of State to do the right thing: to end the scandal of inadequate food parcels or vouchers that take days to arrive, and the scandal—in one of the richest countries in the world—of children continuing to go to bed hungry.

I want to turn briefly to the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister. Let me begin by saying that there are some things in the amendment that I am glad to see—not least that he has finally listened to teachers and to Labour and started to move towards zero rating of educational websites, though quite why it has taken him so long, I do not know. First, the amendment asks us to note that the Government are

“committed to supporting families to feed their children during both term-time and holidays”.

It then mentions a voucher scheme that has been hit by repeated delays in an outsourcing fiasco, a winter grant scheme that cannot guarantee that every child will be fed and a holiday scheme that will not be in place for months. It condemns the food parcels we saw on social media, while failing to take any responsibility for the fact that they were in line with the Government’s own policies. It ignores the Government’s plans to slash more than £1,000 a year from family incomes by cutting the lifeline in universal credit, plunging hundreds of thousands of children into poverty.

Then the amendment calls on us to note all the progress the Secretary of State has made in improving digital access. It lauds his half-delivered target of delivering 1.3 million laptops yet gives us no clear timeline for full delivery. It notes the support given to schools but ignores the fact that schools up and down the country have repeatedly reported that they have not had the support they needed from the Government throughout the pandemic, whether it is on funding, testing, exams—the list continues. I am afraid the amendment is not credible. In fact, it is insulting to schools and families across the country, who will see through this attempt to give Government Members something to vote for while failing to support the entirely reasonable motion we have tabled.

Poverty is, sadly, endemic across our country. In every city, town and community, it blights the life chances of children, causes unimaginable hardship and insecurity to families, and weakens our economy. The pandemic has made the situation far, far worse, and it is appalling that today, we have seen with our own eyes that the Government are simply not committed to the task of ending child poverty.

Earlier this evening, Government Members failed to support Labour’s motion calling for the £20 uplift in universal credit—a lifeline that has kept millions above water over the past nine months—to be made permanent. The consequences are simple: families and children will be plunged into insecurity, hardship and poverty. I am giving Government Members a second chance to do the right thing this evening and to put children first by voting for our motion—a motion that asks for nothing more than the chance for every child to learn and for no child to go hungry.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Williamson]

I think Members from all parts of this House will join together where there is unacceptable delivery, in terms of the standards we all expect. It is right to call that out, for action to be taken and for standards to be raised. People are admittedly working under extreme pressure, but we need standards to continue to increase. Equally, every one of us will have seen—not only in our constituency, but right across the country—amazing work done by so many of our catering staff in schools. They have pulled out all the stops, and provided wonderful, nutritious meals for so many children up and down the country. It is important to put on record our thanks to those who have done so much.

[Steve Brine]

May I direct my right hon. Friend to the Connect4communities programme that Hampshire County Council is putting together? It includes a discretionary schools grant, a holiday play scheme, and free school meal vouchers for the February half-term. That is how we are spending £2.9 million or so of the covid winter grant to support families in my Winchester constituency. Does my right hon. Friend agree that when we discuss these matters, it is vital that we stick to the facts and the practical help on the ground for our constituents?

[Gavin Williamson]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend always makes excellent points, as my experience of working with him in the Whips Office always proved. He is right to highlight the brilliant work that Hampshire County Council is doing. So many local authorities are looking at this issue in an innovative and different way, and are able to have a bigger impact and offer more support to those families who are most disadvantaged, and to whom we want to see support and help offered.

We are well aware that free school meals play a vital role in making sure that disadvantaged children receive a healthy, nutritious meal each school day. They are aimed at families who are out of work or on low incomes, and I have no doubt that they represent a lifeline for many families who have been hard-hit by this pandemic. Any school, family or pupil will be able to raise concerns about their food parcels through the Department for Education helpline. We have had a minimal number of cases so far, but we will take action on each and every one of them.

I want to be clear that children will be receiving food over the February half-term, just as they did at Christmas. In November, we announced a £170 million covid winter grant scheme to support vulnerable children and families—not only with food but, importantly, with other essentials, because we on the Government Benches recognise that this is not just an issue of food; sometimes, for those families most in need and requiring greater support, it is about other elements of support, too. Many of those families were struggling with bills, and other support could be provided through schemes such as the one so brilliantly outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine).

We recognised that support needed to be put in place, and we are doing more to provide support for children over the holidays. As part of the winter package announced in November, we confirmed the expansion of our brilliant holiday activities and food programme, at a cost of £220 million. It would be remiss of me not to mention the work done by a former member of the Labour party, Lord Field, who has done so much to highlight this issue and has always been a great advocate for holiday activities. While we address the issue of food, we must not lose sight of the need to make sure that activities are going on, and the need to support young people, most importantly, families. The expansion of the programme means that eligible children in every local authority throughout the country will be able to access healthy food and take part in fun activities over Easter, summer and Christmas, if they require that.

The course of the virus has changed since December. As a result of the change in trajectory, and bearing the possibility of future changes in mind, the Government will continue to keep under review what they need to do to ensure that all children continue to be fed, and families continue to be supported. I am confident that, thanks to the measures that we have put in place, remote education will go from strength to strength during this lockdown, enabling young people to make the educational progress that every single one of us in this House wants. Of course, every single one of us on the Government Benches wants to see them return to the classroom at the earliest opportunity.

I can confirm that the amendment tabled in the name of the Prime Minister will not be moved this evening. Government Members are focusing on making sure that we get social policy right for the children of this country, and that they and their families are properly supported. For those on the Opposition Benches, so often the tone of the debate is more about social media than social policy. What we see in this Government’s actions are long-term solutions in respect of not just food, but activity for children at Easter, summer and into the future, because we realise and understand that that can make a real difference to children’s lives.