Debate contribution: Education (Holiday Meal Payments) Bill: Consideration Stage
Debate contribution by Mr Nick Mathison on .
- MLA
- Mr Nick Mathison
- Party at the time
- Alliance Party
- Date
- 21 September 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Private Members' Business
- Heading
- Education (Holiday Meal Payments) Bill: Consideration Stage
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5742868
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Deputy Speaker, on behalf of the Committee for Education, I welcome the opportunity to speak at Consideration Stage of the Education (Holiday Meal Payments) Bill, which was introduced on 3 March. Before I address the Committee's findings from Committee Stage and move to look at the amendments, I thank the Bill sponsor, Danny Baker, for his engagement with the Committee throughout our consideration of the Bill. I also record my thanks to all those who contributed written and oral evidence, including the Department of Education, Children in Northern Ireland (CiNI), the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People (NICCY), Advice NI, the Youth Assembly, community and voluntary organisations, academics, representative bodies and individual respondents. I hope that that covers everybody. With your permission, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will briefly cover the Committee Stage and the scrutiny that we undertook before I move on to look at the amendments. The Committee undertook extensive scrutiny of the Bill over 10 meetings. We issued a public call for evidence, received a substantial volume of submissions and considered detailed legal, policy and financial advice. The Committee heard evidence that children from low-income households continue to experience disproportionate levels of poverty and food insecurity. Witnesses described to members the additional pressures that families face during school holidays, when free school meal provision is unavailable and while other household costs, including childcare, activities and preparations for the new school year, often increase. A consistent theme from stakeholders was that inadequate access to food can have consequences not only for physical health and well-being but for educational outcomes. The Committee heard evidence that hunger can affect concentration, engagement with learning and readiness to return to school following extended holiday periods. The Committee also heard strong support for the Bill's policy objective from organisations that represent children and young people. The Youth Assembly in particular demonstrated a clear awareness of the realities of holiday hunger and expressed substantial support for the measures in the Bill that are designed to address it. At the same time, Committee scrutiny identified a number of important issues that required careful consideration. A significant area of discussion concerned eligibility. While the Bill uses existing free school meal entitlement as the basis of support, evidence highlighted concerns that many children who live in poverty do not currently qualify for free school meals, and a number of stakeholders argued that that wider policy issue should be considered by the Department through future reviews of the free school meal eligibility criteria. While members acknowledged those concerns, the Committee recognised that such matters extended beyond the immediate scope of the Bill. The proposed delivery mechanism also received considerable attention. Stakeholders generally favoured direct payments over vouchers or food parcels. The evidence suggested that direct payments can provide greater dignity, flexibility and choice for families, while allowing support to be delivered using the existing administrative systems available to the Department. In its evidence, the Department identified a number of drafting and operational issues in the Bill, and many of those gave rise to the amendments that we are debating. They included what the Department set out as perceived ambiguity around eligibility provisions, concerns regarding payment methods, the absence of a clear and consistent method for calculating payment amounts and practical difficulties relating to the timing of school holiday periods. The Committee considered in detail each of those concerns and concluded that amendments were required to improve the clarity and workability of the Bill. Those amendments are primarily technical in nature and are designed to ensure that, if enacted, the legislation can operate as effectively as intended. Before I come to the amendments in detail, I acknowledge the input of the Bill sponsor in relation to that. From the outset, he was very open to liaising with the Committee team and working closely with the Bill Office in developing the amendments.
643 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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