Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will publish the number of (a) free school meals and (b) Government-funded holiday schemes that offered food to participants, by local authority area in the last 12 months for which statistics are available; and if he will make a statement.

This government has taken significant steps to raise the living standards of low-income families, including introducing the National Living Wage, raising the personal tax allowance so no-one pays tax on the first £12,500 earned and improving financial incentives to work. The government is committed to delivering a country that works for everyone and I want to ensure that all children have access to healthy food and enriching activities during the school holidays. Last year I announced £2 million for projects to deliver this sort of provision, free to disadvantaged pupils during the 2018 summer holidays. We are more than quadrupling that amount for the 2019 summer holidays where we will be exploring how the local coordination of this sort of provision can help more disadvantaged pupils to access free high quality holiday club provision during the school holidays.

The information requested on data on the number of free school meals served in each local authority is not held centrally. However, data on the number of pupils eligible for and claiming free school meals in state-funded schools for each local authority is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2018.

Accompanying this answer is a table showing the number of holiday clubs the Department for Education funded within each local authority, through its summer 2018 Holiday Activities and Food Research Fund. Please note that the total number of clubs included in this table is greater than the 283 clubs referred to in the ‘management information release’ related to this fund due to some clubs not returning usable management information. The management release is available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/755139/Holiday_Activities_and_Food_2018_Programme_revised.pdf.