Debate contribution: Education (Holiday Meal Payments) Bill: Further Consideration Stage
Debate contribution by Mr Paul Givan on .
- MLA
- Mr Paul Givan
- Party at the time
- Democratic Unionist Party
- Date
- 12 October 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution (made as a minister)
- Business
- Private Members' Business
- Heading
- Education (Holiday Meal Payments) Bill: Further Consideration Stage
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5785990
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I beg to move amendment No 1:
In moving amendment No 1, I will also speak to amendment No 2 and amendment Nos 5 to 14. I will also refer to amendment Nos 3 and 4, which have been tabled by the Chair of the Education Committee. I will make my comments under three headings. The first is redrafting amendments, which preserve the Bill's policy intent while improving its legal drafting. The second is an amendment to give clearer effect to the Chairman's intention regarding the value of the payments. The final one is amendments that would require the date of the first payments to be set in regulations subject to the approval of the Assembly. I wrote to the Committee Chair and the Bill sponsor on 6 October, enclosing the text of the amendments and explaining my rationale. My opposition to the Bill overall remains unchanged. I set out my view at Second Stage that this is, effectively, a welfare intervention, and I continue to believe strongly that the Bill will result in funding being diverted from key educational services that are already under huge strain, particularly in the context of an unprecedented increase in demand for special educational needs provision. More fundamentally, it is also a poorly targeted welfare measure. The purpose of free school meals is to ensure that every eligible child has access to a nutritious lunch during the school day, supporting their participation in education and readiness to learn. If the objective is instead to address food poverty, it is difficult to justify a payment that is linked solely to the value of lunches on school days. Food poverty does not begin and end between Monday and Friday, nor does it disappear at weekends. If the concern is that families cannot afford to put food on the table, why would a welfare payment be tied only to school day lunches while ignoring breakfasts, evening meals and, crucially, the weekend? That highlights the fundamental flaw at the heart of the Bill. It seeks to address a wider welfare issue through a mechanism designed for an educational purpose, and, worse still, it proposes to fund that intervention from an Education budget that is already insufficient to meet the needs of our schools. Whatever my views on the Bill, as Minister, I also have responsibility to ensure that legislation is drafted appropriately. If the Bill is to become law, it should be law that actually works. I have, therefore, tabled a number of amendments to protect the statute book. Those amendments, which would rewrite the Bill without changing any aspect of the policy intent agreed at Consideration Stage, are amendment Nos 1 and 5, amendment Nos 7 to 10 and amendment Nos 13 and 14. The initial draft, as is so often the case with a private Member's Bill, was so inadequate and poorly drafted that close liaison with the Office of the Legislative Counsel was required to completely reconstruct it. The most effective way of addressing the drafting issues is an almost complete rewrite of clause 1, rather than piecemeal amendments. Members will be assured that, as a result of these amendments, the Education Authority would make holiday meal payments to parents of pupils who are entitled to free school meals for the relevant holiday periods. Nothing in these amendments reopens that decision. Amendment No 1 leaves out clause 1 and inserts a new article 58A into the Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1986 in order that the holiday meal payments would sit clearly apart from existing school meals arrangements in article 58 of the 1986 Order. Amendment Nos 5 and 8 place the power to update the list of holidays and the power to make ancillary provision in clauses of their own. Amendment Nos 9 and 10 leave out clauses 2 and 3, and amendment Nos 13 and 14 leave out subsections (4) and (5) of clause 4, because the rewrite makes those clauses unnecessary. Amendment No 7 is a consequential change to amendment No 6, which I will return to later. It updates a reference so that it points to new article 58A(1). I encourage Members to support those amendments, as they do not change any of the provisions of the Bill but are simply a set of sensible drafting improvements that have been developed with the Office of the Legislative Counsel and are designed to ensure that the legislation functions as intended. This is about having effective legislation, notwithstanding my opposition to the Bill. This is what I have been asked to do as a Minister. I could have taken the approach to say that it is entirely up to the private Member and that, despite the inadequacies of the Bill and because of my opposition to it, I am not going to bring forward what, the First Legislative Counsel told me, would be required to have effective law in statute. As the Minister, I have taken the decision to act responsibly and table amendments that make the Bill's intent effective. Members, if you do not want to vote for it, you do not need to vote for it, and you will have an ineffective piece of legislation. However, if you want the Bill to do what you want it to do, despite my opposition, you will vote for these amendments, because they make the Bill effective. It is entirely a matter for Members as to how they decide they want to create a statute book in respect of these issues. Amendment No 2 is a stand-alone amendment to address a drafting issue in the amendment that was moved by the Chair of the Education Committee. The Chair's intention is clear that holiday meal payments should never be worth less than the value of free school meal provision during term time. However, as drafted, that amendment is not operationally workable. It provides that the holiday payment must be no less than any charge imposed for a school meal. The difficulty is that, in post-primary schools, there is no single school meal charge. Individual items are priced separately, and pupils who are entitled to free school meals receive a daily allowance. Legal advice has confirmed concerns that there is no single defined charge against which that provision could be applied. As a result, the drafting is open to challenge and requires amendment. That issue is addressed in the revised drafting as set out in new article 58A(9) in amendment No 1. However, if amendment No 1 is not agreed, amendment No 2 would resolve the drafting problem as a stand-alone amendment. It provides a clear and definitive basis for calculating holiday meal payments, by linking them either to the price of a school meal or, in the case of post-primary pupils, to the value of the Education Authority's daily free school meal allowance. That would mean that holiday meal payments in nursery, primary and special schools would be equivalent to the relevant school meal charge. Crucially, it would also ensure that post-primary pupils receive a holiday meal payment that is equal to the daily free school meal allowance that is provided during term time, which is currently £3·34. I hope that the Committee Chair will agree that that approach provides the necessary clarity and still delivers on the Committee's intended outcome. To conclude my opening remarks, I will now turn to amendment Nos 6, 11 and 12, which would allow the commencement date for payments to be set through future regulations. To be clear, no one in the Chamber disputes the importance of helping families with the cost of food, but that is not the issue that is before us today. The issue is a simple one: where will the money come from? My Department is already under immense financial pressure. Based on the current Education Authority meal prices, the Bill will require around £7·2 million this year, more than £22 million in 2027-28 and approximately £32 million by 2033-34.
