Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department has made an estimate of the number of children who are at risk of experiencing hunger during the school summer holidays in 2019.

The information requested is not held centrally.

In 2018, the department announced a programme of work to explore ways of supporting disadvantaged families during school holidays. We received 94 applications for funding from organisations across the country, for a share of £2 million.

The 2018 programme saw charities and community groups provide meals and activities such as football, play sessions, and cooking classes for more than 18,000 children across the country. Building on this, the department has quadrupled funding and strengthened the programme to encourage coordination in local communities, so that even more disadvantaged children can benefit from the programme. Applications were invited from organisations to act as coordinators in a specific local authority area. The 2019 programme received 92 applications and selected 11 locations for funding, including at least one in each of the 9 regions of England. This summer, around 50,000 disadvantaged children will be offered free meals and activities over the upcoming summer holidays, funded by £9.1 million.

The purpose of this programme is to allow us to gather more evidence about the scale of the issue, the most effective ways of tackling it, and the costs and delivery challenges associated with doing so. As a result, the department will be able to make an evidence based decision about whether and how we should intervene in the longer term.