Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference the National Audit Office report, Investigation into free school meal voucher scheme, published 2 December, if he will utilise the provision in Edenred’s contract to deliver the free school meal voucher scheme to access the information about (a) Edenred’s income and (b) cost relating to the Scheme.

The department made an award of a contract to Edenred pursuant to Regulation 32(2)(c) Public Contracts Regulations 2015 to provide extremely urgent deliverables as part of the response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The contract was let as a direct award using the terms of an existing Crown Commercial Service framework.

The department are using the open book arrangement in this contract to request information from Edenred about costs relating to the scheme. The department does not comment on the commercial arrangements of third parties but can confirm that we only paid for the face value of goods delivered, which in this case is vouchers.