Debate contribution: Education (Holiday Meal Payments) Bill: Further Consideration Stage

Debate contribution by Mr Peter Martin on 12 October 2026.

MLA: Mr Peter Martin
Party at the time: Democratic Unionist Party
Date: 12 October 2026
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Private Members' Business
Heading: Education (Holiday Meal Payments) Bill: Further Consideration Stage
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5786415

Text

My comments on the Bill will be brief, but they will reflect my party's position. I reiterate what the Education Minister said: the Bill has been brought forward by its sponsor with good intent. The concept of ending hunger amongst our children is admirable; in fact, the Assembly should aim to do that. I will come back to that later. I will address the intended, or perhaps unintended, consequences of passing the Bill today as it stands. As the Minister mentioned, his amendments would not change the fundamentals of the Bill at Further Consideration Stage when it comes to the eligibility criteria, the holiday periods, the EA's duty and the value of the payments. The amendments are not about seeking to delay or block the Bill; they are about ensuring that the measures could be funded by the Department, and that the Department could deliver what the Bill requires. That is simple fiscal responsibility. The Education Committee Chair, who spoke just before me, will be aware that the Department's budget deficit for this year is in the region of £500 million. He will also know that the in-year cost of the Bill's proposals would be something like £7 million, and that the recurrent cost would probably be in the region of £23 million. The Chair said that the Education Minister has "choices" about how he spends his budget, but I know from my time on the Committee that, whilst the Education budget is fairly sizeable, the amount of flexibility in it, once you take out salaries and statutory functions, for example, is very small. The Bill as it stands would place a vires on the Department to deliver that additional funding to parents without any mechanism to uplift the Department's budget accordingly, which, for a private Member's Bill, is fairly unusual. It remains clear that, without additional ring-fenced funding being provided to the Department of Education by the Finance Minister, the Department of Education would, as the Education Minister referenced, have to absorb those costs in some way. The only ways in which it could do that would be to change some of the criteria around how it evaluates free school meal entitlement (FSME), to stop other programmes or to divert funding from somewhere else. The Minister reflected that argument in his comments, and I will pick that up. He was talking about a fairly basic economic concept called opportunity cost. Essentially, it refers to the potential benefit or gain that is given up when choosing another option; if someone has a certain amount of money to spend and they spend it on x, they cannot spend it on y. It is wholly legitimate for the Assembly to ask where the money would come from. Would it come from youth services? Would it come from extended schools? Would it come from SEN? I struggle to understand why, despite the Bill's positive and very wholesome proposal, we would legislate to put an additional £23 million of financial pressure on a Department that already has an overspend of £500 million in a financial year that we are over halfway through. When I looked at some of the figures this morning, I noted that the Sure Start programme, which, as members of the Education Committee will be aware, is an absolutely brilliant programme that delivers really good outcomes for some very vulnerable families in Northern Ireland, costs £37 million per year. To pay for what is being talked about in the Bill, that programme, which is an exemplar, would need to be cut by about 60%. Regardless of the efficacy of the policy, simply adding a £23 million commitment to a Department that is already overcommitted and has already overspent does not seem particularly sensible. I just do not see where the fiscal responsibility is with this. I am happy to give the Floor back to the Chair of the Education Committee, because we have had a bit of back and forth on this. Where is the fiscal responsibility in putting a legislative duty to commit £23 million of recurrent funding on a Department that has already significantly overspent and will overspend more as we go through the year?
Sorry.

697 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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