At the same time, Budget discussions are ongoing, and difficult decisions about public services lie ahead.
Sorry, is someone looking for me to give way?
I thought that I had heard something. Feel free, Danny.
After the Bill goes through Final Stage and receives Royal Assent, we will be coming into the Christmas period, after which we will hit half term and Easter. We therefore considered the provision's becoming a legal requirement on the granting of Royal Assent and worked through what that will mean for the cost associated with giving effect to the legislation. Sorry, do you want to come in again?
It is to do with the timing. Once the Bill gets through Final Stage, and if Royal Assent is granted, the legal impact of the legislation will take effect immediately, and, as it stands, that will mean an associated cost of £7 million. There are then the figures that I outlined for next year and the following years to consider. That £7 million would have to be found not from the Department of Finance or from ring-fenced funding but from within the Department of Education, which is a Department that, if we take the John O'Dowd Budget as the starting point, is facing a £500 million deficit. From where therefore are we to get the money? The Bill does not ask for it to be ring-fenced in the block grant but to be taken out of the Department of Education's budget. It is therefore a welfare payment that is to be paid for out of its budget, and, as I said, based on Sinn Féin's draft Budget, the Department is already looking at over half a billion pounds of a deficit. One could be supportive of the provision had Sinn Féin put forward a draft Budget that ensured that funding was available for it, but it did not do that. It was an inadequate Budget, with over £500 million in education cuts, and the Bill not only adds another £7 million but makes it a legal requirement that the provision take priority over all else. Before a Minister of Education can get to decide their priorities, legislation therefore states, "Whatever your allocation, this is the first priority. Before special educational needs, this is the first priority", and the Minister is then constrained in identifying their priorities. We are taking part in discussions with the Secretary of State and the Treasury on our financial position, yet here we have an Assembly wanting to add more financial challenges for the Executive. How does that land with the Secretary of State and the Treasury? How does it give the Finance Minister any credibility when he is talking to the Secretary of State about the Executive's being able to take difficult decisions? That is a contradictory position.
That is precisely the point, and Mr Martin has hit the nail on the head. Something has to give, and, in order to give effect to the legislation, it has to give not from within any other Department but from within the Department of Education. About what other schemes that the Department is currently funding would Members say, "Don't do that. Stop funding it"? Would it be the extended schools programme? Would the eligibility criteria for those who qualify for free school meals need to be changed in order to finance free school meals over 12 months and not just in term time? Those are issues that my officials are grappling with to see how effect can be given to the provision. One proposition that is being actively considered is removing the current level of income for free school meals to balance it against the total cost increase from this pressure. That is a serious issue for those families, and it is the kind of issue that officials in my Department now have to grapple with. Against that backdrop, Members need to ask whether it is responsible to create a permanent spending commitment that runs to tens of millions of pounds without first identifying how it will be funded. We are already struggling to fund essential services. Schools are under pressure, hospitals are under pressure and the question is not whether the proposal is well-intentioned — it is a well-intentioned proposal — but who will pay for it. Are Members prepared to see millions of pounds diverted from Education budgets to fund what is, in effect, a welfare payment? If so, they should be honest about the consequences, which will be felt not in departmental spreadsheets but in classrooms and support services and by children across Northern Ireland. Indeed, some of the children most affected may be among those whom the Bill is intended to help. The amendments offer a responsible alternative. They would allow the Bill to come into operation following Royal Assent while providing for the commencement of payments to be set by regulations that are subject to the draft affirmative procedure. In other words, the Assembly would still decide when payments begin, but it would do so with full knowledge of the funding position. That seems to me to be a reasonable and responsible approach that allows us to demonstrate our commitment to families and our responsibility as legislators. By contrast, proceeding without identifying a sustainable funding source is like taking on a major new financial commitment when you cannot meet the bills that you already have: it does not solve the problem but simply transfers the pressure elsewhere. If a family were facing financial difficulties, it would think carefully before taking on a significant new and permanent cost without knowing how it would be paid for. Government should be no different. If the amendments are agreed, the Department will undertake a review of affordability that will include consideration of the final budget position. That is not delay for delay's sake but basic financial responsibility. I propose the draft affirmative procedure because it ensures that Members will retain the final say. Payments would commence after the Assembly had considered the evidence and voted accordingly. I will be frank with Members: if the Bill is commenced without the funding to sustain it, the impact will be felt elsewhere in education. Funding cannot be spent twice. Every pound committed to the Bill is a pound that is unavailable for other educational priorities. Members who oppose the amendments should therefore be clear about what they are asking schools and pupils to give up in return. I said at Second Stage that good intentions alone do not fund public services, and that remains true. I say this to Members: proceed with supporting the Bill, if that is what you wish to do, but support it in a responsible way. Let us identify the funding and understand the consequences. Members can then decide on commencement with their eyes wide open as to the impact. That is what good government demands and what the public expect us to do.
2,478 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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